A LOVE NEVER FADING
Chapter Thirty-Four
May, 1914
"Hey, Jack!" Brian smiled at him as
he came through the front door.
Maggie frowned slightly. "Tough
day?" She noticed he looked very worn out.
He smiled weakly at her. "Yeah. Erik
needed all the posters for the new production, so it was hectic."
"Well, Rose is upstairs, so I'm sure
she'll take care of you." Maggie smiled and watched him climb up the
stairs.
Rose, he thought to himself. He didn't know how much of a help she would
be. He had a noticed a tremendous change in her recently. Ever since the two
year anniversary of the Titanic sinking she had been very distant. She rarely
spoke to him. She was always writing in her journal. When they went to bed, she
would quickly fall asleep, like she was avoiding being intimate with him. When
he would hold her, she didn't respond like she used to. She didn't respond at
all. All these changes worried him. He was terrified that Rose was unhappy in
the marriage. He felt like he was walking on eggshells around her. There was a
deep fear that one wrong move would cause her to walk out on him. But he
noticed that Rose didn't seem angry with him. She was just disconnected, off in
her own little world.
He opened the door, and she was sitting on
the couch, scribbling in her journal.
"Dinner's almost ready," she said
without looking up.
Dinner's almost ready? he thought to himself. He remembered the days when
she would greet him with a kiss and a smile. Not dinner's almost ready.
"Great," he said in a friendly tone, but he got no response. He
sighed and walked into the bedroom. What's happening? he thought to
himself. He knew that marriages weren't passionate forever. But they had
completely stopped communicating. He took off his coat and sat down on the bed
for a couple of minutes. Jack sighed sadly. "This has got to stop,"
he said to himself. He got up and went into the living room. Rose was still on
the couch. He sat down and she didn't even look up.
"Rose." He was speaking in a calm,
quiet voice. "We need to talk."
She looked up at him. "I know." She
was just as calm.
"What's going on? Is it something I did?
Because whatever it was, I'm sorry. I never want to make you unhappy." He
looked at her apologetically.
She was silent for a few moments. "Do
you remember when we were on Titanic, we said we would had out for the horizon
and go wherever the wind took us? We said the same thing when you gave me my
engagement ring. Then when we went to the pier you pointed to the horizon and
said it was ours, and that all our dreams had come true, so now we had to make
new ones. You said we would see the world together. It'll be two years in
September since you said that. It's been two years since you said we'd head out
for the horizon, but we haven't. We haven't been anywhere since our honeymoon.
I don't like where things are going."
"What?" Jack shook his head.
"What are you expecting? I have a job with deadlines. I can't just drop
everything and take you somewhere. I need to make money so I can support you.
Do you want me to blow it all on a trip? In case you haven't noticed, Rose, things
are a little different from Titanic. We're not the same people."
"Jack..."
"No. I don't want to hear it. You made
yourself very clear. You're unhappy. Well, I'm sorry that I can't make you
happy twenty-four hours a day. I have a job." He stood up. "This is
why you've been ignoring me for over a month? I can't believe you. You know,
Chelsea said you had no feelings for anyone but yourself, and she was right.
You want to go on a vacation. Well, we can't. Things have changed."
"Jack!"
"No! I can't believe you would stop
talking to me over something like this. Didn't you even care how I was feeling?
Obviously not. You know something, I don't even want to go on a vacation with
you. As a matter of fact, I don't even want to look at you." Jack turned
and walked out the door. He slammed it shut and stomped down the stairs.
Rose looked at the door in shock. She covered
her mouth. "Oh, my God," she said in a shaky voice. "What did I
do?" She covered her face in her hands and started to sob.
Maggie and Brian had heard Jack yelling and
then saw him run out of the house in a foul mood. They looked at each other.
They had never heard Jack raise his voice. And they never ever expected to hear
him do it to Rose. They decided to go upstairs and see what had happened. When
they opened the door, they were shocked to see Rose crying hysterically into
her hands.
"Rose, honey!" Maggie ran over to
the couch and wrapped her arms around her.
Brian knelt next to them. He put his hand on
Rose's cheek. "What happened, love?"
"Jack and I had a terrible fight,"
she choked out through tears.
They tried to get more out of her, but she
was crying too hard. Brian whispered to Maggie that he would go find Jack. She
nodded, and watched him leave.
*****
Brian found Jack at the first place he looked.
He had a feeling Jack would be at Sammy's. Sammy's was a bar that Brian
had taken Jack to a couple of times. He looked over at that bar, and Jack was
sitting there with a tall glass in his hands. He looked miserable. He went over
and sat next to him.
"What happened?"
"Rose wants to leave me," Jack said
in a voice that was drenched in sorrow.
"What?" Brian was shocked.
"She told you this?"
"No, but I got the feeling."
Brian laughed. "You got the feeling?
Jack, I'm not one to judge, but I honestly don't think this feeling of yours
could be accurate."
"She hasn't been talking to me in almost
a month, and today she said she wasn't happy with the way things were
going."
"Did you ask her what she meant by
that?"
"Well...no."
"You think maybe she might be unhappy
about something besides the marriage?"
He looked into his beer. "See, I
promised her we would go on all these trips. I really wanted to take her. I
still do. It's just that we never got around to planning them."
"That's more than likely all she's upset
about."
"When I think about it now, you're
probably right." Jack stared at the wall. Tears started to fill his eyes.
"The things I said to her...oh, God." He put his face in his hands,
and quietly reprimanded himself.
Brian put his hand on Jack's shoulder.
"Jack? Why did you get so upset, anyway?"
Jack looked over at Brian. "Have you
ever been so scared that you got angry? Like you were just so completely
terrified, that all you could do was get angry and yell?"
Brian nodded. "When my father
died."
"That's what happened. All I had to hear
was Rose say I'm not happy with the way things are going. When she said
that, all I could think was she's not happy with the marriage. She's not
happy with me. Do you have any idea how mortified I would be if she left
me? My life would be over. It's not like if she died. I have no control over
that. If she left me, because of me, I don't know what I would do. I just got
so scared, that I didn't know what to do. And I got angry and I said the most
terrible things to her. I didn't mean any of it."
"Jack?"
"Yeah?"
"Maybe you should be telling this to
Rose."