I may have approached my research like a dude, but I was still that girl from Texas who thought every kiss was the start of a love story. I realized this when CaCee and I were out for drinks with two girlfriends at Chateau Marmont. One of them had been on three dates with a guy and wondered if she was accidentally dating him.
“Three?” I said. “He’s your boyfriend.”
“Whoa, whoa,” said CaCee. “Jess, no. Listen.” She asked me if I remembered when I dated someone in January, naming a high-profile actor. She said “dated” like it was a joke.
“Yeah, of course,” I said.
“Did you ever leave his house?”
“Well, no,” I said. The girls all looked at each other and smirked. “What?”
“Dating is when someone takes you on a proper date,” said one of my girls. “To, like, dinner. Or, like, outside. Where they can be seen with you.”
“Jess,” CaCee said. “You fall in love too easily.”
“I fall in love too fast,” I sang back to her, one of my favorite Chet Baker songs.
Guilty. I had no concept of what it was to date and get to know someone, no matter how casually I approached it. These cloak-and-dagger meetups were fun, but I wanted real. I dreamed of going to readings or museum trips to learn about each other through describing what you saw in the paintings. Or, you know, meeting at a bookstore, reaching for the same self-help book on codependency.
I said this to my girlfriends, and they rolled their eyes, knowing how much fun I was having with Hollywood’s most eligible. Still, I prayed that God would send me someone who longed for love like I did.
I began spending more and more time with Ken, and in some ways, I had that fantasy relationship with him. I have a hard time being alone, and he was always willing to be around. We’d sit around my house and read poetry to each other. It was to inspire me as I wrote my next album, but also because it made us feel fancy. One day, I’d successfully avoided having paparazzi follow me, so I took advantage of the peace to drive to an out-of-the-way bookstore in Los Feliz, an arty neighborhood in Los Angeles. When I went to the front with my arms loaded with Lord Byron and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the woman at the register kept looking at me. I had my glasses on, my hair pulled back with no makeup.
“Please don’t take this personally,” she said. “But you look like the smart version of Jessica Simpson.”
I laughed out loud, and I think the poor girl realized who I was. “Thank you,” I said, and went to the car. I smiled in the rearview.
“You’re not so dumb,” I said.
I AVOIDED ALL THE PRESS ABOUT NICK AND ME AND DID AS FEW INTERVIEWS of my own as possible. I was still writing songs for my next album but was blocked every time I tried to write about my ex. I thought that maybe that was the answer: just write a fun album. It was around this time that I followed Charlie Walk, one of my early champions at Columbia, to Epic, where he was the new president.
CaCee, Ken, and I rented a house in Santa Fe while I filmed my next movie, Employee of the Month. I loved it there, and I felt like I had the space to get to know my new self. I realized that I’d wasted a lot of time avoiding acting on decisions because I feared regret. I was good enough to be my own friend, and a friend wouldn’t let me do that anymore.
Reporters followed me to New Mexico, trying to get me to say something about Nick. Take the high road, I would tell myself over and over. And then the steamroller came behind me. On April 19, he released a tell-all interview with Rolling Stone, where he pretty much talked about me the whole time and apparently cried a bunch of times, too. I don’t know, because by then I was back in L.A. and the article was kept from me. By then, we had also cut off all communication. I knew he was creating an ad campaign for his next album, What’s Left of Me, around the divorce. As much as that hurt me, I still felt responsible for him in many ways. If this would help him heal—and make a living—give it to him.
As part of the divorce album rollout, three days later, MTV did a much-hyped prime-time airing of his documentary about the making of the album. The one he had the Newlyweds crew following him around for. It was a Saturday night, and, yes, I stayed home alone to watch it in bed. I didn’t have my popcorn, but I did have my wine. I just wanted to know what he was going to reveal, and I also wanted to know what he thought of me now, because at that point I had no idea.
Well, I soon learned that he hated me. They showed him playing a song for his dad called “I Can’t Hate You Anymore,” and he said, “Kind of sums it all up for me.” He didn’t write that yesterday, I thought. He wrote that while I was married to him. I had been right all along.
I watched him portray himself as a victim, casting me as this selfish person. He then mentioned that the door was still open for us to get back together. I kept pulling the blanket up over my face to hide because I felt so exposed. It was so disrespectful and dragged me back into his orbit when I was just starting to leave it. Look, I respect artists, and you can’t stop them from drawing on their lives and saying what they want to say. But this was different. This was PR and spin. It felt like I was pulled back onto Newlyweds, only it was just him talking about me with faraway looks and dramatic pauses. He blamed opening our lives to cameras for ruining our marriage to the same camera crew he’d then hired. I even watched the Making the Video special that aired after and saw that he’d re-created our life for the video, casting his future wife Vanessa Minnillo to play me as this cold, unfeeling person. I knew he did this to hurt me.
It didn’t make me cry, it made me mad. But he was breaking down in front of the world, and, again, I felt responsible. How many times are women made to feel responsible for the actions of men? I know now that I wasn’t, but back then, it felt like I needed to fix him.
So I called him. And I asked to meet him at my house. I don’t know what kind of rental-car or secret-driver agent tricks he pulled to fool the paparazzi and get through my gate, but he managed. He rang the bell, and out of reflex I hugged him. I meant it, too. Despite my anger, I missed him.
Nick brought his album to play for me, and I had to sit in my living room listening to his songs about me. He even sang along and would look at me for praise. Or glance at me when there was a particularly cruel line about me. I was numb, just blank. How do you react when you find out you have apparently hurt someone so deeply that they feel entitled to such actions? I felt manipulated into some revenge fantasy, but I had put myself in this situation.
I didn’t know any other way to make it better, so I slept with him.
I know. I wish you were there to stop me, too. It was emotional, yet there was no connection. There is nothing more to say than this was the confirmation that this man was not my husband anymore.
He didn’t stay the night. I was relieved because I could feel his hate. The whole situation was very dark. I didn’t want the energy in my home. When he walked out the door, I knew I would never see him again.
I didn’t call anybody afterward to tell them that I had let that happen. I was too ashamed. I had so much to step forward to in life, and I’d put myself back in the same old boots. Nick would always be one of the loves of my life, and he taught me how to love in that way, so I appreciated that. But I had to leave him in the past.