Professor Feelgood (Page 72)
After I’m done replying to all my emails, I rub my hands together and go over to the bed. As the weather gets colder, it gets more and more impossible to work in this place without bundling up. I grab the comforter, and as I pull it off the bed and wrap it around my shoulders, I manage to knock over a stack of Jake’s storage crates.
“Oh, you sonuvabitch.”
When they hit the floor, their contents explode everywhere, and I crouch down to make sure I haven’t broken anything. I check his camera first. The lens cap came off, but otherwise it seems okay. As I’m gathering up all of his photos, I notice a loose piece of paper, so I pick it up. It’s a handwritten letter.
Dear Jake,
I can’t believe this is goodbye. These past few months with you have been the happiest of my life. I thought I’d never find someone like you, and after everything with Roger, I wasn’t even looking. But as I peered out from the deck at the Zen Farm, there you were, and from the first time I saw you, I knew you were meant to be mine. You’re the first man to whom I’ve given everything: My heart, mind, body, and soul. And no matter where you go, or what you do, you will always carry part of my soul with you.
I wish I could convince you to stay. I know you have your reasons for going home, but I feel like we’re ending before we even began, and whenever I think of you getting on that plane, my heart splinters and breaks.
Every day we’re apart, I’ll pray you change your mind about us. And if you ever do, please know, I’ll be waiting.
All my love, always,
Ingrid.
When I’m done I just sit there, staring at the letter, trying to force it to make sense.
After five minutes of rereading, I still have no explanation as to why Jake’s account of their breakup and this letter seem to be polar opposites. All this time I’ve been telling myself that she’s out of his life forever because she chose the other guy. But she didn’t. She chose him. And he’s been lying about it this whole time.
I grab my phone off the coffee table and hesitate before making the call, but I know I need to do it.
“Hey, Jo. Do you still have that link for Ingrid’s Facebook? I need it.”
TWENTY-THREE
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House of Cards
THERE’S A COLD BREEZE AS I walk through my old neighborhood, but I’m angry enough that I don’t feel it. Whatever Jake has planned tonight, I’m going to need a shitton of answers.
After a few minutes, I’m standing on the sidewalk in front of the house in which I grew up, and a strange sense of inevitability washes over me. It’s as if little pieces of me have been making their way here ever since Jake walked back into my life, and now the rest of me is catching up.
We reminisce about this place all the time, replaying moments from our childhoods, but the home in my memory bears little resemblance to the house in front of me. That’s the porch where Mom had her morning coffee, but it’s narrower than I remember. There are the front steps where Jake and I would stage terrible one-act plays, but I’m sure they were bigger. Even the Tree of Love in Jake’s yard seems stunted and less vibrant.
They say you can never go home again, but that’s not true. You can, but you’ll always be astounded by how small everything seems. Jake’s dad stayed in their old house until the end, but I don’t even know who lives in ours these days. Both houses are dark, so maybe Jake’s not here yet.
I tilt my head when I hear music, and right away I know where it’s coming from. For years Jake and I shared walls and porches, backyards, and beds. But the one place that was truly ours stood by itself.
I walk around the side of the house and down the driveway. At the end, huddled in the shadows of a huge oak tree is the garage. Because Jake’s dad didn’t own a car, it was used for storage, and there was an attic area that Jake and I claimed as our own. It was dank and musty, but to us, it was the most magical place in the world. When we were little, we used to steal any spare blankets and pillows and carry them up the rickety ladder. And then we added books, and toys, and pencils and paper. One time, Jake found some old fairy lights that one of the neighbors had thrown away. Somehow, he got them working, and we draped them over nails in the roof, so we could pretend we were somewhere exotic, lying under the stars.
Right now, light is spilling out of the garage windows, and as I get closer I can make out that the music is an old Natalie Cole album. It was one of Mom’s favorites, and it’s what we used to listen to when we wanted to smooth over the rough edges of our lives.
I pull the door open and step inside, and the sight that greets me isn’t at all what I expected. In the space that used to be packed with storage boxes and old holiday decorations, there’s now a large Persian rug topped by a huge wooden desk; the kind that would have looked at home in a lawyer’s office in the fifties. On the desk are stacks of notebooks, similar to the ones at Jake’s apartment.
My first thought is that if they’re all full of words, Jake’s more prolific than I ever imagined. But then I realize there’s no way he filled all these books in the last couple of years. He’s been writing a lot longer than that.
I glance over to where Jake’s leaning on the edge of the desk. When he sees me, he stands, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched. When I go over to him, he tries to take my hand, but I pull back. I need to hear what he has to say before I let him disarm me.
He nods like he understands. “I’ve run through having this conversation with you a thousand times in my head, and it was never easy. But I don’t think I ever thought I’d feel like I want to throw up.” He rubs the back of his hand on his chin. “Ash, I haven’t been honest with you, and I hate that my lie made you feel like you weren’t the most important thing in the world to me, because you are.” He looks at my hand again but doesn’t touch me. “I know you’re worried about Ingrid changing her mind and coming back, but that’s not going to happen. Ingrid didn’t break up with me. I left her.”
“I figured that out already.” When I pull Ingrid’s letter out of my pocket and hand it to him, he crumples it up.
“I wasn’t snooping,” I say, as if it matters how I found it. “I knocked over your storage boxes, and it fell out.”
He drops it on the desk, agitated. “Goddammit. I’m sorry I didn’t come clean with you before. It’s my fault for waiting so long.”
“I also looked through Ingrid’s social media today. You’re all over it. As recently as a few days ago, she was re-posting a memory of you two and saying how much she missed you and loves you. What the hell, Jake?”
He drops his head. “I was so stupid to lie about it, but I didn’t know what else to do. You were sold on the story of me pining over the soul mate I lost, and Ingrid was the obvious choice.”
“So, it’s all been bullshit? All the poems … those beautiful, passionate poems were just words? You made up a false narrative to make them seem more profound than they were?”
He stares at me for a few seconds, like I’ve connected the dots but failed to see the picture they formed. “Those poems weren’t fake, they were from my heart. Every emotion in them was real. I just didn’t write them for Ingrid.” He takes a deep breath. “They were about you.”
My heart falters as the memories of all those incredible words flood my mind. I’m too shocked to form a reply.