I was in a bind: Tony liked dating Jessica Simpson, the star, but he wanted a wife like the other football players had. I cooked meals at home and went to the grocery store, where I saw my face looking out at me on the covers of magazines at the checkout line. I never identified with those magazine covers anyway, but now they seemed even further from who I was. One time, after I saw myself on a magazine when I was leaving the store, I went to sit in the car and had an imaginary conversation with Tony. I asked him all the questions I didn’t dare say aloud.
“Is there room in your ideals of what a relationship is supposed to be,” I asked, “to meet me halfway so I don’t give up my dreams?”
I watched a teenager round up shopping carts, leaning on one like a Jet Ski. “Can you support me and what I do as much as I support you and everything you do?” I was on a roll now. “Is my giving up all I want to do truly what you want of me?” I paused a long time. “And why?”
It didn’t occur to me then that I needed to ask myself those questions, too. Did I love Tony enough to give up my work and dreams? I didn’t dare ask, because I knew the answer was no.
I talked about it with my father, who wanted to do more film producing and would jump at the chance to do another movie with me. I was honest with him, telling him that I would marry Tony if he asked, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted him to ask me. I wanted to be what Tony needed, but I felt God had called me to use my voice and be an example for women.
“Well, the same God that called you to sing is gonna want you to do that,” he said. “Maybe you need to walk away.”
It didn’t help that my parents told me they’d been hanging out with John Mayer. It was so bizarre. In early 2009, John rented a place in Hidden Hills, near where I used to live in Calabasas. He turned the whole place into a home studio to record what would become Battle Studies. It was about fourteen miles from my parents’ house in Encino, and they told me about having him over. They would even go pick him up to spend time with them. Gated community playdates. At first, I thought they were kidding, but he had stayed friends with Pete Wentz and Ashlee. Still.
He told them he had read my Vanity Fair cover story that came out in May. My parents told me he went on and on about it. He emailed me about it, too, telling me how amazing it was and that he loved me and wanted me back. Because I was on the cover of Vanity Fair? I actually hated the story, which was mean-spirited and full of references to me not actually being fat—a word the writer used over and over again—and had one brief mention of the fact that I had created what was at that point a $400 million business. But the photographs, by Mario Testino, were beautiful. It’s telling that being in Vanity Fair made John think I was worthy of his interest again. I also said one thing in the interview that, reading it now, I know would have been irresistible to John: “I feel like I’m at such a place that I own myself, and it’s authentic.”
Challenge accepted, I imagine him saying.
My parents knew how much John had toyed with me, and even now, I marvel that he could extend that manipulation to my family. I recently asked my mom why she spent time with him. “What were you thinking?”
“We were all in love with him,” she said with a laugh. “We’d bring him over here, and we’d sit around the firepit, and he’d play his guitar. What’s not to love about a cute guy playing you love songs?”
Sigh. They were under his spell. I can’t really blame them. I know how persuasive he can be and how kind my parents can be. But I refused to let him have that real estate in my mind again and focused on figuring out how to make my life work with Tony’s. I was turning twenty-nine in July, and every magazine said he was going to propose any minute.
Maybe John read one of them and thought so, too. As we got closer and closer to July and my birthday, he ramped up his wooing of my family. He told them in no uncertain terms that he had changed, and he could tell I had changed, too. “I need her back,” he said. “I’m in love with her.”
If it were just my parents, I might have taken that with a grain of salt. But he got to Beth, my old dance teacher who became one of the heads of the Jessica Simpson Collection, and her husband, Randy, who is now my house manager. Randy is no-nonsense. If you can fool him, you are a master. And Randy believed him. His profession of love for me was so over-the-top that it made my relationship with Tony seem like I was missing out on someone who truly adored me.
“Jessica, you don’t even know,” went the chorus. “He is so sincere. You have to at least hear him out.”
Can I sigh again? Is two too many on two pages? A week before my birthday, I was in L.A. at my parents’ house. I had this idea to have a huge party, and my mom and I were going over the details. My dad drove to Hidden Hills to bring John over while I was there. By a fire in the backyard, he stood and told all of us that he loved me and that we could all trust him to be a good man. I told him I would always love him, but I was with Tony.
But I didn’t tell Tony. I broke my own rule of full disclosure about any contact, even accidental, with John.
On July 9, the night before my birthday, Tony went through my phone. He saw an email from John to me, something about not being able to get a shower door to work at my parents’ house. Tony confronted me with it immediately. I wasn’t even there, and no, I still don’t know why John showered at my parents’ house. He accused me of seeing John behind his back. I hadn’t cheated on Tony at all, but I could not lie and say I hadn’t even seen him.
“Nothing happened,” I said.
Tony didn’t believe that for a second. And within that second, he broke up with me right there. Two years, gone with an email. It was just immature that he went through my phone. If he didn’t trust me, why was he with me in the first place?
I could trust that Tony would never tell the press that John Mayer caused the breakup. It would imply that he wasn’t enough for me. Even though I canceled the party, I managed to keep the breakup secret for a few days. I think maybe I would have been able to keep it quiet longer if Tony had just gone back to Dallas. Instead, he stayed to go golfing with his friends and took his guys out to a Hollywood Boulevard club on my birthday. Kind of a red flag.
Tony soon realized I was telling the truth. Of course I didn’t cheat on him. But our breakup had been so ugly that it shocked me into realizing it had been necessary. When he said he wanted me back, I was honest with him.
“No, you did what I needed to do,” I said. “Thank you.”
“This is really over?”
“You broke up with me, so yes,” I said. “It’s over.”
If I hadn’t already been through that cycle so many times with John, I might have reflexively gone back once someone “forgave” me. Tony’s a wonderful guy, and he was destined to have beautiful babies with someone else, a lovely woman. Not me.
John got what he wanted. I wouldn’t be with him because of Tony, and now Tony was gone. I lost my feeling of agency in my life once again and felt I should just give in and be with John. He had promised forever in my parents’ backyard. Who was I to argue?
I went to John’s house quickly. Driving over, I felt like I was in the closing scenes of a sweeping, epic love story, and the dark romantic hero had beaten out the star quarterback. Wuthering Heights in Hidden Hills, only this time Cathy chose Heathcliff. But did I? It seemed like the choice had been made for me.