Lost In Rewind (Audio Fools #3) (28 page)

“I never thought Jacky and I could have a future, not just because of her cancer, but because she didn’t love me that way. She didn’t look at me the way the innocent girl I spent every weekend with did. Most of the time, she would try to push me away. I’d spend the week in school allowing Jacqueline to pretend I didn’t matter, and then I would spend the weekend with another girl and pretend Jacky didn’t matter.

“After a year, nothing mattered anymore. I was waiting to finally graduate and start my life without my best friend being a constant reminder and a source of pain. I was tired of pretending, and I did love Eddie’s sister very much. I was ready for school and Jacky to be over so I could start my new life with someone who wanted me in theirs.”

He pauses. He sounds winded, as if physically reliving his actions.

“Did you tell your friend’s sister you were sleeping with someone else?” I present a question I already know the answer to, but I need to hear his response. My question is meant to hurt him like he’s hurting me right now.

“I told you that I kept them separated. One had nothing to do with the other. Jacky was a cactus that wouldn’t allow me to get too close and love her completely. She would spend time with me and sleep with me, but our relationship was limited, guarded. There was a huge elephant in the room that she chose to ignore, and it infuriated me.

“I’d take the train into Manhattan every weekend for her, but she didn’t know and I couldn’t tell her. Not to mention, I was human; I needed to be loved and appreciated, and she didn’t do either of those things for me. But the girl who waited at my apartment did. She loved me, she wanted me, and she appreciated my effort. I would touch her and all my problems would vanish and nothing else mattered. She was a portal, an escape, a make-believe world I created that would come to life at the end of every week. She was my reward and salvation. We talked about the kind of life we’d build together one day, and I couldn’t wait to start a new chapter with only her once law school was done. I didn’t need to tell her about Jacqueline; there was nothing to tell. We wouldn’t be together anyway.

“I never in my wildest dreams thought that Jacky couldn’t beat cancer. She was young and she had money to get the best treatment. Michelle kept hinting that she wasn’t doing well, that life was unfair and she didn’t know how she would go on without her best friend, but I didn’t listen. My brain wasn’t programmed to think of a world without Jacqueline in it.

“As we got closer to graduation, I spent less time with my so-called best friend. We didn’t study together; we were too busy with finals, and it felt like a natural disconnect. Eddie’s sister was accepted to Brown University. She was also following her family’s footsteps to become an attorney, like her father and brother. I was going to get rid of that apartment and find a job around anywhere she was, but that’s not what life had in store for us.

“I told you already that Jacqueline’s father paid me a visit a month before I graduated and turned my life upside down. His daughter was dying and he wanted me to love her, marry her, and give her what every woman should have—a family. It was like a dream and nightmare wrapped into one. Her family had finally accepted me and I would get to marry the girl I always thought was unattainable, but she would be painfully taken away from me in a year. What was I suppose to do? Huh?”

I listen and realize he’s asking me a question. “Jeff, are you asking me what I would do?”

“Yes, what would you do if you were me? Would you tell everybody the truth? Was I supposed to go back to New York and break that poor girl’s heart?” The agitated sound of his voice tells me just how much he wishes he did tell the truth, but clearly he didn’t.

“I would tell the truth. I would own my actions and consequences, even if it meant breaking someone’s heart. C’est la vie.” I hear him chuckle at my response.

“That’s life, huh? Well, I’m sorry, I couldn’t look her in the eyes and break her heart. I wasn’t man enough to tell her that the place we’d made love and where she gave me her heart and her body was the same place I’d rented to watch over my sick best friend, who was my longtime lover, the one I was now going to marry. I didn’t have the balls to tell her I came to the city almost every weekend to make sure Jacqueline was okay, and not just to see her. I was a negligent pretender, but I wasn’t that kind of heartless monster … not yet. I couldn’t witness her disappointment. So instead of doing the right thing and breaking up with her, I just did the cowardly thing and stopped going to the city to see her altogether. Like a child, I ignored her calls, texts, and emails. Nobody knew about us anyway, so it was easy to detox her out of my system like the addict I’d become.

“I couldn’t feel guilty about my newly acquired predicament, because I had to concentrate on Jacky and whatever time she had left on this earth. That was my only job. Once again, I thought I had a plan, but I think the universe saw it and laughed. Then it showed me who the real life architect is.”

“I’m scared to hear what happens next,” I say out loud.

“What happened next is worse than you could ever imagine.”

I swallow the acid and stop trying to predict his next move, and how or why Joella would have had anything to do with it. Our physical distance and his account of the past add another layer of separation between us, and with each new revelation, I travel a little further away from the idea of him.

“It was May first, and our last final was done. The whole gang was together at BlackGod celebrating, drinking as if tomorrow would never come. I drank to try to forget the girl I knew was waiting for me like a lost puppy back in New York. I drank to try to forget that my best friend was dying. I drank in an effort to pretend I wasn’t a scared idiot who was about to propose to the love of his life that night. I drank and hoped I was anybody but me.

“I had Jacqueline’s ring in my pocket when I went upstairs to the bathroom. I got to the top of the stairs and this woman, whom I’d never paid any attention to before, motioned for me to come closer. I was a bit buzzed, but I remember looking around. There was no one there except me.

“She said, ‘
Come, boy, I will give you a reading.’
But it was the way she’d whispered it with certainty that caught my attention. I said I wasn’t interested, that I’d only gone upstairs to take a piss. I hadn’t gone up there for a reading. I told her I didn’t even believe in fortunetellers anyway. I’d always believed that you make your own fortune—you know what I mean? But upon closer inspection, the smiling woman looked familiar to me. I had to have seen her before, maybe sitting at the top of those stairs on another occasion I had gone up to use the bathroom. I mean, after all, we did frequent that bar no less than twice a week.

“I remember her saying,
‘Your eyes … two different colors. You’re one in a million, boy.’
She stood with difficulty and drew back the black velvet curtains, and beckoned me to enter the small, hidden room at the top of the stairs, right across from the men’s room. I can’t explain what compelled me to accept her invitation. I can’t decide if I was intoxicated, or perhaps hoping she’d actually know my future since my reality at the time took an unforeseeable turn.

“Her lips came together in a knowing grin as she said, ‘
Show me your hands, Godfrey.’
I corrected her and told her that my name is Jeffery, not Godfrey. I thought maybe she’d mistaken me for someone else. But before I could stop her, she’d taken hold of both my wrists. I sat down and listened, completely startled.
Although, it was her next words that had me frozen in place. She said, ‘
Those eyes … I’ve seen them countless times, boy. Don’t you worry about your name, just pay attention to what an old woman has to say.’
I looked down at her wrinkled hands, which had given away her advanced age, and watched as she began to trace a line from my index finger down my palm and to my wrist. She stopped at my wrist, and then we both looked up in sync.

“She raised three fingers and smiled before saying,
‘Three children will come from you—a king and two queens. But you will be lost without her. Your life collided with pain and suffering that won’t end until you find her. Only the girl with the biblical name will save your broken heart, Godfrey. She will heal you and you will heal her. When she grows up, you will be lost no more, my boy, and your life will be filled with music and begin again.’
I removed my hands from her grip as if her prophecy had burned me. She had no way of knowing about
her
. She had no right telling me such crap. Who did she think she was? The girl she spoke of … it was over between us. I hadn’t seen or called Eddie’s sister in weeks. This stranger knew nothing. I was going to marry Jacqueline, end of story.

“I was never the same after I spoke and looked into your grandmother’s eyes. She was the reason I went back to New York to see the girl I had cowardly abandoned. I went back to try and explain, try to end things with her like a man and let us both move on. I had every intention to never see her again, especially since I was getting married. She had her whole life ahead of her, she was practically a baby who just graduated high school, and I was a new attorney, fresh out of school, who would be moving to New York to try and build a career. Jacqueline was my future, not her. But seeing the girl I couldn’t stop thinking about, coupled with the gypsy’s taunting words, became my ruin. She planted the seed, but I watered it with empty promises and I willed it to life. I lived a life of sin because I thought I knew my absolute future and what it held, but I knew nothing.”

I hear him crying, but I’m too busy pacing my room in circles while methodically compartmentalizing his words. I struggle in my efforts to decode Joella’s reading to him and try not to go crazy with all the information I finally have. I rewind and play back her prophecy over and over. She said his name, she knew who he was, in a way, and it must’ve been him she waited for all those years. She could’ve sold this bar thousands of times, but she never did, and he has a key. He had to have been the reason she kept this place and why she remained here waiting for him to come back.
But why?

It dawns on me that I don’t know Eddie’s little sister’s name. I don’t recall Jeff mentioning or saying her name once in his storytelling.
But why?
I need to know her name, now!

My phone is suddenly quiet as I look down at my screen to see that it’s completely black,
dead,
and Jeff and his story are gone.

Out of frustration I fling my phone across my bed, and just as quickly, go after it to find it and plug it in. I place my hand under the covers to try and fetch it but I can’t seem to locate it. I dig further under the covers until my hand grazes over and comes in contact with a key.

“
Didn’t We Almost Have It All
” by Whitney Houston

I
did what I promised, I told her the prophecy, the nonsensical prediction of her old, senile grandmother, and she hung up on me, as I knew she would. Now I need to get as far away from the memories as my head will allow me, without undergoing a lobotomy. It’s the first time I’ve actually regurgitated my life to someone out loud, and I don’t particularly like myself very much. I sound like a lying pig that cheated on his sick girlfriend, fiancée, and then wife with a young, innocent girl, and I haven’t even told her the whole story. I snicker with disgust. At least I won’t be adding Kali to my reckless body count.

I don’t care about understanding or knowing why that old woman presumably waited just for me. I rub my chest to try and find my key, but again I’m reminded I don’t have it anymore. I left it under Kali’s pillow. That key doesn’t belong to me. Her grandmother would want her to have it. It doesn’t matter anymore why she said what she said, and I don’t care about her perfect granddaughter, either.
Lies, lies, lies.

I splash water on my face and readjust my favorite green tie tightly around my neck before I brace myself to step back out into my life. I need to get back to work and look forward to seeing Emily and her family tonight. Hopefully she’ll give me good news about Sara and her slow recovery. I’ll also hand over the key to the apartment in the village I once called my home with Sara. I’ll have Emily and Louis speak to Sara and William about it and decide to do with it as they see fit. I have no reason to ever go back there, just like Sara, that place was never really my home. My kids are my only home.