“I love you, Red,” he murmurs, his voice soft and tired as I slide into the crook of his arm and rest my head against his chest.
“I love you too,” I return, finally closing my eyes and allowing sleep to wash over me, resting in the arms of the man who now owns my heart.
***
My eyes fly open, a shrill ringing pulling me from my sleep. Sitting upright, it takes me a moment to realise that it’s my house phone. My house phone never rings. It’s an emergency number that only certain people have.
Worried, I pull the sheet off my body and get out of bed, picking up my robe and wrapping it around my naked body as I realise the phone has stopped. Glancing back at my bed, Jonathan isn’t there anymore; he obviously beat me out of bed.
When I step out of my room, he’s standing in my living room, looking divine in his striped blue boxers and no shirt as he bows his head, listening to my caller. His free hand reaches up and rubs the back of his neck as I hear him say, “OK, we’re leaving now. We’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“What’s going on?” I ask, sensing that something is wrong from the tone of his voice.
He glances over at me, his eyes set with sadness as he says, “She’s here right now. I’ll put her on.”
Handing me the phone, he gives me a pained look and my heart leaps up into my throat as I swallow hard and press the receiver to my ear. “Hello?”
“Why haven’t you been answering your phone?” my mother cries, her voice obviously distressed, making my concern grow as she begins to ramble. “I’ve been trying to call you since yesterday afternoon! Then I remembered that I had your home number in the book at home and your Aunt Liz went and got it for me. Where have you been? We need you here.”
“I’m sorry, Mum, I’m sorry. What’s going on? What’s happened?
“It’s your father, he was on the roof and he fell!”
“He…he what?”
A sob bursts out of her before she continues. “He fell and it’s…it’s bad. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know how I’ll cope.”
“Where are you?”
“At the hospital. They’re trying to save him but–” Her words cut off in another sob and my Aunt Liz, my mother’s sister, takes the phone from her and tells me where they are.
“And Sandra, you need to hurry,” she says before she disconnects.
When I hang up, I’m in shock.
“Get dressed. I’ll drive you,” Jonathan says, and all I can do is nod and follow his direction, not even knowing what I end up wearing as I get into the car beside him. I stare ahead the whole time, a sense of dread filling me as I hope to whatever god there is in this world that my father is alright, and that life as I knew it isn’t over.
Chapter 23
“Red,” Jonathan whispers in comfort, his voice strained with emotion as he reaches for me.
“Don’t,” I gasp, holding up my hands and moving out of his reach. “Just don’t.”
I turn from him and wrap my arms around my wailing mother. We got here too late. My father died of massive internal haemorrhaging while we were still driving. I missed it. I didn’t see him before it was over because I was too damn busy making love to Jonathan. My stomach twists and my throat clenches as my eyes burn. My family needed me, and I was too caught up my own selfish desires to even hear my mobile phone ringing.
“No,” mum whispers as I sit beside her, cradling her in my arms. “Not my Tony. Not him. No.”
I bow my head, resting my face beside hers as she curls her body into me, seeming so small and so fragile compared to the woman who has been my rock for my entire life.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper back. “I’m so sorry.”
She shakes her head and her body quakes and we both mourn the loss of the same man, a man who we both loved for very different reasons.
I mourn for the man who taught me how to swim and who refused to let me wear makeup until I was seventeen. The man who threw me in the air and twirled me around like I was an aeroplane. The man who smiled proudly with tears in his eyes when I graduated both high school and university. The man who was the man I measured all others against. The man who loved me first. My father.
And my mother mourns for the man she shared her life with, who loved alongside her and held her when she was sad. He was the light that sparked her joy, and the strength that kept her safe. He was her world.
She cries and she cries, and it’s as if I can hear her soul tearing in two. One half, now gone along with the extinguished life of its mate. And, as I hold her, it’s as if my heart splits in two right along with her. I feel broken, completely and utterly broken. I’m too angry at my own selfishness to even allow myself to cry. I should have been here. I should have been here for her when she needed me. Now all I can do is be the strength that carries her through.
When I look up, Jonathan is leaning against the wall, his head tilted back as his eyes close. He looks as though he’s feeling this loss just as much as we are, but how could he? He never even met my father. He doesn’t understand what we’ve lost. I look at him and my heart beats a little faster, causing me to feel an anger bubble up inside me. If I wasn’t so busy with Jonathan, I would have been here. Things would be different and maybe, just maybe, none of this would have happened.
While I was busy falling in love with him, I lost my father, and my family as I know it. Last night, when I was in Jonathan’s arms, I knew my life would be forever changed. I just didn’t expect it to be this. It’s like one of those goddamn Nicolas Sparks movies. Just when you’re at your happiest, life steps in, and tears it all away, breaking your heart and destroying your world.
“You need to go,” I tell him, his face blurry as my eyes fill with tears. My heart aches and I desperately wish we could rewind time and go back to the day before when everything was fine, and we were all happy. But I can’t. Yesterday is gone and I need him to leave me to fix what I’ve done.
His eyes open and he frowns down at me, confusion all over his beautiful features as I see that he understands what has just happened between us. He understands that I can’t look at him without feeling that horrible sickness of guilt, because I wasn’t here. I.wasn’t.here.
“No,” he whispers, shaking his head. “I want to be here. I want to be here for you.”
My Aunt Liz reaches over and takes my mother from my arms, seeing that I need a moment to talk to Jonathan alone. “Go and talk to him. We’ll be OK,” she smiles, her eyes red-rimmed and watery as I stand and walk a short way down the hall with Jonathan.
“Don’t ruin this, Red. We can get through this. Let me take care of you. Let me help.”
“I don’t need your help. I need you to go,” I cry, struggling to meet his eyes because I know that if I do, I’ll break down. And I need to be strong here. I need to be strong for my mother.
“Don’t, Red. Don’t, please,” he pleads, and it’s as if he can read my mind and connect exactly the same dots that I have.
Taking a deep, shaky breath, I force myself to meet his eyes. They’re pained and swimming with tears, just like my own are, and my breath hitches and I choke down a sob before I gather enough strength to speak.
“I look at you right now, and all I can think is that while I was loving you, my father was lying here dying, and my mother needed me, and I wasn’t here for them. I wasn’t here because I was too busy fucking you. Too busy being selfish and planning to leave them behind to be with you. So, just go, Jonathan. Please, don’t make this any harder than it already is. It was beautiful, but it’s done. We can’t go back to yesterday. What we had–it’s ruined.” He opens his mouth to speak and his hands move as if he’s going to reach out to me but I step back. “Just go!” I yell.
Several people glance over at us, and I watch as Jonathan’s face twists in the pain of my rejection. I feel a flash of pain in my chest when I watch his eyes glisten as he nods his head and turns away, stalking down the hall, his emotions barely contained, until he goes
through the exit door and slams it with a loud bang behind him.
I jump. My tears forcing their way out of my eyes and spilling down my cheeks as I stare down the hall after him, knowing that I just sent away the only man I’ve ever truly been in love with. But how can I keep him? How can I keep him when our union marks the breaking of my mother’s heart?
I think back to the movie I watched with my parents and the conversation we had after. They were shocked at my rejection of a happily ever after. But this here, this devastating event, just proves that I was right. That Nicholas Sparks is right. We don’t all get to live happily ever after. Sometimes, love is pain. And sometimes, love is sacrifice. We don’t always get everything we want. Sometimes, we just have to settle for a life that had a ‘happy for a moment’ and that will have to do. It has to do. Because I can’t go on, knowing that by falling in love, I did this to my parents.
I did this.
Chapter 24
Eventually, mum calms down enough and the doctor prescribes her a strong sedative so she can rest and then we take her home. She barely speaks a word, walking out of the hospital in a daze, her expression pale and jaded. I sit with her in the back seat of my aunt’s car and I cradle her like a child as a fresh bout of tears flows from her eyes when we pull away from the hospital.
"You want me to stay overnight?" Aunt Liz asks, handing me the package of tranquillisers from the doctor.
"No, go back to Uncle Dan and the kids. We’ll be okay for now."
"Alright, sweetheart. I’ll call you in the morning to see how she is. I'm so sorry for your loss." She reaches forward and gives me a tight embrace, before stepping away from the door.
"Thank you," I say, even though it doesn't really fit the situation, and I stand at the door waving her away and telling her how much I appreciate that she was there for mum when I wasn't. I’m so riddled with guilt that my body feels like a tight ball of emotion and I’m barely holding on. I want to tip my head back to the heavens and scream out, why? Why did he have to be taken from us? Why did this have to happen?
Closing the door, I take a short moment to breathe and calm myself down. So much has happened in such a short time, and I don't feel like I’m anywhere close to coming to grips with it. I had been so worried about Jonathan breaking my heart. I never dreamed that it would break because of me. But it has and now all that’s left is for me to be strong and be here for my mother, just like she's always been here for me.
Moving away from the door, I instinctively know where my mother will be, and I find her curled up on her bed hugging my father's pillow to her chest as she moans softly. I can hear the pain in her tone, and it’s a sound that tears at my open-wounded heart.
Sitting beside her, I smooth out her hair with my hand as I tell her that I'm sorry over and over again. I don't know what else to say. I don't want to sit here and tell her that everything will be all right like one usually does in situations like these, because right now it doesn't feel as though life will ever be okay again. Right now, we’re broken.
Slowly, her sobs quiet down, so I move away from her and head into the kitchen to get her a glass of water so she can take her pills, and as she swallows them down I hope that the rest will give her a short reprieve from the pain in her heart. Then I return to the space next to her on the bed, and she moves so that her head is on my lap where she continues to sob quietly. She is unable to speak of her loss and unable to be anything but the emotional shell she is right now. Slowly, the tablets force her to sleep and when her breathing deepens and her body stills I finally give in and let myself cry for my own loss. Not just those tears that forced themselves from my eyes before. This time I cry out my grief with huge wracking sobs that hurt my chest and produce torrents of thick, hot tears that stream down my face and drip onto my chest.
I cry.
I cry for my mother as I wonder if she’ll ever recover to be the loving and confident woman I’ve always known her as.
I cry for my father, and the life that was taken from him far too soon.
I cry for myself, I cry out of guilt, I cry out of anger, I cry out of loss, and I cry because this.isn’t.fair.
But most of all, I cry for our happiness, my parent’s, Jonathan’s and mine–now lost, never to be returned.
***
Over the next week my mother becomes almost catatonic. She's barely responsive when I speak to her, and does little more than sit in her chair and stare out the window all day. She's not even interested in being distracted by the TV. Between my aunt and me, we take care of her round-the-clock, and we share in making all of the necessary arrangements that one is obliged to do when a loved one passes from this world.
It's hard, and it's horrible, and I wish to God there was something I could do to turn back time to keep all of this from happening. But there's nothing. Nothing I can do. Nothing at all.
Eventually though, I need to go back to collect my car and a few personal items so I can continue living with my mother. I offered for her to move in with me, wondering if perhaps living in a house that held constant reminders of dad was too hard for her. But she flat-out refused. She seems to need to stay with the memories of her love. So I’ll stay with her until she doesn’t need me anymore–that is, if she ever doesn’t need me anymore.
In the wake of dad's accident, I almost forgot that today was the day I was supposed to be travelling to the US with Jonathan. I remember it on the cab ride over to my house and as it drops me off, the memory hits me with a thud in the chest. I feel a deep sadness that twists at my insides, reminding me that my life isn't going to follow any of my plans. It turns out that life is just going to do whatever the fuck it wants, while laughing at me and thinking that I must have been so naïve to believe in true love, even if it was just for moment.
On heavy legs, I walk toward my front door, knowing that when I open it, everything will be exactly as we left it. There'll be evidence of Jonathan and my night together and I’m not sure if I’m ready to face it. I pause at the front door taking a deep breath to prepare myself before I step in, but when I push the door open, the house is spotless. And in my bedroom my clothes are put away and the bed is made. There is no evidence at all.
In a way, this is even worse than what I expected, and it saddens me. It's as if Jonathan returned and erased everything that happened between us. And now, there's no rumpled sheets, no discarded dress, nothing. And I ache inside, not realising how much I just wanted to look upon the room, and perhaps lie in that bed I had shared with him, just one more time. One more time before I let him go for good.
Now, it's gone. He's gone, and I'm here, and it's as if we never existed.
Letting out a deep sigh, I pull my suitcase out of my spare room and take it into my bedroom, opening my cupboards, collecting everything inside as I'm not sure how long I'll be back at home with my mother.
Sitting on the suitcase I squeeze the zipper shut and drag the heavy bag off my bed, taking one last look around the house before I head to the front door with my suitcase in tow. When I pull the door open, I get the shock of my life when I find that I'm face-to-face with Jonathan.
"What you doing here? You're supposed to be on a plane," I demand, reacting slightly aggressively from the surprise of his sudden arrival.
"I still have security looking after your house, and I cancelled the flight. I don't want to go without you."
"I don't see that you have a choice. I broke up with you remember?"
"I remember that you were grief stricken because you just lost your father and you’re looking for someone to blame. So you’re trying to push me away as if us not being together will somehow make this better. But it won’t, Red. It’s just going to make your loss so much more profound. And I’m not letting you throw what we have away. I'm not going anywhere. My life is shit without you in it, and I’ll wait for as long as it takes for you to be ready again. But I'm not giving up on you. I’m not giving up on us. Not now. Not ever."
"Jesus Jonathan, what
is with you and your inability to take no for an answer? You and I can't work together. Not anymore. Not after what happened. You need to go and live your life. I don't want you waste your time waiting for me, because I don't want you in my life!" I yell, gritting my teeth to keep my tears at bay.
"That's not true, Red. You’re grieving and you’re blaming our relationship for something that was out of anyone's control. "
"Our relationship? Our relationship doesn't work. I was fine before you came into my life. I had a good job, good friends and I was dating a good man who was good to me. Everything was fine! And then in you came with your movie star charm and your relentless pursuit of me. And you turned everything upside down. I knew I shouldn't have got involved with you. I knew it was going to end badly. I knew would destroy me. I just didn't think it would destroy my mother in the process."
"How can you blame what's between us for what happened to your father? It was a tragic accident."
"Yes. It was a tragic accident. One that wouldn't have happened if I'd been a better daughter. If I had hired a goddamned handyman like I was supposed to, none of this would have bloody happened. But I was so caught up in you that I didn't do it, and that stubborn man," my voice changes as my throat constricts with emotion and my eyes fill with tears, "climbed on that bloody roof anyway."
He reaches out and wraps his arms around me, telling me that everything will be okay and that it wasn't my fault. For a while I let him hold me, and I breathe in his scent as I take one last moment of enjoyment in the warmth of his arms around me. Then I push away from him and wipe at my eyes, regaining my control, knowing that what I’m doing is right for both of us.
"I need to go. Mum will be wondering where I am," I tell him, my voice small and strained despite trying to sound strong.
He nods and steps to the side, taking hold of my suitcase and loading it into my car as I lock up the house.
"And I mean what I'm saying to you Jonathan. I want you to go. Go and make your movie and do something wonderful for your career. I don't know what's going to happen from here on out, but I don't want you waiting for me when I'm not sure that I'm ever going to return to the girl I was a week ago. I don't know if it matters or not, but I'm always going to love you. That's never going to change, but things are different now and I can't be with you as well as do the things I have to do. It's just not going to work. So please, if you do anything for me, go. Play that amazing role and win yourself and Academy Award. Because I know you're good enough to give an epic performance that will wow the world and prove to even your harshest critic that Jonathan Masters is a man of immeasurable talent. Okay? Be amazing, Jonathan. Do that for me instead."
A Beautiful Star (Beautiful Series, Book 5) Page 13
