Page 147 of Wingwoman
Nina leaned in closer, giving Jenn a warm embrace. "I've got to get back to the bar, okay? Your mom and I are going to take you to brunch tomorrow though."
She gave her friend a hug and I waved awkwardly, saying goodbye to Jenn.
Nina and I walked back to her car in silence.
"How often does she, um, come to stay here?"
Nina shrugged, pulling the seatbelt across her sternum. "Off and on for the last ten years. Any time she relapses and starts cutting." She paused, starting the car. "Or worse."
"All because she cheated on him and he broke off their engagement?"
With her hands clenching the steering wheel, Nina shot me a quick look. "It’s not just that. Josh’s entire first album is about Jenn. Every goddamn song about her and her cheating. And his biggest hit song is all about her death. He wrote this macabre fake story all about how if she could take her own life, only then he could remember her fondly." With a shake of her head, Nina put the car in reverse and pulled out of the parking spot. "It's what gave her the fucking idea to try to kill herself. This most recent attempt was her fourth try. All because of that fucking song."
I watched the hospital fade from view in the side mirror in horror. "He couldn't have meant for that to happen," I whispered. "Maybe if he talked to her—"
"He has. Many times," Nina said. "But the damage is done. Impulsively, with a broken heart, he wrote that song and put it on YouTube when he was a nobody performing in seedy dive bars. Practically overnight, the song went viral. Every label wanted to sign him… as long as they gotthatspecific hit song on a record. And selfishly, he said yes. He said yes to producing that song on his album. Most people don’t really know what that song is about and how detrimental it was to Jenn’s mental health. And to be fair, Josh didn’t know how it would affect her either. But now, no matter what Josh says to her, no matter whatanyof us say, Jenn believes the only way for Josh to truly forgive her and think of her with love is for her to take her own life. He says he wishes he could take it back and that he never wrote that song. But at the end of the day, hedidit. And he can’t take it back. Her mental health isn’t his fault… but also, it kind of is."
"Oh my god."
The lies he referenced in his song today… was this what he meant? That he’d been keeping this secret from me?
The situation was way worse than I ever thought. But suddenly, it was all making sense. Everything Josh had been saying… or not saying… all clicked together.
I want you even though you don’t want me because I know deep down it’s better if you don’t.
He’d said that to me. Those exact words. Right before he’d also saidlove is toxic. And I want you to ruin me before I destroy you.
The memories flooded into me like a broken dam.
It was like he believed he was jinxed. Like this one mistake with Jenn had convinced him that not only was he not deserving of love, but he would always be this curse for women.
A self-fulfilling prophecy, if anything, given that song he’d just written about me.
Nina put her blinker on and took a right turn toward Main Street. “He’s sorry, of course. He apologizes constantly, but the community here in Austin who knew Jenn before that song was released have never forgiven him. I think I’m the only person who went to high school with both of them who doesn’t hold a grudge against Josh.”
She slowed to a stop at a red light, taking the moment to look over at me. “Just promise me… whatever songs he writes about you, don’t take them literally. Because no matter how hard he tries to change his image, he’s still just the emo boy who wants to be loved and can’t forgive himself for what he did.”
“Then why make the same mistake again?” I asked Nina. “Wouldn’t he learn from that mistake and not write that sort of music anymore?”
“Because men are stupid?” She snorted. “Because he believes he’s poisonous. Because he thinks it’s the only music people want from him. Because watching his dad beat his mom to a bloody pulp year after year is the real heartbreak he writes about in the subtext of all his music. Pick one. There’s a million reasons.”
My stomach twisted with the imagery. He’d definitely alluded to the fact that his dad had been abusive. I just didn’t realizehowbad it was.
“I need to find Josh,” I said, grabbing my purse from the floor of the front seat as Nina parallel parked in a spot right in front of her bar.
“I think he found you.”
I jerked my gaze up to find Josh sitting on the stoop of Nina’s bar with his head in his hands.
Forty-One
JOSH
Words,Josh. Say words. You can do this.
But as I stood to greet Hope, words escaped me. How much had she heard? What did she know?
I glanced at Nina who gave me a hopeless shrug and said, “She deserved to know the truth.” Then she disappeared inside her bar.
