The Happy Ever After Playlist

by Abby Jimenez

  She took a step back, dropping her hands away from me, and I registered briefly that that was the last time she’d ever touch me.

  “You…” Her voice was shaking. “You actually slept with her?” she whispered.

  I dragged a hand down my mouth. “I didn’t plan what happened last night with Lola. It just happened.”

  I knew I would never forget that look on her face. Never. Not if I lived to be a hundred. It was the moment after shattered glass. The tinny buzz in your ears after a loud noise. A plunge into glacial waters, frozen, unable to breathe.

  I looked her in the eye. “Sloan, this wasn’t going to work out between us. I think we both knew that. I need to be single, I’m not in any position to be a boyfriend right now.”

  She put a trembling hand to her mouth and I wanted to shout that it was a lie. I wanted to close the distance between us and kiss her, tell her it was bullshit, beg her to forgive me for not being what she needed, for not being able to protect her. Instead I picked up the hotel phone and dialed Zane.

  I marveled at how calm I was. How collected and matter-of-fact.

  “Zane? I found her. She’s here. Can you come down here, please?”

  Sloan had backed up to the wall. She was staring at me, unblinking. Tears were streaming down her face. Tucker looked up at me and made a whining noise like he was crying with her.

  “I’m going to have Zane take you to the airport,” I said, tucking the phone in my pocket. “I’ll buy your ticket. Ernie will pick you up. Oh,” I said, like I’d just remembered something. “And can you keep Tucker? I don’t have time for him.”

  He’d take care of her. She wouldn’t be alone.

  I gave her the last of my heart to take with her.

  She stared at me in horror. “How…how could you do it?”

  But I didn’t have to answer. Zane knocked on the door and I let her in.

  She stepped inside and looked back and forth between the two of us in confusion. Sloan crying. Me stoic and dying inside.

  “I need you to get Sloan to the airport,” I said. “A first-class flight to Burbank. Get yourself a ticket so you can wait with her at the gate.”

  I felt Zane’s disapproving glare, but I didn’t pull my eyes from Sloan to see it. This was the last time I’d look at her, and I didn’t want to turn away, even though the stare she gave me was pure hatred.

  Sloan let Zane take her arm and allowed herself to be led away.

  The door closed after them, and I fell to my knees as my world shrank around me, suffocating me, the edges turning black.

  * * *

  An hour later, with Lola dressed in my flannel and one of Jessa’s hats so the cameras waiting outside the hotel wouldn’t see what she’d done to her hair, I climbed onto Lola’s motorcycle with her sitting behind me, and I drove her to a rehab facility an hour away.

  I could have taken an Uber. I could have called a black car or had Zane drive us. But I needed something that could outrun the paparazzi so they wouldn’t know where she went. I did it knowing that Sloan would see this in the tabloids and it would add a final blow to the already-mortal wound I’d inflicted.

  I remembered the fear in her eyes that day in Dad’s garage and how I’d vowed never to get on another motorcycle.

  The last of my promises, broken.

  I checked Lola into a private room, gave the rehab facility my credit card, and had Ernie send them an NDA. Then I stopped for a new phone, and when I got back to the hotel, I blocked Sloan’s number and deleted it. Erased all her messages, all her pictures. Deleted her on social media. All traces. I wouldn’t know where she lived now or have a one-click way to reach out to her in case I had a moment of weakness.

  And then, with the final thread between us severed, I lost my fucking mind.

  I destroyed my room. I threw a lamp, pushed over a table, and punched a hole in the wall. Then I got drunk. Blindingly, sloppy drunk.

  When Zane showed up again, coming into my fog like an apparition, I sat with my back against the closet of my trashed hotel room, holding an empty bottle, with a washcloth wrapped around my bleeding knuckles.

  She crouched down and peeled away the blood-soaked towel and I watched her dispassionately. She shook her head at me in that unfazed way she had. “Well, this looks pretty bad. Let’s go. Hospital time.”

  When the doctor came into the ER with his clipboard, I couldn’t even remember how Zane had gotten me there.

  The doctor pulled up an X-ray of my hand on the monitor, and I stared at it, bleary and shattered, from the edge of the paper-covered exam table, the smell of rubbing alcohol stinging my nostrils. “Well, it’s not broken. Pretty bruised, but not broken. Ice it, take some ibuprofen, and you should be able to use it in a few days.”

  But Zane shook her head. “Naw, Doc. It looks broken to me. He probably needs at least a couple weeks to rest up that hand. I’m thinkin’ severe exhaustion and dehydration too. Maybe some other stuff you just missed.” She nodded at his clipboard. “We’ll need a medical report. Something to show his record label since he’ll have to cancel some tour dates.”

  The doctor looked at her and they shared some sort of silent exchange. He glanced at me, and he must have seen the wear on my face, the despair behind my eyes. The crevasse across my heart.

  “You know, you’re right. There does seem to be a break there, along the proximal phalanx. Funny I didn’t notice it before. I’ll uh, write something up.”

  Zane packed my things. She made all the necessary phone calls and had all the needed conversations. My intoxication moved into a hangover, and then into grieving as I processed what I’d lost. And I vowed to feel every fucking second of it.

  The plane ride was torture. Just me and my thoughts and a hangover. I couldn’t even put in my earbuds. Music chipped away at my soul, every song about her. Every lyric haunted me. The smell of coffee on the drink cart made tears squeeze from my eyes.

  When I landed, Ernie called. I answered without saying hello.

  He blew a deep breath into the phone. “Girlfriends on tour…”

  I laughed a little, despite myself. “It must be hard to always be right.”

  “This is one time, my friend, that I really wish I had been wrong.”

  The ride from Duluth to Ely with Dad was the worst of all. Long and quiet, tense with judgment. When he pulled into the garage, he put the truck in park, but he didn’t get out. He held the wheel and looked over at my bandaged hand, his eyes sad.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said with my forehead in my palm.

  He looked at me, the pity on his face. And something else.

  Loss.

  He lost a daughter. I’d lost her for everyone.

  My guilt and grief tripled, crushing me. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at anyone. How would I face Mom? Sloan was a member of this family now, and I’d ripped her from their lives. I put a hand over my face and felt the wave of nausea and sorrow surge again.

  Once I got inside, Sloan was everywhere and nowhere to be seen. I felt her in every inch of that house. She was grocery lists in the kitchen, tiny creamers in the fridge, and a stray blond hair on the couch. She was an abandoned shampoo in the shower and polish on Mom’s nails.

  The sadness in Mom’s eyes.

  The absence swallowed me whole and left nothing behind but emerging chords and painful lyrics that bubbled from a crack in my heart so deep it was fathomless.

  I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t be anywhere. So I went where I would be nowhere.

  I slipped into the mouth of the wilderness with my canoe and my guitar and I abandoned the world, that world without Sloan, behind me.

  Chapter 41

  Sloan

  ♪ It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You) | The 1975

  Three months later

  Do you want me to meet you at the cemetery, Sloan?”

  Kristen was worried about me.

  “No, I’m not going today,” I said, sitting back to take one fin
al look at the painting that had been drying for the last two weeks on my easel.

  I gave it a soft smile. It was beautiful. It looked like a photograph.

  It was the fifth one I’d finished over the last three months. Another addition to the collection in the gallery that had picked me up. I’d completed the commission I’d started in Ely, the little girl on the swing, and shipped that two months ago. Three more had sold, and this one in front of me was leaving today.

  “You’re not going to the cemetery?” she asked. “It’s the anniversary of the day you met Brandon.”

  I picked up the remote to turn off my crime show. “How do you remember this stuff?”

  “I have reminders in my phone.”

  I laughed, collecting my brushes. “Are you serious?”

  “Uh, yeah, I’m serious. I have to watch you like a hawk.”

  I slid off my stool. “I’m fine. I’m just finishing up some work before the thing.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for this? I mean the dude’s hot as fuck, but we can skip this double date. It’s not a big deal.”

  Josh’s cousin Adrian was in town from St. Paul. He was a lawyer, single, and, according to Kristen, the perfect rebound for me. He lived out of state and was only here for a few days. I think she thought it would be distracting or boost my shattered self-esteem or something.

  “I don’t know what you expect me to do with him,” I said. “I don’t even kiss on the first date.”

  “You need someone prescreened to tell you you’re pretty and hand you free drinks. And he’s got all the things you like. He’s tall, he’s bearded, and he’s from Minnesota.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Ha ha.”

  “Seriously, Sloan, we can call it off if we need to. I mean, he’s excited to meet you but Josh can just take him out instead. I figured you might need to hit something with a bat today so I made a piñata full of mini alcohol bottles and Starbucks gift cards. I could be there in a half an hour.”

  I rinsed my brushes in the sink. “Nope,” I said, tapping the water off them. “I’m fine. It’ll be fun.”

  It would not be fun.

  “Look at it this way,” Kristen said. “If you guys hit it off, you’ll end up a Copeland. Then our kids would be related. And, what if Josh’s enormous penis is hereditary? I’m just sayin’.”

  I snorted. “God, I do not want to think about Josh’s penis, thank you very much.”

  There was a pause on the other end. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  I nodded. “I really am fine. I’ll visit Brandon on his birthday from now on, and that’s it. It’s time I stop living my life in the past. It’s what he’d want.”

  Another pause. “And the other thing going on today?”

  I took a deep breath. “It’s time I move on from that too.”

  Jason was in town. He was playing the Forum in LA tonight.

  I forbade my eyelid to start twitching today.

  This day had loomed in front of me like an impending invasion. Jason had been in the UK for the last few months, as far away from me as humanly possible. And now he was going to be less than an hour from my loft.

  I’d debated several options for dealing with this event. A sleepover at Kristen’s. A trip to literally anywhere as long as it was far enough to put a couple hundred miles between us again. But when Adrian decided to visit, from Minnesota no less, and Kristen had suggested this double date, it had seemed like the universe was sending me a message. So I agreed to it, and I had about as much enthusiasm for this outing as I did for going down to check the mail.

  “Okay,” Kristen said. “Well, we’ll be there in a half an hour to get you. What are you wearing? You better make an effort. I’m gonna be pissed if I talked you up for the last three days and then you show up looking half-homeless.”

  “I’m wearing the red dress. I have makeup on. I’ve done my hair. I won’t bring shame upon your house.”

  “Good. Don’t wear underwear. Goodbye.”

  I snorted and hung up, shaking my head at the Verdugo Mountains through the window in my living room.

  My new apartment was nice. It had a pool and a hot tub, and I had my own washer and dryer. It was newly remodeled too. I didn’t have things breaking all around me, which was a pleasant change. There was a dog park nearby and a Starbucks on the corner.

  I was doing okay. I went to the gym, I got my nails done. I was tan. I took Tucker on walks and went to art shows and had Josh and Kristen over for dinner once a week—and I did the cooking. I did all of the things—and I was proud of myself.

  I’d never gone to grief counseling after Brandon died. Kristen had begged me to go, but I had no interest in learning how to be okay without him. I didn’t want to talk about his death or share it with strangers. I didn’t need to bond with other people going through it to know I wasn’t alone. People died every day, unfairly and prematurely. My tragedy wasn’t anything special. I just wanted Brandon’s hold to let me go when it was ready to let me go. I wanted to feel that grief in its most organic way, like trying to take the edge off it would somehow be dishonoring what he meant to me. But somewhere along the line, it had let me go, and I hadn’t noticed because the tired listlessness that comes with grief had shifted into the kind that comes from losing yourself through depressing life choices—and I wasn’t repeating that mistake.

  I wanted Jason’s hold to let me go. I was desperate to shake it. I wanted to do everything I could to make it stop—because he didn’t deserve any grief.

  I’d allowed myself exactly one week of falling apart at Kristen’s before I pulled myself up through sheer will, found myself an apartment, and started painting. I slept. I updated my blog. I did yoga. I decorated my apartment and did things I loved—and I chose happiness.

  There was a certain dullness to it, though. My “happiness” wasn’t always the real thing. Most of the time it was a fabricated, forced version that cracked around the edges if examined closely enough. But it was the choice that was the accomplishment. I’d finally found the me I’d lost before. I was strong—heartbroken, but stronger than I’d ever given myself credit for. Especially under the circumstances.

  It was hard to come to terms with something that didn’t make sense, like a tragic untimely death or a breakup that came out of nowhere. How can you be at peace when you don’t know what you did to deserve it or what you could have done to make things different? I couldn’t wrap my brain around how I’d misjudged Jason to such a high degree, how I could think he was that in love with me, when clearly he wasn’t. It made me question my entire sense of self. Like finding out your hero isn’t a hero at all and you’re just too blind to know the difference.

  Right after it happened, I’d had a moment of disbelief. Even though I’d seen Lola half-naked in his room with my own eyes and he’d confessed right to my face, my heart simply wouldn’t accept it, and I’d almost called him. Then I saw the picture of him with her on the motorcycle.

  Jason had broken every single promise he’d ever made me. That was his choice. And mine was going to be to thrive despite it.

  You can’t control the bad things that happen to you. All you can do is decide how much of you you’re going to let them take. I would be fooling myself if I said I didn’t still love him. I think I’d always be in love with him. But I refused to mourn him or give him a shrine.

  Everyone around me knew talking about Jason was off-limits. No one ever mentioned what he was doing. Not even Ernie, during his many visits to check in on me. But a few weeks ago, curiosity had gotten the better of me and I googled him.

  I wished I hadn’t looked.

  Apparently Jason had gone full rock star since our breakup. He’d trashed a hotel room—kicked in a bathroom door and everything. Then he’d hurt his hand somehow. The tabloids said a fist fight with a roadie. Jason’s crew loved him, so I doubted it. But the article also said he’d broken a fog machine in a rage and Ernie had accidently confirmed it when I overheard a phone call with Jason�
�s tour manager, so who knew who Jason was these days. He’d ended up canceling three weeks of concerts due to exhaustion and dehydration, and there was speculation that he was abusing drugs and alcohol. I’d seen him passed out myself, and concerts didn’t get canceled unless there was a legitimate medical emergency, so I didn’t know what to believe.

  I was worried about him, so I’d asked Ernie. The only time I’d ever asked him about Jason. Ernie told me to let him worry about Jason and to just take care of myself. Judging by how evasive he was, it was pretty clear that at least some of what I’d read was true.

  And the Lola/Jaxon rumors were back in the tabloids in full force—only those, I knew for sure, weren’t rumors.

  The whole thing made me sick. I wanted to bleach her from my brain. I couldn’t forget her standing there in that doorway in her underwear, so smug. And the universe wouldn’t let me forget it either. Her music, his music, constantly popping up in the grocery store and the gym. I’d started wearing earbuds everywhere, just so I wouldn’t be randomly accosted by it.

  It was the most peculiar form of torture.

  Jason was capable of things I never could have imagined. He was someone I didn’t even recognize now. Maybe he finally became Jaxon.

  The painting that I was going to deliver to the gallery today had been therapeutic. Proof that the six months I’d spent with him had been real. At least at the time.

  At least for me.

  But it was time I rid myself of the visible reminders of the man I lost. I had enough invisible ones to deal with.

  I’d drop off that painting and then I’d go on my first date since my breakup. Kristen and Josh would be there to carry the conversation when this guy bored me, which he probably would.

  And I’d get through it—I had to. Because I chose happiness.

  I wrapped the painting in brown paper, leashed Tucker, and went downstairs to drop it off and take the dog for a walk.

  Twenty minutes later, we were coming back up to my door when I saw a courier standing outside waiting for me. “Are you”—he looked at his device—“Sloan Monroe?”