Chapter Ten.
Jack could hear her steps echoing in the corridor. Eventually the sound of the pacing stopped. The exit door opened and slammed back close. She had left the building.
He stood in front of the door, staring at it like he would've had the power to look straight thru it. The look in his eyes was dead and the whole situation that had just happened felt surreal.
Bit by bit it all started to sink in and the panic struck his chest. What seemed surreal began to look real now. A moment ago she had been there, kissing him and then the next minute she was gone. Just like that.
He leaned his back against the wall and as he buried his face to his palms, he started to slide down towards the floor until he was sitting on it. Jack pressed his forehead against his knees and began the beating-up.
What were you thinking when you brought her into your home? That you could live happily-ever-after with her? he thought and slapped his forehead with his palm.
There was no excuse to treat Kate like he had treated her. Though Sarah was never home he had no right to cheat her. She was allowed to travel the world if that was what she wanted to do.
And to top it all off he had now managed to hurt Kate as well. The knife went a little further into his heart as he thought what he had just done.
The door makes a sudden bang and Jack raises his gaze rapidly up. Did she come back?
When he recognises the person who came in, he buries his face to his knees again and makes a disappointed sigh.
"Why on earth didn't you come to the airport to pick me up like you said? I waited two hours for you but you never showed up! I had to get a cab."
Sarah walked into the flat from the doorway but stopped when she saw him sitting on the floor looking miserable.
"What's wrong?" she asked tossing her keys to the kitchen table and leaning herself down to his level.
There was a long silence as Jack ignored her burning gaze. Eventually he couldn't take it anymore and moved his eyes to her face.
"Honey, what is it?"
He had no idea of what to respond to her but he knew that he couldn't tell the truth to her.
Instead, he just rose up from the floor and walked to the kitchen.
"How was France?" he tried to change the subject.
Sarah gave him an annoyed look for not telling her what was going on but she knew all too well that she wasn't going to get anything out of him if he wanted it to be that way. So she decided that the best thing to do was just to let the matter slide pass.
"France was fine. Nothing new there," she said and the look in her eyes softened.
"Something special happened here when I was away?" she asked following him to the kitchen to make some coffee. "Do you want some?"
The smell of coffee bean rushed his mind to the moment he had seen her in the small café. The sent of old and bad coffee had surrounded them in there but the beans that Sarah was about to use smelled so new and modern. Like they would've been somehow wrong.
"Can you still speak?" she said staring at him. "You've been awfully quiet."
He snapped back to the reality.
"I think I prefer tea to night. It's getting quite late anyway. But you make some if you want to."
He reached his arm to get the tea out from the cupboard but her hand stopped him.
"Wait. I got something for you from Paris that you might like."
He brought his arm back and looked at her enthusiastic figure as she dashed towards her luggage. Sarah was going thru her stuff and Jack had moved his gaze from her to the coffee maker.
At that moment, he could see why Kate had been staring at it so intensively that one morning – it really did calm you down, swept the negative issues of your life to the back of your mind.
According to the sound that Sarah let out, she had finally found what she had been looking for. She stood up and was holding a small box in her palm.
"Vanilla tea?" he murmured looking sad and amused by the irony of the situation.
"Yes. I've always thought that you love vanilla things and that just caught my eye in the store and I decided to buy it for you…" she smiled.
"I think I'm just gonna go to bed. I don't feel so great," he informs, handing the tea box back to her.
She takes it but looks confused.
"Are you sure you are OK?" she asks him as he is walking upstairs.
He turns around to answer but he isn't looking her into the eyes.
"I'll be fine. I think it's just that I haven't been sleeping much lately so a good night sleep ought to do the trick," he answered and continued to climb the steps to upstairs where he drifted into his dreams.
He woke up when Sarah came to the bedroom a few hours later. The strings in the bed went slightly down creaking as she sat down. She had taken off almost all of her clothes and looked rather tired.
Although he wasn't sleeping anymore, Jack kept his eyes closed, hoping that she would by his act. It would appear that she didn't notice his pretending because she was just lying on her side of the bed without saying anything.
Jack had his back to her and she wasn't too happy about that. To fix it, Sarah started dragging her body closer to him and eventually reaching his back, she wrapped her arms around him. His eyes fluttered open.
"Didn't you miss me at all?" she mumbles against his neck, bringing her body even more near to him suggestively.
"I would just like to sleep now, please?" he simply responses and there is a bit of frustration in his voice.
She gets the hint and withdraws herself from him, feeling utterly rejected.
"OK. Good night, honey," she says silently and turns her back to him and goes to lie on the far edge of her side of the bed.
He doesn't say anything back, just tightens his grip to the sheets.
The cold treatment continued every night after that. Jack didn't speak much to her and eventually she got tired of being the only one who talked so she cut her words back to the minimum as well. One time he just couldn't listen to her begging and whining anymore and had given himself to her. She got what she had wanted from him but his mind hadn't been there with his body.
A month had passed since she had run away. From those 30 days, Sarah had been home two weeks. Though most of the time he couldn't have even told that she was there. So it was pretty much the same to him if she would've been away the whole time.
Jack had started to get his take away coffees from their coffee shop now regularly. Although the espressos you got there were horrible and tastes like they had been made out of the washing up water, he wasn't going to let that bother him. If he had spare time in his hands, he would come there to sit and take in the old-fashioned smell of coffee and freshly baked cupcakes.
He didn't know the exact reason why he kept on torturing himself by being constantly in there – was it because it brought good memories to him or was it just the fact that he hoped he could bump into her again. Either way, Jack didn't stop going there.
He had had maybe one of the hardest nights of his life. Jack had lost three of his patients that day and one of them had been a 5-year-old girl. She had wanted to be a writer when she grew up, she had told him. He had listened carefully as the girl, Maria, had gone on about her future.
He had had the night shift so it was still early in the morning. Maybe somewhere around 8am, he thought without having the energy nor will to check the exact time from his watch.
The door creaked in its rusty hinges louder than it usually did and Jack made a nasty smirk to it. Like you would have it rough.
He paced towards the counter and saw that the girl who once had burned his hands was on duty that morning. He rolled his eyes.
"Double espresso. And make sure you put some whiskey in it as well," ordered his normal caffeine resource with a little extra kick and walked over to the empty table that was located in the back of the coffee shop.
He scanned the place quickly before grabbing the latest issue of the New Yorker. There were only a few people sitting there their noses either buried into their coffee cups or into a book or a magazine of some sort.
He brought the cup to his lips and read the headlines. Nothing really interesting but it would make time pass nicely.
The creaking door opened and closed. Jack sighed. Why couldn't they just fix the door or better yet, get a new one.
To his surprise the palm-burning waitress came by his table with a bottle of scotch in her hand.
"You really look like you could need more of this," she said smiling and placed the bottle next to his coffee cup on the table.
Jack started to look for his wallet to pay for it.
"Don't worry about that, honey. It's on the house."
He smiled to her and thanked her for the kind act admitting that she had been just right. That was exactly what he needed now.
The waitress turned to walk away but suddenly came back and lowered her head to his level.
"And by the way, you're girl just came in," she said making a gesture to the corner table with her head and with that she walked away.
Jack glanced to the direction she had pointed and saw Kate's figure, sipping her cappuccino.