My Blue River (48 page)

“What are you talking about?” But I knew what he was talking about. He was being forced to make a choice, but he would never say those exact words.

Jack turned from me and said, “I guess I’ve reached my breaking point.”

The panic in my heart was unbearable.
This is happening. Right before my very eyes, I’m losing him!

“Don’t say that. Please, don’t say that.” I tried to touch him. He gently pushed my hand away and turned his back to me. Hot tears filled my eyes. My lips trembled.

His voice was shaky. “Addy, I don’t give ultimatums. I’ve been very patient about giving you a choice. But each year you don’t make the choice that makes it possible for us to be together. I have at least given a slight consideration to moving. You can’t even go that far.”

“Are you back to thinking I’m spoiled?”

“Maybe I am! You are still quite spoiled. But I’ll take some blame for that. I’ve been an
enabler
.”

There was a touch of sarcasm to his words, knowing it was a Dr. Margaret Davis word and using it would get under my skin, but he didn’t know what I knew. I owed Maggie Davis an apology. It didn’t bug me that it was a word my mom would use; it bugged me that he wanted to hurt me.

“I can’t believe you’re saying this! By the way, one of us is working on a future, so I’d say that trumps your complete lack of concern about how
you’ll
earn a living. If anyone should move it should be you.”

“I’m—not—moving.” He didn’t yell but he was angry. I winced at his reaction.

I had never seen him so angry with me. He meant every word. I had heard those words before from my own lips, right before my senior year, out of protest to the Montana move. I had won many small battles with Jack, but he would win the war. My lips moved, but I fumbled for a response. I wasn’t able to construct a useful sentence. I tried to refocus. Lashing out would not help me keep him.

“Jack—I—I—I—Jack—I—please—please—” I begged. Complete fear coursed through my veins. He was ending it with me. I had been arrogant enough to believe he would just keep the hope that one day we’d be together, like real couples.

I looked around in bewilderment as if I had forgotten my lines in a school play and I was waiting for the backstage director to prompt me. It was like trying to stop a freight train—impossible. I felt like someone had just reached in, pulled my heart out, threw it on the ground and stomped on it.

He looked intensely into my eyes. “Are you staying?” He asked. The tone of his voice told me he wouldn’t ask me that question again—it was his final attempt at making me stay and if I said no, he was done.

I shook my head. He was asking me to make a miracle happen. “You know I can’t but I’ll be back in March. Can’t you just be patient?”

“Addy, you have no idea what patience is. You have no idea what sacrifice is. I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t. I’m sorry.” He walked to his jeep and I followed after him. As he reached for the door handle, I touched his hand. He stopped, but he refused to meet my gaze.

“Jack…please…don’t do this.” My voice quivered as tears streamed down my face.

He turned his head slightly away from me, but I still saw his hand swipe at a tear. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I had not been prepared for this moment. Actually, I wasn’t sure anything could have prepared me.

“I’ll call you when I get back to my dorm tomorrow,” I said.

He tightly closed his eyes and whispered, “Please don’t.”

I gulped.
He can’t be serious
. My tears flowed uncontrollably over my cheeks.

“Jack…” I whispered through a sob.

He finally looked at me, staring long and hard, like he was trying to capture this moment to replay over and over again to remind him it was the right decision. He got into his Jeep, then drove entirely too fast down the driveway.

I didn’t know how long I had been standing in the driveway, just staring into the darkness, when I heard my mom call out that I had a phone call.

It was Claire.

Jack had just called her saying he didn’t want to tell her why, but he knew that I needed her. She said he was acting bizarre and his voice sounded strange. She spent an hour listening to me sob and another hour listening to me babble.

When I was finally coherent, Claire said, “Addy, I had a feeling this day would come. You have to understand. Jack is a man of commitment. He wants a wife and children. He wants all that and more and he wants it right here, in his hometown of Blue River, Montana. He’s just not a big city guy and honestly, I think that’s part of his charm, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I just don’t understand how he plans to support a wife and kids. Is he going to be
Jack the handyman
for the rest of his life?” I asked through my sniffles.

“Is that what this is all about? He doesn’t have a luxurious enough career for you?” She sounded slightly offended on Jack’s behalf.

“Uh, I’d say he has
no career
at all, but that’s beside the point. I just always figured I would have a career and that’s fine with me. I have no problem with being the person who supports our family.”
Look at me…talking about having a family!

“In a way, I think he feels like he’s not good enough for you. He’s old fashioned. He’ll want to contribute to the household,” Claire insisted.

“That’s silly.”

“Is it? With all due respect, you act like coming back to Montana means you’ll get an infectious disease.”

“Ah! I do not!” I hated that she couldn’t just be completely on my side. I loved and hated her honesty all at once right now. “Claire, I need to get my degree.”

“Then do that. Finish your degree but if you want to be with Jack, you’ll need to get that degree in Montana. I guess you have some pretty serious things to think about.”

“Yeah, I do. Maybe I’ve been too spoiled.”

Claire quietly chuckled. I was afraid to ask why that was but I presumed she thought I was a spoiled little rich girl, too. I had come so far over the last few years and changed in many ways—my thoughts, my words, my habits—but I had also been foolish, arrogant, and spoiled. The realizations—the important, life changing realizations—had come too late, and now I was left with what I could do to make it right.

“Thanks for listening,” I sniffed and wiped my runny nose.

“No problem. That’s what friends are for, right?”

“Right. I promise to keep in better touch. I promise.”

“Me, too. Hang in there, Addy. He’ll cool off, but he needs some time alone with his thoughts.”

“I suppose you’re right. Good night, Claire.”

“’Night, Addy.”

********

Jack’s Journal

Friday, January 11

I finally reached my breaking point and I broke up with Addy. Well, in a way, I’m not sure we were ever even back together, either way, it’s over. I guess I finally realized that she won’t come back to Montana, and I can’t go to California. I know that San Diego isn’t really the place for me, but if it meant being with her, I’d do it. I’d be happy because I was sharing my life with her, but I’d be unhappy with myself for leaving my dad to work so hard by himself. His health just isn’t what it used to be since the heart attack. I can’t leave and she won’t come here which means we just can’t make it work.

I went there not knowing what I would do or say. I had her promise ring in my pocket, but I never took it out. I’ll always wonder if I should have and if that would have changed the horrible direction the night took. I never gave her a chance to accept or reject it, I just…freaked out…I guess…I let out all my anger and frustration. I know I’ve been acting weird for days, debating what direction I should go…pulling away from her and wondering if I should try to further the commitment with the ring. Should I accept it won’t work and break it off? I know she had to feel how distant I was. She had to. We’re so in tune with one another that disconnecting is like shutting off electricity.

I’ll always wonder if I did the right thing…always. I need to delete my email account. I know she’ll contact me, and I don’t know that I can resist reading her words.

36. Letters

Jack didn’t cool off. I didn’t hear from him when I returned to California and he wouldn’t take my calls. If he was home, his parents must have lied for him, telling me he wasn’t there because somehow he was never available. He wouldn’t respond to my text messages and he wouldn’t answer his phone and when I emailed him, the response was that the account no longer existed. He had apparently been very serious about reaching his breaking point. This was our official breakup and it sucked.

This was the most painful moment in my life. I remembered when we moved to Blue River and I thought it was so painful that only the sweet release of death would have been better—that was nothing compared to how this felt. Losing Jack was excruciating. I wondered every minute of every day where he was, who he was with, and what he was doing.
Had word traveled through our small town that Jack was available? Had Mandy achieved her goal? Was Brooke on pursuit? Were either of them able to make their conquest?
I felt physically ill at all these thoughts.

I muddled through each day and each week of my classes in a complete fog. Kate tried to cheer me up with North Dakota jokes that she turned into Montana jokes. But it was hopeless; no, I was hopeless. I walked to each class like a robot who could feel nothing. The emptiness was unbearable. I cried myself to sleep each night and woke each morning with a new shade of red around each eye. My eyelids went through varying degrees of puffiness. Dark circles made me look like I smoked crack. I was falling to pieces, physically and emotionally. Kate finally suggested I simply go back to Montana. I just couldn’t and it didn’t seem to matter now. Jack no longer wanted me. No one seemed to understand my need to follow through with my education.

My dad tried to influence me by reminding me it would be okay to transfer my credits. I only got defensive. He tried to remind me about our “
the one who got away
” talk so I began to drown him out. Even he didn’t make sense to me anymore.

By the end of February, I decided I would write Jack a letter—an actual, handwritten letter, written on fancy stationary.
He won’t be able to resist opening his mail
. Maybe we could fix this before I went to Montana for spring break. I still believed in second, third, and fourth chances.

Dear Jack:

I’m sorry we argued before I left in January. I now know you were right. I didn’t know the meaning of sacrifice. I have given nothing to this relationship at the level you have. Yes. I am spoiled. I promise to do better. But just as any spoiled rotten princess believes, I think I should have my way all the time. I want
you
to give in. I want
you
to leave Montana and join me in California. I want
you
to make all the sacrifices. I am a horrible, rotten person—a horrible, rotten person who deeply loves you.

I never in a million years dreamed I would move to small-town Montana and find a person like you. But I did and there is no going back now. I knew the first time I kissed you at Castle Peak Falls that this was a love that would last forever. Please. Let’s try. Let’s make this work. Please give us the chance we deserve.

I guess these are the words I couldn’t say before, but I mean them. I truly want us to have another chance. I promise—after I graduate—I will move back to Montana. I know it isn’t as soon as you’d like, but I promise to come home. There…I said it. Montana is my home.

All my love,

Addy

I sealed the letter in a pretty pink envelope then sprayed it with the perfume Jack loved on me. I sealed it with a kiss—literally.

I walked to the mail drop-off, stopping to check my own mail box first. I opened the tiny door and what I saw caused my hand to freeze in mid-air. Inside lay a letter from Jack—an actual paper letter. I slowly removed the envelope, running my fingers over the letters I knew he’d personally written. My heart beat faster and faster as my trembling fingers opened the brown envelope.

I read the letter then dropped to my knees. I had no idea how long I sat on the floor, unable to move. When I finally mustered the strength, I slowly rose and walked back to my room, putting my pretty pink letter in a shoe box, knowing I would never mail it. Jack would never read my letter.