Shawn
Song of the Chapter: She'll Be the One
"She'll be the love I can't let go / Oh, but how can I not try?"
= =
Her shoes, I wished I could be in them for so long, but now that I am in them, I regret wishing that so many times.
I wish I could have felt the pain she felt in the cab when I looked her in the eyes and calmly told her I didn't love her anymore. Throughout those four years, I always wondered what it was like to be on the receiving end of someone telling you that they no longer love you. And today that wish was granted. She still looks at me, completely unfazed by how bad she has hurt me. Oh fuck. That's how I was to her, wasn't it? That's how I looked breaking her heart, didn't I?
"You don't love me anymore?" I ask as I try my hardest to not look like it completely broke me on the inside.
"I don't think I stuttered." She says as she casually shakes her head. She grabs her mug of tea and takes a drink before setting it back down on the table. "Not to sound rude."
"When did you realize that you were over me?" I ask her.
"You did that ad campaign for Gucci and I had to make room in my article for it. That advertisement was all almost everyone at my office could ever talk about. I managed to drown out everything everyone had to say about you and I just didn't care about it or about you. I genuinely did not care and I wasn't pretending anymore, either. There was not a thought of you in my mind. I just looked at it, didn't feel a damn thing, and just went, eh." Jasmine shrugs.
"It took me a while to get over you, though." She continues. "There was still a little love, but it left. The love is gone."
"So you really don't love me anymore?" I ask her.
"No. And I'm sorry if you had any thought about wanting to get back together."
How can she just sit there and not seem to care about me? This Jasmine isn't the Jasmine that I used to know. She's changed. She seems cold and her empathy vanished. I have the rest of the night to figure out if she's still the same old Jasmine, and hopefully, there would be a part of her that would still want to ask me "how high?" if I asked her to jump. Hopefully the girl who loved me so much was still there.
"I have to ask," I begin, "how did it feel when I left you?"
Jasmine narrows her eyes at me and she suddenly leans back in her seat and I see her chest rising up and down slowly. "De ja vu."
"Huh?" I ask her.
"I just asked Robin Cooper that the other day when I interviewed her. You know whats funny? I saw so much of myself in her." She says.
"I didn't get a chance to read it." I say.
"You really wanna know what it felt like when you left me?" She asks me. I nod my head and she takes a sip of her tea before clearing her throat. "It hurt so fucking bad. I remember not wanting to board the plane because I didn't know if I would be able to control myself for a whole ride. Most of my time on the plane to Chicago was spent in the bathroom crying. I cried so much that I nearly drowned every time I thought of you. But you know what? I wish I did drown, because then I would finally be free from you."
"Oh." Is all I can say.
"But that's not all. You hurt me so much that I had to go seek psychological help! I spent so many nights sleepless, so many days without eating, so many afternoons without showering. I was literally depressed, Shawn, you hurt me so bad I became depressed. It didn't help seeing you everywhere. How could I try to get over someone who was everywhere? You possessed my mind and my dreams, turning those into nightmares. You hurt me so incredibly bad that I don't even wish you could feel what I felt. I wished so many times that you could feel what I felt, but now, now I'm starting to rethink that."
Oh, but if she knew. Do I tell her that I feel like that? "Hey, Jasmine, I still love you, but you don't love me and that hurts."
"And all you can do is just sit there, expressionless, and just say 'oh,' because you can't even grasp how badly you hurt me." Jasmine continues. "So you're really just gonna sit there then, huh?"
"What do you want me to say? Jasmine, all I can think of is how strong and kept together you are." I say. "You're doing an interview with your ex. That's strong."
Jasmine leans back in her chair and crosses her arms under her chest. "You have some fucking nerve! I mean, my god! You come up out of the blue four years later and just request - no, demand - that I interview you! And then you try to weakly compliment me with some, 'you're so strong oh, how do you do it blah blah blah' bullshit."
"Out of the blue?" I ask. I lean forward and lower my voice. "I fucking searched endlessly for you. I asked Jack, I tried to contact your mother, I even thought of hiring a private detective to find you! Your profiles were gone or I was blocked. The only thing I could do was find your articles with Cosmo and that was it! Do you know how long I kept searching for you? You were my everything! I searched everywhere for my everything. I may be four years too late, but there's a saying that goes better late than never. You decide what you wanna do with that information, baby."
Jasmine scoffs. "Baby? I'm not your baby. But you know what?...." She stops and I can truly see her biting her tongue and she begins to play with her fingers as she places her hands on the table. "Nothing."
"No, come on, say it." I say.
"It's nothing. Actually, maybe we can meet up another four years later and I can tell you."
She gets up from the table and places a five dollar bill before walking out the cafe. I take out a twenty and leave it on top of Jasmine's bill and then follow her outside. She begins to walk down to the nearest corner of the nearest main street in hope of finding a cab.
"So why are you walking away?" I ask her. "Didn't you have any questions for me? You don't like these answers I'm giving you?"
Jasmine continues walking and turns a corner. I continue to follow her and catch up to her. There's an alley underneath a train station and I grab her by the arm and turn her around. A train passes quickly and the wind pushes her hair back over her shoulders. We stand to the side of the alley and Jasmine removes her arm from my grip and tucks her hair behind her ear. For fucks sake, can she stop!?
"I wanna know when." Jasmine says.
"When what?" I ask her.
"When did you stop loving me? And when did you realize you wanted to have me interview you?" She asks. "Tell me how long it took for you to get over me. Tell me how much you hurt. Tell me."
I'm taken aback by the slight raise in her voice and the hint of anger. She has the same look on her face as she did when she said she hated me. Now I want to know if she still hates me.
"Exactly. You didn't go through what I went through and you have the nerve to call me strong. No, Shawn, it's not being strong, it's called being professional. I have to be professional because the only place where I thought I could escape you was whenever I wrote. But then you showed up, and, well, I guess not. I guess that I'll never escape you. I guess these questions that I have will forever haunt me because I really don't know if I want answers from you." She says.
"Do you still hate me?" I ask. "You look at me like you hate me and you talk to me like you hate me. Do you still harbor all that hatred for me inside you?"
Jasmine is silent and she can only look at me. I happen to glance down and see that her hands are balled up into tiny fists and I remember that was a method she had of controlling her anger - digging her nails into the palms of her hands. I grab her hands and hold them in mine and look at her.
"Look who is quiet now." I say. "Maybe I didn't know what you went through these past four years, but let me tell you what I went through." I let go of her hands and then grab her wrists together in one hand while I use my other hand to point a finger at my chest.
"I had to go four whole years knowing someone I love absolutely hated me! For four years do you know how frightened I was thinking of the possibility of running into you? Jesus fuck! I wanted to find you, but then I thought, What if you still hate me? Then what? Each time I thought of finding you, I would always hit a brick wall! That's all that would happen - I would get stuck! You said the strongest word known to man and you said it to me.
"Your voice and your word poisoned me with every second. Every girl with long, black hair suddenly became you and their face became yours. The face you made when you spit that word at me will forever haunt and plague me. You've given me that look two times tonight and I need to know: do you still hate me?"
Jasmine stops struggling and instead looks at me. She loosened up and I let go of my grip on her. Her arms drop at her sides and I can't tell what emotion is ridden in her eyes.
"Do you hate me?" I ask as I lower my head to look directly in her eyes.
"You have questions for me. I have answers." She says. "I hate myself for not being able to hate you anymore."
I stand up straight and look at her as she tries her hardest to not look hurt.
"I stopped hating you a year ago. This emotion was just hanging by a thread I kept trying to stitch repeatedly but it was going nowhere. Do you know what I felt trying to hold you accountable for my hatred towards you? I felt pathetic. Absolutely pathetic that this person who doesn't give a fuck and has clearly moved on in his life doesn't seem to care about me. I felt incredibly stupid hating someone who must have forgotten about me. And I hate myself for not being able to hate you anymore. I should. I should hate you because of how you left me. Because of how you planted yourself in me and grew roots in my ribcage that sprouted around my bones." She nods her head and I see that she's not actually strong. "So, no, I don't hate you."
"But if you could you would?" I ask.
"If I could, maybe."
"Maybe?" I repeat. "Jasmine, I hurt you!"
"Do you want me to hate you?" She asks. "Why do you want me to hate you? You give this whole little rant about how you felt and you want me to hate you?"
"Because I want you to feel at least something for me!" I shout. I didn't mean to shout at her, but that's how it came out. Jasmine looks confused and takes a small step back.
Oh shit. Quick, think of something! Anything!
"I don't care if it's hatred, either." Yes, good! Keep going! "I can't accept the fact that some people don't feel anything for people from the past."
"You're confusing me." Jasmine shakes her head. "Shawn, what do you want from me?"
I drop my hands by my sides and shake my head. "I don't know. I don't know why I came here and I don't know why I requested you. I guess some part of me thought that we would go back to being friends."
"So you want to be friends?" She asks me.
"Only if you want to."
"I can't answer that." Jasmine tells me. "And I'm being honest."
"Why can't you answer that?" I ask.
"Because it took me so long to get over you and you waltz back in here in my life and everyone is happy with it. Jack and Paige and my dad...they're happy with you. But me? I don't know if I'm ready for you in my life again. Or for that matter, if I want you in my life again."
"We can't even be friends?" I ask. "Because I want to be your friend. I wanna hear about how shitty your day was, or how great it was. I want to lose contact with you and then maybe go out and catch up over drinks. I wanna do what friends do with you."
"You want to be friends?" Jasmine asks. "Shawn, ex's can't be friends."
"And why not?" I ask.
"It's awkward! Haven't you seen How I Met Your Mother? It's so awkward for Ted and Robin. We can't be Ted and Robin." She tells me.
"We can be different! We don't have to be like television, Jasmine. I just want to be friends again. That's it."
"There's a difference." She says.
"Tell me all about it. Please. What's so different? Why can't we be friends?"
"I don't know if I want you in my life!" She raises her voice. Jasmine turns around and walks away and I watch her. I snap out of my trance and chase after her.
"Slap me in the face." I say.
Jasmine stops and turns around. "You want me to what?" She asks me. There aren't many people around, but just a few to hear our conversation only if we yelled.
"I didn't stutter," I reply. Walking closer, I look down at her and she tilts her head back to look me in the eyes. Don't kiss her. Don't touch her. Don't lose your focus. "I can't understand the pain that I caused you. There's absolutely nothing that could ever compare and if I could, I would take all the pain and heartache and depression - gladly. Every girl claims that they wish they could slap their ex if they were to ever see them again. I'm here. We're ex's. Jasmine, I know that deep down inside it's what you want."
Jasmine searches for the right words to say and I watch as her mouth is agape. Don't look at her lips for too long. Don't. Please don't. Don't lean in. Resist.
"You want me to slap you?" Jasmine asks me. "You're joking, right?"
"Nope. Slap me. Go ahead." I place my hands behind my back and lean my head forward as I await the painful sensation of her hand on my cheek. "Come on, it's what I deserve."
"You're sure about this?" She asks. "You really want me to slap you?"
"Yes. Go on." I tell her.
"What's the point in this?"
"I don't think I could ever understand the emotional pain that you went through. The pain I put you through? I will never understand it." Bullshit - because I now do understand it. "So, I want to give you something - a free slap."
Jasmine hesitates but then nods her head. "Okay. I'm gonna slap you. Because you truly do deserve it and I don't think there will ever be another chance for this. Shawn, thank you."
I close my eyes.
I have been in plenty of fights. And each fight, I have never been nervous because I always know that I'm going to win. Always. But my ex-girlfriend who I am still in love with is about to slap me. Will it be worse than the one at the airport? Who knows. But I am shitting bricks and I cannot control my shaking hands that I have hidden behind my back. I am incredibly nervous and know I am going to lose.
Love is a losing game.
Wondering what's taking so long, I open my eyes and see Jasmine's eyes. They hold a small, little gleam and I wonder what the hell could have caused that. Her right hand draws back to the side and then she swings it forward, connecting the palm of her hand to the left cheek of my face. My head whips to the side and I do the smallest stumble. I've taken many hits to the face, but none can measure up to the pain of a slap delivered by a brokenhearted girl.
"Ooooh, shit! Okay girl, slap that mother fucker!" Someone from across the street says. They've exited a shop called Stan's Donuts and it's three people. One laughs while another winces.
"Slap that white boy upside his head again, mami!" Another voice says.
I place my hand over where Jasmine slapped me and turn to look at her. She holds the wrist of her right hand and her hand is completely red. Huh. I wonder how my face looks. My eyes scan to her face and she bites her lip as a huge smile spreads over her face.
"God, you don't know how good that felt." Jasmine confesses to me. She then turns to the people across the street and gives them a thumbs up before turning to me. "Do you have any more questions for me?"
"Yeah. Where can I get some ice?" I ask.
Jasmine giggles and she places her hand at my arm. "Come on. There's a Walgreens right across the block."
= =
My head leans against the seat of the cab and Jasmine holds the bag of frozen carrots to my face with her right hand. The driver went down a slightly bumpy road and the bag pressed a bit into my skin.
"Is the bag too cold for you?" I ask her.
"It's good. How about you?" She replies.
"Easing the pain." I comically sigh.
We sit in silence as the driver is at a red light. He has headphones in his ears and listens to the music that played through the small speakers. Jasmine yawns and she rests her head against the seat.
"Do you still draw?" I ask her. I place my hand over hers and remove the bag from my face. The bag falls on my lap and she doesn't seem to notice my hand still over hers. She looks at me and her expression is soft. "I wish I still had a drawing of yours, but you never gave me one. And each time I closed my eyes I tried to remember the drawings you showed me that night. Do you remember?"
Jasmine nods her head as she smiles. "I remember." Her voice is soft and tired. "I do. I paint in my spare time and sketch at work or wherever I go. For a while I stopped, but then I remembered a saying that went, Take your broken heart and make it into art. That's exactly what I did. Sometimes I paint on the roof. It's really calming up there and I have the lake by me, the wind in my hair, and the night sky above my head."
"That's good. I'm happy you channeled your broken heart into art." I nod my head. Our hands are still touching. She hasn't removed her hand from under mine.
"Do you still sing and play the guitar?" She asks me.
"Yeah." I smile. "I still do. I'll keep playing until my hands and fingers have given up."
"With the rate of your fighting career, that'll happen soon." She jokes.
"Alright you know what..." I say as I remove my hand from hers and gently nudge her. Jasmine laughs as her body moves just a little bit. The cab turns on her block and I make my move.
I reach over and tuck her hair behind her ear. My fingers slowly and gently trace along her jawline up to her cheekbone. I missed the feeling of her hair. The thickness and the way it felt so incredibly soft. Her hair was slightly damp, but only a few strands. Jasmine looks at me and her eyes widen in just the slightest. Is it the girl who still loves me? Please let it be.
The cab stops in front of her house and the breaks come to a small squeal. She unbuckles her seatbelt and licks her lips before looking at me.
"I-I'll see you tomorrow at the office." Jasmine says. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight, Jasmine." I say. She takes the bag of frozen carrots with her and exits the cab. The door closes and I turn my head to the right to watch her walk up the stairs. She walks slowly as I see the way her hair moves with each step she takes. She goes up the stairs and I watch her enter the house and the outside light switches off.
I place my fingers on the window of the cab and look at the little shadow that peered through the curtains of the house window. The cab drives off and I close my eyes as I get ready to hold the memory and look of her eyes in my mind.
Please still love me.
Please.
- x -
AN: I feel like this chapter wasn't my best, and it was so hard to follow up last chapter since I personally feel like chapter 10 was my absolute best so far. Also, if there are any typos, please excuse them! So sorry for the long wait, you guys are always amazing for waiting! Love you guys! Also, comment below about what you would like to see in the next chapter(s) to come!
Xoxo, Sierra!