Page 85 of Art of Love
Jia: Hi, sorry I’ve been gone all day. I came across something important. I’ve been busy with that. Call me if you’re not asleep.
I stared at the phone. My heart screamed at me to call her. It wailed, hollered, bellowed.
But I wasn’t listening. My fears took over, and then anger. It was ten. Jia had left my place just after lunchtime today. It was six when I’d left her place, and when I’d left, Stephan had been inside her apartment.
What was he doing there for so long? And was he still there now?
I thought because I’d never felt for Emma, I wouldn’t be left with the sort of repercussions that came with trusting someone.
But then, it wasn’t Emma who’d hurt me. It was the person Id’ trusted most in this world.
Devon was a really, really good friend, but Collin had been like a brother to me.
The trust was with him, and he’d damaged that to a degree whereby this was the result.
In a situation like mine, what counted was where the trust lay. If Emma had cheated on me with some random person, I might not feel like I do now. I might have called Jia straight away. I might have gone up to her apartment when I was there, and I might have been a man and told Stephan I could look after my girl when she was upset.
I might have answered the phone when Jia rang the next day too, and the six times she called after that.
At lunchtime, almost exactly twenty-four hours since we were last together, she came to see me. I never locked my door in the day when I was home. She came right into the sitting room, where I was watching that damn recording of the exhibition.
I was leaning against the wall.
She walked in looking pissed, and her nostrils flared when she saw me.
“Did you get any of my calls?” she snapped.
“Went to see you yesterday. You looked busy with Stephan.” I cut to the chase. I wasn’t a beat-around-the-bush kind of guy, and when I looked at her and imagined that asshole with his hands on her, it made me livid. I had to clench my fists and steady my breathing. “He went up to your apartment, and he was there for hours. I was outside; would have seen when he left. Only he didn’t leave the whole time I was there.”
When a tear ran down her cheek, I could have died, and I straightened, fearful to hear what she would tell me next.
“What do you think I was doing?” she asked, bringing her hands up to her cheeks.
When I didn’t answer, more tears came.
It was pretty clear from my silence and accusatory tone what I thought.
“I don’t think I need to say it.”
“No, you don’t, and I hate you right now for thinking that about me. But I love you too much to not tell you something that could change everything for you.”
My heart stilled. What was she saying?
And... she loved me?
She loved me too?
“What?”
“Death. The last element is death. There was a jingle I heard in the music as we watched the exhibition, and I remembered something John told me years ago that 1999 was a bad year. I found out that it was actually the worst year of his life. It was the year when the worst thing ever happened to him. His brother died.”
Now I swore that my heart stopped. How in the hell was I ever supposed to guess all that?
No... wait..
I wasn’t. Not any of it. Not even the first few clues. I could have guessed by chance or some miracle that the set on Juliana’s show looked likeLabyrinth, but I was sure as fuck that there’s no way I would have come up with the answer to what she just told me.
“How... how did you know?”
