This wasfrom a prompt I found on Twitter. The taxi cab doesn't take you where you want to go. Insteadit takes you where you need to go.
Talk to me softly
There's something in your eyes
Don't hang your head in sorrow
And please don't cry
I know how you feel inside I've
I've been there before
Somethin's changin' inside you baby
And don't you know. Don't Cry by Guns and Roses
Jamie Gallagher was sleepwalking through life and had been for a while. A broken heart could do that to you; it could change your entire life, make you question everything you thought was true about yourself. It made her question her judgment, her intuition and if she was even loveable.
There had to be something wrong with her, for this to have happened right under her nose, for her not to have known what was coming. Surely she wasn't that naïve? Oh but she was, she was.
Unlucky in cards, unlucky in love, unlucky in life.
Love was a bitch.
It could destroy you and Jamie was well and good destroyed. Logically, she knew she would recover and that it would take time, but the emptiness in her chest from being discarded so thoughtlessly remained and mocked her.
Every day she woke up and said to herself 'I will feel better today' and everyday her very soul ached. The disappointment and the loss always just below the surface pulling her down like the undertow at Jones's Beach in the summertime.
Jamie walked in quicksand through every day, struggling to recover.
It always came back to the same thoughts, if the one person in your life that you counted on betrayed you, how could you possibly get over it, how could you go on? As she walked the sidewalk after her shift at the hospital her head hung low, her hair wisping in the wind around her face she thought about that.
They had met in college and had known each other a very long time. She thought they knew each other, anyway. She had thought he was her soulmate, and the reminder of how wrong she had been just kept eating at her day and night.
Jamie had followed Daniel, an investor to New York City on a promise of marriage that never happened, all the way from Ohio and now she was ashamed to go back home. She hadn't even told her mother that he had left her, likely her mother would ask 'What did you do to drive him away.'
Jamie's mother was not known to be the most supportive mother in the world and in reality, their relationship was very hot and cold. Jamie's mother had never wanted kids, and so they had never bonded correctly. Jamie was virtually motherless and without any family to help her heal from the shock of it all.
She did tell one person, though, the one person she could trust now.
Her best friend Lindsay knew, but she was the only one. It had been Lindsay that jumped on the subway that day when Jamie had called her and came all the way from Long Island to help Jamie through those first horrible days.
Lindsay had called out of work and virtually moved in with Jamie for that first terrible week. They spent it half- drunk all the time and watching old movies on TV. Lindsay made sure she ate when she didn't want to and made sure she got out of the house regularly.
If Lindsay hadn't been there, Jamie might not have made it, and they both knew it. But, now? She was just existing, moving through life and waiting for it to end. Deep down she knew she would feel better, eventually, but it would take time.
Maybe she would die first, and end the misery once and for all. She was never going to fall in love again, though; she was done with that.
It had been fourteen months since she sat down at the computer to do an in-service for work and found it. He had a secret life that she knew nothing about, including an E-Harmony account and an email account she had never seen before. It was all there in front of her.
Daniel had left a window open by mistake, his Twitter account, and Jamie's life ended. He had been telling some woman in New Jersey of all places, that he was leaving Jamie that very weekend. They planned to meet at Penn Station, and from there take the train to Newark Airport, then on to Jamaica.
Just a month before Jamie had asked him to take her on vacationand he said they couldn't afford it.
That was the first thing she thought of,and then she cried. She cried for a long time, deep, wreaking sobs of grief and sorrow.
Then, in a panic, she opened up their joint bank account window and found three-quarters of it gone! He had left her just enough to pay the rent for the next month on their apartment in Brooklyn, where she now sat at the computer letting the tears fall anew.
Daniel had taken everything, and he could have well afforded to leave her some money to live on, but he didn't. He wanted to spend it all on his new girl, Jamie supposed.
Later, much later, she found out that was all done on purpose, he was too much of a coward to tell her to her face, and he never even came back to the apartment that night.
Eventually, he showed up for his things, three weeks later, with a tan and a cheap looking woman on his arm. Jamie kept her earbuds in the whole time, playing 'Call it Off' by Tegan and Sara in a never ending loop. That song got her through that horrible day and the days afterward.
She just listened to her song as they moved the hefty bags that Lindsay had thrown all of his belongings into. They had toyed with the idea of a bonfire in the backyard, but Daniel was a dick, and she didn't want to get into some kind of war with him. She just wanted him to leave her alone.
She didn't want him back, the love she had felt melted away in the days following her discovery, but she was damaged now, damaged and sad.
Now Jamie threw herself into her work as a pediatric nurse at All Saints Hospital in New York City. The babies and children warmed her heart and gave her purpose, and she needed that desperately.
She usually took the subway to work from Brooklyn every day, but on that day she planned to go to the Museum of Modern Art after work.
She had decided to treat herself to a taxi cab ride, and it was a good thing because the rain was slowly turning to snow and it was getting colder out by the minute. There was no one to tell her she couldn't, or that she was frivolous.
That was a freedom she did enjoy, and she grinned to herself.
As she passed by a shop window she looked at her reflection briefly as she smiled, her dimples were showing. That was a first; she hadn't smiled in such a long time.
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She didn't understand why the cab driver, who looked just like Norman Reedus, right down to the baseball cap and Ray-Bans told her to go into the little bar, but he said she needed to and she thought he was crazy.
She never came to The Village, well not unless Lindsay dragged her out on Saturday afternoons, but never to go out at night, Jamie was a homebody.
She knew the bar, she and Lindsay had walked past it dozens of times, it was called 'The Slaughtered Lamb' after some movie she recalled seeing when she was young.
It was a tiny little place, but lively, with people milling around outside and in the doorway under an awning because of the weather. Jamie glanced back at Norman's twin, and he nodded at her 'Go in' he mouthed to her, and she shrugged.
In for a penny, in for a pound, she supposed.
She walked into the bar and was immediately assaulted with the sounds of a band singing "Tu Vuo Fa L'Americano," and she knew that voice. Her heart sped up, for the first time in months and she felt goosebumps erupt all along her arms.
It was a voice from way in her past, the voice of the boy who sang.
His voice had always been one of her favorite things in the world, but they had lost touch long ago.
Memories flooded her, of warm summer days together, when they were young. He had been before Daniel, and she had been thinking of him through the years.
He had left Ohio to follow his dream, and to Jamie, it looked like he was still on that journey. at
She looked up at the stage, and it was indeed Michael, and before she knew it, he was staring at her. He kept singing, but that look somewhere between disbelief and joy on his face didn't leave.
Michael finished the song and was off the stage in a second, leaving his bandmates in confusion. The hat he was wearing fell off of his head, and he didn't even to stop and pick it up.
"Jamie?" He said as he wrapped his arms around her. "What are you doing in New York?"