Chapter 28
Sloan
♪ A Moment of Silence | The Neighbourhood
Jason: Sloan, can we please talk?
I stared at the vertical blinking line in the empty text box. I set my phone facedown on Kristen’s kitchen island and put my forehead in my hand.
“Was that him?” Kristen asked, leaning on the counter.
Josh stood by the sink, giving Oliver a bath. He’d sculpted the baby’s hair into a Mohawk and Oliver was giggling.
I had Stuntman Mike in my lap wearing his EMOTIONAL SUPPORT LUNATIC shirt. Tucker lay curled at my feet. Jason had called his dog to him before he left my house two days ago, but Tucker hadn’t budged from the bed, so Jason had left him.
“Yes, that was him.”
“What did he say?”
“What he’s been saying.”
“He wants to talk?”
I nodded. My eyes filled up again and she ripped off a paper towel and handed it to me. “Sloan, why don’t you just talk to him?”
“About what? He doesn’t get this, Kristen. He seriously thinks there’s nothing wrong with any of this. He lied to me. He let my mom—my mom—be the one to tell me about Lola. He just stood there shrugging like, ‘Well, nothing I could have done to prevent this. Sometimes famous recording artists show up to fuck me, I didn’t want to bother you with the details.’” I pressed the towel to my eyes.
“Well, he is a rock star…”
I did a laugh-cry.
Josh rinsed the baby’s hair with a cup. “Nah, he’s not a rock star. I didn’t get that vibe from him. That guy’s pretty grounded.”
Kristen peered at me. “Do you think he cheated on you with her?”
I sniffled. “No. I believe him. But he should have at least told me about her.”
Josh lifted Oliver into a towel and handed him to Kristen for a diaper. Then he kissed the side of his wife’s head on his way to the fridge. “Look, I’m gonna be honest. I like him, and I think you need to cut him some slack.” He grabbed a beer and pulled up a stool at the counter. “Did he handle the situation badly? Yes. But no guy wants to tell his girlfriend about the women he’s slept with, believe me.”
I shook my head at him. “So he should just get a pass for this? He was about to go on a year-long tour with his old hookup and I didn’t even know about it.”
Josh opened his beer. “I know what a man looks like when he’s in love with you, Sloan. I saw the same look on Brandon’s face once, and I’m telling you, this guy’s serious about you. Give him a break. He fucked up and he knows it. He’s probably losing his mind right now.”
He’s losing his mind? Jason felt like a stranger to me with some torrid past and secret double life. Like the Jason I’d known was a different person from the man who’d lied to me and hooked up with Lola Simone.
Maybe the bad guy was Jaxon.
“Did you even listen to that song?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Did you?” How many times had I heard that nasty Lola Simone song and not realized it was about Jason? It was like I’d just found out my boyfriend had starred in a lyrical porno that everyone had seen. The whole situation was so cringy.
Kristen shrugged while she fastened Oliver’s diaper. “I listened to it. So he got drunk and fucked her on a beach. Then she wrote a song about it. It’s messed up, but that just makes her a bitch. It doesn’t make him anything less than a guy who was exercising his God-given right to make bad choices six months before he knew you.”
I let out a breath. “What about the lying?”
Kristen sucked air through her teeth. “He didn’t really lie. He just didn’t tell you. I mean, that doesn’t make it okay, but I gotta be honest, I kind of get it.”
I stared at her, incredulous.
“What? Jason’s a nice guy,” she said, pulling a onesie over the baby’s head. “He’s the kind of person who donates his fucking bone marrow to a stranger. He didn’t want to make you insecure. Was he really going to tell you that a gorgeous rock star showed up at his house in the middle of the night to fuck him when the two of you had only been dating for three days? How would that have gone over?”
She did have a point.
She put the baby in his high chair. “And when she grabbed him, same thing. He probably thought nobody saw it and he was sparing you the visual of a famous train wreck touching his dick. And he’s not special, believe me. She’s always doing shit like that. She’d give the pope a lap dance.” She sat on Josh’s knee and put an arm around his neck.
I mopped at my nose. “You know, maybe I wouldn’t be so upset with him if he’d told me about this without letting TMZ pick it up first.”
“You guys don’t have typical problems, I’ll give you that,” Josh chuckled, pulling on his beer. “Just tell him that from now on he needs to be honest with you so you don’t get blindsided when stuff like this happens.”
I clutched my damp wad of paper towels, miserable. “I did. He said he can’t prepare me for every story the tabloids might make up. He sure as hell could have prepared me for this one, though,” I mumbled.
My phone rang. I picked it up and looked at the screen.
It was him.
My gaze shot to Kristen. I hovered a finger over the Answer Call button. I wanted to hear his voice. Talk to him. But I wanted the old Jason. The one from before. I thought about how he’d been so oblivious to how he’d let this happen, how he’d purposely hid all this from me and how dismissive and unapologetic he’d been.
I sent his call to voicemail and shut off my phone. What could he possibly have to say that would change my mind? The only thing that could make this different was complete and total transparency in our relationship, and he’d made it very clear he had no intention of participating in that.
Kristen shook her head at me. “You only have ten days, Sloan. That’s all you get before his tour. Are you really willing to let this be the thing that breaks you guys up? You can end it now, like this, or calm the fuck down and give him a chance and at least enjoy the time you have left.”
I shook my head. “It’s bigger than that, Kristen. This isn’t just about the next ten days. It’s about whether I’d even consider dating him again when his tour is over. He wants me to wait for him. And you know what? I was actually considering it. I figured, what’s the harm? It’s not like I’m gonna be dating anyway. We can just put our relationship on hold, do what we have to do, stay faithful to each other, and get back together when his tour’s over. And all I can think now is, how much crap will I learn about him this way while he’s gone?”
I wiped at my nose. “Even if I forgive the lying—the omissions, which he didn’t even seem to be sorry about—what about the next time? And there will be a next time. He was right, this shit is going to happen. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do this with him again and again while he purposely keeps me in the dark. I mean, if he didn’t feel like Lola Simone and the song sitting at number two on the damn music charts warranted mentioning, what else isn’t he telling me? Am I just going to find out about his skeletons with everyone else when they hit the celebrity gossip circuit?” I shook my head. “I’m not cut out for this life and I don’t think I really realized it until today.”
Kristen and Josh looked at me like they felt sorry for me and didn’t know what else to say.
“I’ve been able to compartmentalize this whole fame thing because I didn’t ever see the Jaxon side of him. And now all of a sudden it’s this enormous, glaring spotlight on everything,” I said, waving my paper towel around.
My chin started to quiver. “He’ll do nothing to protect me from the tabloid onslaught. He’ll keep doing things behind my back. I’ll get no warning, just like this time. Then when the inevitable happens and some story breaks, he’ll tell me I need a tougher skin. He’ll brush it off, justify hiding whatever it is from me, take no responsibility.”
I’d be a lunatic. I would be twitchy and worried, waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole time he was away.
Stuntman Mike peered up at me from my lap.
My eyes filled with tears again and I looked back and forth between Kristen and Josh. “I have to break up with him,” I breathed. “I have to do it now.”
The finality of it crushed me. Tears came again and I sobbed into my paper towel.
He’d given me no choice.