“Fuck,” I yell, when a jar of nails rolls off the end and smacks me in the head.
I sit and bury my sore head in my hands. My heart slams against my chest when I think about what I did last night. I fucking hated the idea of hurting Holly like that, and yeah, there might have been a hundred other ways I could drive the point home without having Sheri-Lyn ride me like a rodeo cowgirl in our lounge room, but I couldn’t think of a more obvious message that that to say this shit between us is through. I knew it would just drive her further into his arms, but that was kinda the point, wasn’t it? She might not be happy for right now, but someday, she’ll thank me for it.
Still, I didn’t expect it to hurt so fucking bad once the deed was done, and when she walked into the kitchen as I was trying to drown my sorrows in a stolen bottle of expensive whiskey, I lost the very last shred of decency I had left. I shoulda kept my mouth shut. I shoulda let that little fuckrag believe he’d won. I shoulda been able to walk away, give her this one shot at happiness. But I’m a selfish bastard.
I don’t know where Holly and I go from here, but I know one thing’s for sure: every day I spend unable to touch her, hold her, or make love to her is going to tear me apart.
Fuck me; I’m a sorry son of a bitch.
I sit for a good minute, trying to get the hangover from hell to cooperate and not fuck me over again, and then I slowly rise and stumble my arse out into the brightness of late morning. It’s about forty degrees in the shade already, and I smell like a fucking brewery. I stumble into the house, and see Holly and Ana sitting at the table over a cup of coffee. Their conversation comes to a pretty abrupt end when they see me. I probably look like shit. I certainly fucking feel it.
“Mornin’ ladies,” I mutter, knowing full well that one of them is going to ream me out any minute now. I grab a can of Coke from the fridge, and guzzle half that sucker in one go. “Jesus, you two are fucking sombre this morning. Who died?”
Holly doesn’t say anything; she just sits back in her chair and folds her arms over her chest. I glance between the two of them, and notice they both have tears in their eyes.
“No one died, Jack,” Ana says through a croaky throat. “Holly’s moving to Sydney with Coop.”
I crush the Coke can in my hand, pouring liquid out all over my dirty jeans and feet. I toss the thing in the sink, and then turn to face them. “Really?”
“We’re driving back today,” she says, but she won’t look at me. Why the fuck isn’t she looking at me while she feeds me this horse-shit?
“I’m gonna let you two talk this out,” Ana says as she gets up from the table.
“We got nothin’ to talk out, Ana.”
“I think you both know that’s not true.” Ana spears me with a look that’d make even the baddest motherfucker cower. She gives Holly an encouraging smile and leaves us to ‘talk’. What she doesn’t know is that words fail us at every turn.
I lean back against the counter, and drive my hands through my hair. I’m so fucking angry, I could take this place apart with my bare hands. I wanna yell, and scream. I want to fucking shake her, and tell her she’s making the biggest mistake of her life.
“Would you say something, please?” Holly whispers.
“Got nothin’ to say, sweetheart.” That’s not true. There are a million things to say. Don’t go. Stay. If you think you’re going to be happy with him, you’re wrong. I know what she wants me to say, but I can’t. It doesn’t matter anymore anyway.
“That’s it? That’s all you have?”
“What do you want from me, Hols?”
“I don’t know, Jack. Maybe a little more than see ya, have a nice life.”
“This what you really want? Or what the rock star wants?” I bite out.
“It’s what I want,” she says, and then lowers her gaze and runs her hands over her belly “It’s what’s best for the baby.”
“Bull-fucking-shit,” I say, and lean over the table in front of her. “This is you taking the easy way out. This is you running away.”
“What exactly am I running away from, Jack?”
“Life. Responsibility,” I say, and she opens her mouth to cut me off, but I won’t allow it. “From me.”
“You said yourself you didn’t want this.” She waves her hand over her belly. “You said you couldn’t do this, it didn’t make a difference how you felt about us because you couldn’t handle it.”
“Would it matter if I could handle it? Would you still have stayed here, knowing what he can offer you?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Hols, you’re smarter than that. He can provide you with things I can’t. Isn’t that what every woman wants? A rock star, with pockets full of cash.”
“This has never been about money, and you know it. This is about family, and it’s about the baby that I’m carrying that you can’t deal with.”
“Right. Family,” I scoff. “You know what’s funny? Is that he’s asking you to move away from yours.” This is not what I’d planned when I made the decision to push her away. I didn’t sign up for her moving across the state, and never being able to see her again. I’m so fucking furious I wanna punch my fist through a wall. No. Through that fucker’s head. “Where the fuck is he?”
“Why? So you can go and fuck my life up even further?”
“He’s right here,” Cooper says from the doorway, startling the both of us. Holly’s cheeks flame and she drops her gaze from mine.
“This your idea? Taking her away from the only family she has?”
“I’m her family now. Me and my baby are her family,” Coop says with a snide smile.
“How long exactly have you been back in her life? How long you known about that kid? Up until two months ago, you had no idea that baby existed. You know why? Because she didn’t want to tell you. She didn’t want you in their lives.” I step closer, just itching to put my fist through this fucker’s face. “So you can feed all that bullshit to yourself if it helps you sleep at night after you’ve fucked her in your bed, and she’s spent the entire time imagining it was me, but no one else here buys it. You’re not a fucking family. You’re an afterthought.”
“Jack!” Holly says, and steps in front of me. She shoves hard at my chest, knocking me back a few paces. “You are not going to screw this up for me again. I’m moving to Sydney because I want to. I’m sorry that hurts you, but it’s the truth.”
“Nah, that doesn’t hurt me, darlin’. We had a good run, Hols, but personally, I’d rather just get fucked without the headache,” I say, and hate myself for the way her face crumples and the tears that spring up in her eyes, but I dig the grave deeper because she’s leaving with that cock-sucking wanker, and she’s fucking tearing my heart out of my chest, and making feel this shit without her. “Good luck with the baby. Fucking glad that’s another headache I don’t have to deal with.”
I stride from the room without looking back. I pull my keys from the hook near the door, and I get in the car and I drive. I have no idea where I’m going, I don’t fucking care. I drive like a maniac until I find an open bottle shop, and I purchase a bottle of tequila, and in some far-off field I drink until I pass out because it stops me from feeling all the bullshit that hurts so goddamned bad I wanna bash my head against a fucking tree.
I SIT with my back to the cot and swig straight from the bottle of Bundy rum. It burns like a motherfucker going down, and I grunt and groan, and slap at my chest until it goes away. I miss her so damn much. I miss her laugh, and the noises she makes when she comes, and the way she snores when she’s tired. I miss the smell of her shampoo, and goddamn it, not getting to see her stomach grow rounder, or feeling the baby kick.
“Fucking pussy,” I mutter to myself, because sitting in an empty nursery mourning a kid and a woman who were never quite yours to begin with isn’t pathetic enough.
In the month she’s been gone, I’ve been kicked out of the Sugartown Hotel for drunk and disorderly conduct too
many times to count. I started a bar brawl that ended with Cade having to bail my arse out of jail, and I’ve more than likely drunk my weight in rum.
I think about the day she left constantly. I think about the things I could have said, should have done, and I think about the fact that soon she’ll be lying in a hospital bed, holding a little baby in her arms, and smiling up at that cock-fuck like he has a right to be there. Just one big, happy fucking family.
The worst part, the real fucking kick in the balls, is that I spent all this time convincing everyone—myself included—that I couldn’t deal with the baby belonging to him. And now the idea that this room that we decorated together will sit untouched just kills me. For so long I despised the kid, or at the very least, the thought of him, and now? I’d happily add daddy to my job description if it meant I got her back. Them back.
My gut tells me that’s not gonna happen, so I down the rest of the bottle, and then hurl it at the wall. It shatters, shards of glass ricocheting everywhere. I try to stand, but on the way up my head spins, and I end up falling into the end of the cot and hitting my head.
“MOTHERFUCKER!” I roar, and kick the base of the cot with my boot. Ana’s gonna pitch a bitch fit when she sees the mud I tracked through the house by keeping my shoes on. I slam my foot into the wood again, higher this time, and the physical release feels so good that I just keep going. Pain shoots down my leg, but I ignore it. The wood that I worked so hard on cutting, sanding and painting splinters, and I feel something inside just fall the fuck apart. Then I launch myself into breaking it apart, the way I broke us, the way I broke her. I kick, curse and spit, and once the thing is barely standing I shove my boot into it, hard. When the cot is reduced to a pile of kindling, I howl my frustration into the empty house, and then I fall down in a heap and cry for the first time since our dog died. I cry because whatever we had, we buried that day, right alongside Snickers.
And everyone knows you let sleeping dogs lie.
I STARE out the massive loft windows of Coop’s apartment, overlooking the harbour. The city beyond is completely covered by cloud. It’s been raining nonstop for the past week up the whole east coast of Australia, and no matter how hard I try I just can’t get warm.
Coop’s loft is gorgeous, in that ‘I’m a lazy arse musician who can’t be bothered to paint, and who employs a cleaner to come pick up my shit’ kind of way. It’s taken me four weeks to get this place baby-proofed enough, and ready for the arrival of the little nugget. It’s taken me four weeks not to cry when I think of Jackson and the last things he said to me, and in that time I’ve seen Coop a total of three hours a day.
His manger is still making him pay for cancelling their tour to be with me, and he’s refusing to go away until after the baby is born, so she has them in the studio day and night cutting their next album. I’ve spent a fortune on clothes and toys for the baby, and I even tried to set up a nursery for him like the one we had at home. I got as far as purchasing a porta cot before I started to feel homesick. It wasn’t the same without the furniture Jack had made. I’ve worn holes in the floorboards because I’m bored out of my brains, and in desperate need of something to do. I even went to lunch with his mother and sister … by choice.
Boredom wouldn’t be a problem if I were at home. I’d be helping Ana bake, or sitting on the couch with Jackson, or even offering to babysit Sammy. But I’m not home, and no matter how hard I try to make it, this place just doesn’t feel like it’s where my heart is.
After watching the rain swallow the ferries on the harbour for too long, I finish my tea and decide I want to bake something, because what else do you do when money is no object and you’re pregnant as a room full of hookers that forgot to suit-up, and missing home? You bake a Belle’s Pies specialty.
An hour later, I flop my fat arse down on the couch—did I mention I’ve also gotten fatter since I’ve been here? Because I have—and I start channel surfing. I don’t know why Coop pays for Foxtel. He’s never even home to use it. I pick up my bowl of Ole Melty Eyes pie and ice cream, sit back, and watch the end of some romantic comedy with Mathew McCona-Yummy. I take a bite of my pie and burst into tears, because even that doesn’t taste like home. My phone rings and I answer it, though my tears probably make me sound like a geriatric frog as I begin sobbing uncontrollably in Coop’s ear.
“I’ve been making those pies alongside Ana for years. There isn’t a single ingredient that I left out. It should have tasted the same, Coop. It should’ve been like home, but it’s not.”
“Holly, calm down, baby.”
“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down! I’m pregnant, I have a life taking up all the space in my womb, and I’m tired, and my hair is dirty, and I hate your conditioner, and your apartment smells funny because you kind of need to do the dishes more than once a week, Coop, and your mum keeps texting about some fucking social calendar high-tea crap, and the bitchy sister keeps sending me snapshots of your fan mail, and some of those girls have really nice boobs … and you’re not here right now, so you’re not allowed to tell me to calm the fuck down.”
“Hols, I gotta go back in. I’m sorry, baby. I’ll be done here soon, and then I’ll come home and take you out somewhere nice, okay?”
“I don’t wanna go—”
“I love you, I’ll be home soon,” he says, and then the phone goes dead.
“I don’t wanna fucking go somewhere nice. I wanna go home!” I say, and throw my phone. It bounces off the table and lands face-up on the floor, with the snap shots I took of Jackson’s arse as he was setting up our tent on our camping trip all that time ago.
I bend down and pick up the phone and scroll through a sea of photos of my friends, who have been my only real family. There’s pictures of Ana and I with Elijah, and Sammy photo-bombing in the background, and then there’s a few of Jackson in the coma. He looks just like he’s sleeping, not fighting for his life. I swipe my tears away with the back of my hand, and keep scrolling. There’s more random weirdness: pictures of ice cream, and the shot I took of the sonographer squirting lube on my belly before my last ultrasound, and then there’s a couple I didn’t even know I had of Jackson and I. I’m sound asleep, and he’s photo bombing by sticking his tongue in my ear, and his fingers up my nose, and then the last is one where he’s not even looking at the camera but his eyes are closed and he’s softly kissing my cheek.
The tears start up again as I sit down hard on the floor, which is kinda the stupidest thing you can do when you’re pregnant because … um, hello, can’t get up again. I stare at the photo for far too long, and then when my tears are dried, and my chest feels like a gaping cavity, I glance up at the TV playing quietly in the background. The Bold and the Beautiful is on, and Ridge is kissing the Doc like his life depended on it, and Jack’s words about them having chemistry that’s impossible to ignore comes flooding back.
“Yeah, they do.” I sigh, wipe at my eyes and spring up from the floor. Only it’s not springing so much as it is hauling my heavy arse up, and having every one of my muscles complain. I glance down at the phone in my hand and see Jack’s face, and then I’m dialling Coop’s number. He doesn’t answer, of course, because he’s recording, and I know the evil bitch manager would have confiscated his phone. I pull out a pen and pad from the top drawer in the kitchen, and leave him a note:
Cooper,
I love you, in ways you can’t possibly imagine, and you’ll always be a part of our baby’s life, but I’m going home.
I’ll call you from the road.
I’m sorry.
Holly
I race into the bedroom, and throw some of my clothes into a bag, I don’t bother with anything else, just my phone and bag, and then I dash for the door.
Five hours on the road and I’ve already stopped at two different petrol stations to pee, stock up on snacks, and call Coop. Each time I tried it had gone directly to voicemail, which meant it’d been after midnight and he hadn’t even left the studio. It’s four in the mor
ning, and I’m exiting another servo armed with chips and chocolate when my phone rings. I juggle the goods in my arms, and hit accept. I’m met with a very frantic and very pissed-off sounding Cooper.
“You couldn’t wait until I got home?” he yells down the line.
He’s obviously already heard my voicemails telling him that I’m going back to Sugartown, and how sorry I am that I left this way. If I’m honest, I can hardly believe that I’m doing it myself, but the minute I saw those pictures, I couldn’t stand to be away from my family a moment longer. I take a deep breath, and say, “I should have waited, I’m sorry, but Coop, I didn’t know how long it would be before you got home.”
“I’ve been working my arse off to provide for you and our kid, Holly. This isn’t a fucking nine-to-five job we’re dealing with here.”
“I know. I’ve been the one falling asleep on the couch; waiting for you to come home every night, remember?”
“It’s not always going to be like this—”
“No, soon it will be tours and groupies, and staticky phone calls from different time zones,” I say. “Your job isn’t the problem here, Coop. We are.”
“Bullshit. Jackson Rowe’s the fucking problem. Always has been.” He’s half right. Jackson Rowe has always been my problem, but he’s not the only reason I left. “This is fucking ridiculous. You’re eight-months pregnant and you’re acting like a fucking child, Holly. Tell me where you are. I’m coming to get you.”
“No, you’re not. I’m okay, Coop, and you will be, too. There’s a better woman out there for you, one who can give you her whole heart, and not just half of it—”
“Holly,” he warns.
“I’ll call you in a few days, and we’ll work out what to do once the baby comes. I want you to be as much a part of his life as possible.”
“Holly, don’t you dare fucking hang up on me.”
“Bye Coop. I really am sorry.” I hit the end button. I’m shaking as I stand under the florescent lights of the petrol station, clutching my phone to my chest, and my snacks in the other hand. It rings again almost immediately, but I wait for it to go to voicemail, and then I turn it to silent. From out of nowhere, I have this insane urge to be sick, so I carefully place the snacks on the ground, slide the phone into my pocket, and head for the seedy looking toilet off the petrol station. As I’m making my way over to the bathrooms, a trucker wearing a Bundy rum shirt slows down as he approaches me. He’s staring, and I can’t work out if he’s just trying to figure out why the hell a pregnant woman is walking around a petrol station in the middle of nowhere at some ungodly hour in the morning, or whether I look like an escaped mental patient with my wide eyes and frizzed-out hair.
Enjoy Your Stay Page 19
