His piercing gaze willed me to understand, but I couldn’t. “So, you were in the Caribbean? I may never have been out of Ireland, but I know they have internet and phones there … practically nowhere is inaccessible to a phone mast these days.”
“Are you going to let me talk or not?” he asked, sternly, clearly frustrated with my standoffish attitude. I huffed and nodded. “The album we just finished was ‘the impossible fourth’. Our band was contractually obliged to produce the album within a given time scale, but the contract for non-completion carried multi-million-dollar penalties. If we hadn’t delivered, it would have ended our careers. It was my fault we fell behind schedule, because I went missing for a few months when I fell for you and let my heart and my dick rule my head.” He smiled, sheepishly, and ran his hand through his smooth brown hair again.
My heart sped up, hearing his admission of how he’d felt about me. I’d been with him long enough to observe his little ways, how he looked when he was embarrassed, horny, angry and frustrated; and that thing he did with his hair told me he was embarrassed with the conversation, not that he was lying.
“I owed the guys … they’d been patient with me being here, but there was no way I could let the band down.”
I wanted to believe him; and from the way he looked at me, I was almost convinced, but I shook my head because the least he could have done was to have told me he was leaving.
“It’s been over four months, Jamie. You just— went.”
I shrugged my shoulders helplessly and remembered how crucified I’d felt when I found out he had gone.
“You’ve been gone for longer than you were here,” I reminded him, feeling hurt all over again. “With no contact, what was I supposed to think? And supposing you were making an album, were you saving your precious voice for that? You could have gotten a message to me.”
“I’m trying to tell—” he ground out.
“Oh, and how do you explain the photographs?” I asked ignoring his protests. “How do you think I felt when Frances showed me the gossip magazine photos of you out on the town with ‘Stunning Starlet’ and ‘Fontaine Cozies Up To Debut Singing Sensation,” I scoffed. “Do you think we can’t read here in Ireland?”
“Stop … just stop. Take a breath, Daisy. I can explain all of that, too,” he pleaded, moving down onto the couch cushion next to me, and reaching out for my hand. I pulled it away and he flinched with my rejection. “Those photographs were staged. Our management company arranged photo opportunities with up and coming wannabees to keep the band’s profile in the media. It's pretty standard practice. I’ve had no outside contact with the world whatsoever.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t just tell me you had to go,” I reminded him. He sighed, his face displaying the obvious torture at that decision.
“If I’d spoken with you, I knew you’d have been upset and I would never have left. Believe me, it was a struggle to go, but I owed it to the guys to get the album done. I couldn’t allow what I felt for you to get in the way.”
“You couldn’t have messaged me? Emailed? Anything?”
Jamie’s eyes narrowed and he eyed me suspiciously before he locked his intense gaze into mine and he stared me down.
“When I knew I was leaving, I asked Frances for advice because I had no idea how to tell you. She thought it would be best if I just left you the letter.” He shrugged, like it explained everything. “She’s your best friend … I thought she knew you better than me, and I’ll admit I was a coward because I knew if I told you in person, and you’d cried, I wouldn’t have gone.”
I blinked as my breath hitched when my heart stalled for a beat. “I didn’t get any letter. What letter? I haven’t seen one. She really told you to leave without telling me?”
“She did. I explained it all in that letter to you, but it’s now dawning on me Frances isn’t the amazing friend she’d have you believe. She should have given you my note the day I left, and it would have set you straight.”
My heart beat erratically. “Well … Now I don’t know what to think about her,” I admitted after mulling over what he’d told me.
My anger shifted immediately from him toward my so called friend. The way she’d insisted on sharing those gossip magazine images flashed through my mind. Jealous bitch.
I sighed, feeling both betrayed by Frances, and heartbroken for the hatred I’d felt toward him. For a minute I considered how devastated I’d felt and cussed Frances upside down for deceiving me. I’d had an inkling she felt jealous about Jamie and me; some friend she’d been when she’d held back his letter and allowed me to think the worst … or perhaps she had secretly banked on him not coming back.
Wait until I see her.
“Right then, there’s only one way to deal with this,” I told him, fury filled my veins as I pulled my cell out of my jeans pocket and called Frances’s number. Jamie frowned and for a split second I wondered if he had made up the story to get himself off the hook for leaving the way he had. But when he didn’t move to stop me, I knew before Frances answered he was telling the truth.
“Hey, Daisy,” Frances said in a chirpy tone.
“Frances … guess what?” I said.
“What?” she asked sounding excited.
“I have a visitor today.”
“Oh yeah? Who’s that?” she asked, invested in the conversation like she was enjoying the mystery.
“Jamie,” I said, flatly.
“Jamie?” she replied, but the screech in her tone told me everything I’d needed to know. “Wait, Daisy. You know I love you, I never expected him to come back, I did what I did out of love …”
“Oh bejesus, Frances, I’ve heard it all now. You held back his letter … my private letter and watched me heartbroken for months?”
“I did,” she confessed. “But I thought your fling had run its course and he had been using his band’s album as a way out.”
“You read it? You fecking read it?” I yelled.
“No, he told me that’s why he was leaving. I still have the letter, its unopened. Just know I was protecting you.”
“Ha! Protecting me? Frances from where I’m sitting right now, the person I need protecting from is you… or rather, the next time we’re in the same room you may need protection from me.”
I ended the call and turned to look at Jamie again. “Sorry, I believed you before she answered, but …”
“It’s okay, I understand,” he told me reaching out and pulling me into a hug. “I’m really sorry, baby, believe me.”
“From the moment I left here everything else in life had to go on the back burner. My total focus was on: writing, composing, recording, re-recording, dubbing, multi tracking, infills … the creative side of a music album is all consuming. I had to forget about everything else and immerse myself in my song writing. It’s the only way to get results. When the tracks are done, the producers and record label give their input before the album can be signed off. Then, they plan a strategy for the pre-release promo, optimizing the release date against who else is releasing … it’s all those complexities that ensures the album doesn’t fail.”