Can't Look Away(95)

Jake studied the photo in disbelief, his breath knocked out of his chest. Molly and Hunter posed on a dock in front of the ocean, their smiles wide and jubilant. She wore a long, strapless column of a gown, a delicate veil floating behind her, caught in a gust of wind. Beside her, Hunter stood tall and proud, his thick hair neatly combed, his left hand supporting the small of her back.

Not a year and a half after their breakup, and Molly was married? And to Hunter? Jake was pissed—no, he was indignant—but more than that, the news smashed his heart all over again. And there was nothing he could do about it, except try to hide his feelings from Sisi.

In August, when Jake had been unemployed for nearly a year, he received a phone call from someone in HR at the Manhattan branch of Randolph Group, the insurance company founded by Sisi’s father. They were offering Jake a job.

That afternoon, he texted Sisi and asked her to meet him at the Standard after she got off work.

“I don’t need you doing me any favors,” Jake told her, signaling to their waitress for another beer. He’d quickly drained the first one. “And I’ve never expressed any interest in working in insurance.” He frowned.

She took a sip of her vodka soda. “I thought you’d be excited,” she said. “You’ve been wallowing, Jake. You’re clearly depressed. You have to move on with your life; you can’t just sit at home all day and feel sad about Danner Lane—”

“I’m not sad about Danner Lane.”

“Then what are you sad about?” Her emerald eyes locked on his, the question a challenge.

“Nothing,” he answered quickly. “But I told you, I’ve been approached by a few managers. A solo album isn’t off the table—”

“But do you really want to go through all that? Just to try to prove to Sam and Hale that you’re better?”

“It’s not about them.” He stared into his empty glass, not sure if he believed his own words.

“Really? They’ve got a good thing going, Jake. You know it’s true. The Times called them the next Allman Brothers.”

“Avett Brothers, Sisi.” Jake grunted. “There’s a big difference.”

“Whatever. They’re not as good as you guys were, but everyone in my office has heard of the Lane Brothers.”

Jake shrugged, dipping a piece of soft pretzel into a plastic container of cheese sauce. “I guess they’ve found their niche.”

“Look.” She placed her hand over his, interlacing their fingers. The volume of chattering voices began to rise around them as more of the after-work crowd packed into the Standard’s outdoor biergarten. “I’m giving you tough love because I want you to be happy, Jake. What happens when Sam and Hale are killing it as this new folk duo and you’re just yesterday’s gravy?”

He glanced up at Sisi. Her expression was full of care, of genuine concern. He was lucky, he knew more than ever, to have a smart, strong, beautiful woman in his life who looked at him this way. Who loved him this deeply.

“The position at Randolph Group pays well,” she pressed, though they both knew the money didn’t matter. If they ended up together, whatever he made would be a drop in the ocean of her trust fund. “You need a change. A fresh start. We both do. We need to start looking forward, not back.” Sisi was always making them a we. He’d grown to love this about her, the way she made them feel like a team.

“You’re right, Sees.” Jake sighed, touching his forehead to hers. As impossible as it was for him to imagine his life without music, it seemed even more unthinkable to start playing again. Revisiting that part of his psyche would be like picking off a giant scab, reopening a raw wound and watching the blood pool. “I know you’re right.”

Jake started at Randolph Group in September, the same month he and Sisi moved into a spacious two-bedroom on the Upper East Side. They were happy, for the most part, as they fell into a steady routine. Sisi worked her butt off at Marc Jacobs—she always had—and this was a character trait that Jake found inspiring. A job wasn’t always a vocation, he was learning. For the majority of people, a job meant setting an early alarm and putting in the hours and harboring a sense of purpose when the ACH deposit hit biweekly, even if you weren’t fully clear on what that purpose was. You worked, you came home to your person, and this was life. It was predictable, and steady, and—Jake was discovering—not so bad.

And yet, there were moments that set him back, moments when he found himself reaching for the past instead of rooting his feet in the present. There was the night that Sisi was at a work dinner and he passed out on the couch, ice cubes melting in his whiskey, “Molly’s Song” blaring from the Sonos speakers. He’d drunk too much, and hadn’t remembered queueing the song on repeat when he woke to it playing at 3:00 a.m. Sisi was home from her dinner, asleep in bed. She didn’t mention what had happened in the morning, but they both knew. She stepped around the elephant in the room, her eyes cold.

Then there was the evening Jake came home from work to find Sisi on the floor of his closet, rummaging through an orange Nike shoebox he recognized instantly. It was his collection of Molly memories: old photographs, his tattered song notebook, ticket stubs from concerts and movies and Broadway plays, matchbooks from various New York restaurants, her pink scrunchie—the one he’d found in the bathroom of their apartment after she left. It was stretched out and ratty, but he hadn’t mustered the strength to throw it away.