“Oh, Jas…”
She took back the jacket from River, running her fingers over the collar. “How am I supposed to go back to being without him? Nothing feels or looks or sounds the same.” At once, her breathing grew labored, like she’d sprinted a mile. “I miss him. And I know its wrong and selfish to want him, but I do. It doesn’t even have to be here. Just anywhere.”
When the silence stretched, Jasmine lifted her head to find River giving her a sad, sweet smile. “There’s your answer.”
“I don’t understand.”
River picked up Marcy and settled the little girl on her hip. “You said you want to be with him anywhere.” She shrugged one shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be Hook. Go find him, Jas. And then go with him.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled from her throat. “I can’t leave here.” She’d stopped believing she ever could. Shoved those hopes and dreams way too deep to unearth them ever again. Hadn’t she? “My job…my family. You and Marcy. Everything is here.”
“Yeah. We’re not going anywhere, either.” River tugged on the hem of Jasmine’s shirt. “We’ll talk all the time. You’ll come for visits. Maybe someday you’ll want to come back and settle. And we’ll pick up right where we’re leaving off.”
Jasmine could barely see through her tears. “You sound so sure.”
River kissed her daughter’s head. “Jasmine, are you sure about Sarge?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“That’s all I need to hear. Go.”
Sarge sat on the floor of his hotel room, back pressed against the bed. His oversize headphones hugged his ears, delivering Morrissey at top volume. Crumpled notebook paper was strewn over every inch of the floor, mocking him. Little balls of failure. Around his sixty-third attempt to write a song about Jasmine, Sarge thought he was onto something. He’d titled it “Gold.” That single word was the only accurate way to describe how she smelled, but he couldn’t get the feeling to translate onto paper. It was all garbage compared to the real thing. All his songs were now. He’d written them before. And he was living in an after world.
There was a tray of room service food on the desk across the room, but he had no recollection of how it came to be there. Or when it appeared. The smell of grease was making him sick, though. Sick on top of sick on top of sick. God, why didn’t the fucking volume go any higher on his headphones? He couldn’t drown out the…gold. Jasmine’s tongue sliding along his belly. Holding her hand in the mall. That unrestrained laugh she’d let loose when he tickled her.
Sarge shot forward to his knees and snagged the almost-empty notebook off the floor, whipping the pen from his pocket.
Golden laughter. Never after—
Garbage.
He tore the piece of paper in half with a satisfying rip, crumpling both sides and throwing them in opposite directions. Songwriting had always been his way of coping with the solitude. Being in a sea of thousands but feeling completely alone. It wasn’t working now. Nothing compared to the days he’d spent in Hook with Jasmine. They’d written the perfect song just by being together, and he would never come close to matching it.
The curtains of his hotel room were drawn, casting the room in darkness except for one dim lamp in the corner. At some point he’d even found that minimal light offensive and covered it with his T-shirt, leaving him unclothed save a pair of black sweatpants. Outside he could hear bells ringing for donations. Could hear snowplows scraping down the city streets of Manhattan, clearing away the snow that continued to fall. Christmas Day. He wanted nothing to do with it. Wanted nothing to do with the new recording deal. Another few years on the road, knowing where he really wanted to be was with a woman he couldn’t have?
I don’t have it in me. I have nothing left in me.
It was unclear when or how he would leave this hotel room. Eventually he would either be thrown out or walk through the exit of his own accord. But it wouldn’t be happening today. Or tomorrow. Not until he wrote a fucking song to adequately describe the woman he was in love with. At least then he would have something to show for the misery.
Sarge shoved back his unbrushed hair, scrubbing at his bleary eyes until the notebook once again came into focus. His pen had just touched paper when light appeared to his left. Someone else bringing him french fries or wanting to clean the room. They were probably speaking to him, but answering would require him to remove the noise over his ears, and then thoughts would rush in. No thank you. He was just about capable of fielding the sneaky memories trickling in through the deafening lyrics.
When warm skin brushed against Sarge’s face, he recoiled, as though a bullet had struck him in the chest. It forced him to suck in air. And with that air came gold. Jasmine’s gold. She was there. Standing in the hotel room, framed by the still-open door. Sarge glanced behind Jasmine long enough to determine she’d been let in by James before consuming the sight of her again. So goddamn beautiful. But the door closed, and she went too dark. No. No, no, no. Sarge lunged to his feet, feeling along the wall for a decent source of light. There. He found a standing floor lamp and turned it on, illuminating Jasmine where she stood at the foot of his bed.
Morrissey was still singing in his ears about heaven knowing he was miserable, and it seemed like a huge risk, removing the headphones. What if she was there to apologize for hurting him, but wanted to explain her standpoint? Or some other possibility that didn’t end in them together? And why—why—couldn’t they just be together when his heart was clearly being operated from the palm of her hand? If she rejected him again, right in the center of this agony, he wouldn’t have the strength to come back.
When he didn’t immediately remove his headphones, Jasmine nodded, as if she completely understood the nonsensical fuckery happening in his sleep-deprived brain. Instead of trying to talk to him through the noise, though, she knelt down on the ground and picked up one of his discarded pieces of paper. She read it, her gorgeous lips moving, before lifting wet eyes to him. The sight of her kneeling, her expression pleading, knocked the remaining breath from his lungs.
“Love you, love you…” Sarge murmured, unaware if the words came out the way they sounded in his head. Jasmine ducked her head in response, then set about picking up every balled-up sheet on the floor, reading them, and stacking them in a pile. Sarge watched her, afraid to move, knowing the words were unworthy of her but unable to resist seeing her acknowledgment of them. Look at them. Look. See how I feel? See what you did?
Finally, she was finished clearing the room of trashed lyrics. Nothing left. The Morrissey album had finished, leaving Sarge with only the echo of his deep, shaking inhales. The far-off sounds of Jasmine moving across the floor on her knees to pick up the notebook he’d left lying open. She picked up the pen and started to write, hair falling on the floor as she leaned forward. Somehow he knew the vision of Jasmine biting her lip and moving the pen inside his notebook would be the last thing he thought about before he died. Just knew it, right then and there.
Something like five minutes or five hours had passed when she stood up, hesitating a few beats before handing him the book. Sarge could barely rip his gaze from her to read what she’d written, but managed it through sheer force of will.
Got turned around when you crashed through
Couldn’t stay away from you.
Swept me up and shook me down.
Blindsided. Sunk. Lost you, too.
Forgot how to leap when I looked at you.