Page 157 of Jude

‘That’s just it. I’m wrecked over her. I didn’t see it until I blew it,’ I muttered, tossing my crust back into the box.

‘Then fix your vision, Jude. Find a therapist. Go deal with the scars your father left on us. Dig deep. Seek the truth. It’s the only way you come out of this in one piece.’

I tossed my crust back into the box as my eyes scanned the Nashville skyline.

I took her words and advice to heart and chewed on them during my early-morning runs and my sixty-mile bike rides on my Fatboy into the Tennessee hills.

I cranked the throttle till the roar of the engine drowned out my doubts, wind blasting through my leather jacket as I carved through the highways.

When I got back to the house, I sat in my studio with my acoustic guitar and wrote new songs that reflected the truth of my failures.

I also got damn tired of cold pizza and went in search of better nourishment, missing Sofia’s delicious meals.

One thing she forgot to take with her was her handwritten recipe binder, its pages stained with oil and vanilla extract.

I forced myself to learn the delicate art of her mother’s chicken cacciatore and her signature pasta alla norma.

I burned the first three attempts, cursing.

By trial five, however, the pasta alla norma sauce came very close to matching her flavors.

I packed the leftovers into containers and hauled them to the studio the next lunchtime.

‘Eat,’ I rumbled to my bandmates, slamming the bag onto the mixing console.

They all fell on it.

Bishop tackled me in a hug of pure gratefulness, enveloping my shoulders and almost cracking my ribs.

‘I freakin’ haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon,’ he growled.

He ripped the lid off the cacciatore and shoved a spoonful into his mouth, his eyes tearing up as he chewed.

‘You’re a true brother,’ Bishop muttered, thick with emotion, as he cleared half the container in three bites. ‘My stomach was touching my spine, man. This is holy, bro.’

Still, I had to fix my shit if I wanted any shot at keeping Sofia.

So I hired a therapist.

Dr Hill was an unassuming man who wore rimless glasses, a neatly pressed tweed jacket, and charcoal trousers.

He skipped the clinical jargon and soft-spoken bullshit, which was the only reason I didn’t walk out on day one.

‘You’re reacting to old scars, Jude,’ Hill said during our fourth session in his high-rise office.

He leaned forward in his leather armchair.

‘Sofia packing her bags ripped open an old wound. Your psyche equates it to when your father stepped into that taxicab when you were young and vanished.’

I dragged a hand down my face, my jaw tight.

‘He left because he was a coward. Sofia walked because I was a stubborn bastard who didn’t back her up. Huge difference.’

‘The impact to you feels the same,’ Hill said, his voice level. ‘You’re reliving the gut-punch of being abandoned. However, this separation isn’t a death sentence, Jude. It’s a window. If you two drag each other back together without fixing your internal wiring, you’re just setting the fuse on the next explosion. If you go back to her as the same man, this whole nightmare was for nothing.’

Digging through the trash of my past was brutal, but Hill didn’t let me off the hook.

Real growth was supposed to burn.