I stood and reached for the bag, feeling wobbly on my feet. Gracie was right; I was a lightweight.
“Don’t tell me you came down here all indecisive about the proposal. That you packed up some stuff to move it into Eric’s and then came to your senses when you got here. Because even though you made the right decision, I want to believe that you had enough common sense not to flip-flop for two hours.”
“No, I came down here with the express purpose of breaking up with him. The stuff in my car is there because I’m currently homeless.”
“What?”
Gracie trailed behind me as I made my way to her bathroom to change. I moved to shut the door between us, but she stuck out her hand and barged right through. Undaunted, I began peeling off my work clothes as she stared at me, waiting for a response.
“I moved out of Blake’s this morning.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.” I opened the bag and pulled out my sweatshirt, yanking it over my head.
“Try me.”
She stood with her arms folded over her chest, looking very much like I had just burst her bubble. Her motives were transparent; her thoughts had instantly drifted to me making a play for Matthew as soon as she heard I’d returned Eric’s ring. There was more than a little irony in her having the same idea as my ex.
“I just can’t live there anymore.”
I was stalling and we both knew it. Part of me couldn’t figure out the best words to use for what had happened, while the more practical side of my subconscious needed me to at least have pants on before I burst into tears.
I slid on my flannel bottoms and led her back out to the living room. If I’d known she would have just followed me around the apartment, I would have saved the energy and stripped down in the middle of the place. I grabbed the food on the way back to the couch and divided it up between us. No sense in it getting cold.
“I thought you two got along okay?” Gracie questioned as she unwrapped her sandwich.
“We did, but then things happened,” I said, taking a bite of my own hamburger. “Like I can’t come between her and her brother.”
I couldn’t even say his name now. Great. Even though the syllables hadn’t passed my lips, the thought of them had entered my mind and tears welled in my eyes nevertheless.
“I know Blake gives you guys grief about flirting with each other, but I think she’d be open to the idea of you two having a real relationship,” my friend mused as she nibbled on a french fry.
“It’s not going to happen. He doesn’t want me like that.”
Gracie snorted. “Please. Are you so blind that you can’t see it?”
I shook my head. “I’m being realistic. He told me as much.”
Her eyes narrowed. “When?”
I sighed. “Last night.”
“Before or after you told him you were breaking up with Eric?”
“When I talked to him, I hadn’t exactly made up my mind on what I was going to do.”
“Lauren.”
She pronounced my name much like I imagined my mother would have done if she’d been able to have the opportunity to comment. Clear admonishment. I had known going into the conversation with Matthew that I wasn’t playing fair; I didn’t need anyone else adding to the guilt trip, however much I deserved it.
“I know,” I admitted, “but I really thought it would help me to see things more clearly if I talked to him first. I owed him an apology at the bare minimum for Eric crashing his birthday party.”
“Eric proposed in front of him?”
I thought she was going to spring up from her seat, but she stayed put. I nodded.
“Well, no wonder! If you witnessed someone getting proposed to, you wouldn’t exactly take that as an invitation to admit your feelings for them. I mean, the speak now or forever hold your peace part comes into play if you make it to the wedding, but how many people really do that? How many people would knowingly break up another person’s relationship? Especially when that person comes over to your house and asks for your advice because they’re obviously conflicted?”
“He would barely even talk to me. He tried to pass it off on Blake or you – it’s like he didn’t want any part of it.”
“Because he knows how Eric feels about things. He was there when Eric practically accused the two of you of sleeping together. Okay, he literally accused the two of you of sleeping together. But you get my drift. Matthew can’t be part of both the problem and the solution. Not if your mind wasn’t made up when you walked through his door.”
As much as I hated to admit it, Gracie had a point. These were all conclusions that I would have come to eventually on my own. But this close to the open wounds, the realization of my wrongdoings burned like hell. I had expected Matthew to solve my problems for me without regard for his own feelings. I still wasn’t positive what those feelings were, but I had taken advantage of him nonetheless.
“My mind was made up by the time I left,” I whispered. “I got what I wanted, I guess. I knew deep down that I couldn’t marry Eric.”
“So, what’s the big deal? Friends go off on tangents all the time. So maybe you bruised his ego a little with your indecisiveness; he’ll get over it. No need to overreact and move out of Blake’s house. Give him some time. He’ll come around and you can see where things go from there.”
“No,” I shook my head even as I squeezed my eyes shut to ward off the impending onslaught of fresh tears. “There’s nothing left. No friendship, no inkling of an attraction. I ruined all of that when I kissed him and told him I loved him.”
This time she did leap off of the sofa. Her container of french fries overturned with the hasty motion, spilling all over the floor. She clasped her hands over her mouth and looked at me with those innocent brown eyes of hers. After she took a moment to compose herself, she stooped over and began to clean up her mess.
“So how was it?” she asked from beneath my legs, where she had crawled to collect an errant fry.
I responded with my newly patented sob/squeak. Only Gracie would think to temper the mood of my emotional breakdown by asking for a play by play of the action.
“Really?” I choked out.
She looked up at me expectantly, nodding. Her face fell once she saw my tears, and she disposed of her floor fries in the paper bag sitting empty on the table. In a flash, she was by my side embracing me. I buried my face in her shoulder and cried for several long minutes.
“Shhhh,” she soothed once more, “it will all be okay.”
I wanted to believe her, really I did, but I didn’t see that happening. Any attraction that had been set in motion I had irreparably cast aside. My fishing expedition had been at Matthew’s expense and had turned out an epic fail. Last night’s anger at him should have been directed inwardly. I felt like I should hang my head in shame even though the one I would repent for would never see.
“It was good,” I summed up finally. I sat up, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.
“Yeah?” Gracie settled back against the sofa, an uncertain look upon her face. She was clearly concerned that at any moment I would dissolve into tears again, but this latest round of gossip was far too juicy for her to not be interested in.
I nodded sadly. “I used to think that Eric and I had chemistry and maybe we did. But with Matthew it was so different. When we were kissing it was like nothing else in the world mattered. It just felt good and right, like someone was shining a light down on me and telling me this was the choice to make. And outwardly, I thought he was into it, too.”
I giggled softly at the memory. Gracie caught my drift and smiled.
“But I doubt he’s really dated much since everything happened, so maybe it was just a reflexive response. I read too much into it; I thought maybe, just maybe, we could work out. I would have followed him anywhere he asked me to go. And the words just came out. It shouldn’t have bothered him – we’d said it before to each other. But this time, it meant something diffe
rent and he knew it. He backed away from me like I was on fire.”
“And?” my friend prodded.
“And he just kept telling me that we couldn’t do that. That we couldn’t be the people that Eric accused us of being. That I couldn’t ruin my relationship by making a stupid mistake.”
“But he never told you he didn’t love you back?”
Her words stunned me. I paused, silently replaying the blur that had been our conversation. Love had never been mentioned as far as I could remember.
“He also never said he did.”
“No, he just wrote it down.”
I bit my lip. She was referring to the Christmas card he had given me mere weeks ago. When I had packed up my room last night, I had debated leaving it in my empty sock drawer. I knew Blake would at some point rifle through my old bedroom and come across it. If Matthew hadn’t come clean about what had gone on by then, it would at least provide her with some food for thought. In fact, I had boxed everything else away and carried it all out to my car in the wee hours of the morning before I had gone back at the last minute and shoved it in my purse.
“He wrote it down because he meant it, pure and simple,” she continued. “He sat down and thought about it. He wrapped it up and probably thought about it some more. And it sat in your house underneath your Christmas tree for who knows how long. If he was worried about how you would take it, or if he had second thoughts about telling you, he would have taken the present back and redone it. Everything was intentional. I haven’t even read the damn thing and I’m swooning.”
“Do you want to read it?”
“You have it on you?”
I nodded. “In my purse.”
I made a motion to get up and grab my bag, but Gracie beat me to it. She returned to the couch with the whole thing, pawing through it as though she was digging for buried treasure. One by one, the contents of my purse were emptied onto the cushion: wallet, checkbook, cell phone, then finally she struck gold.
She plucked the card from its envelope and read it slowly, her mouth silently forming the words I had already committed to memory:
To Lauren,
Your acceptance means more than you will ever know. Thank you for being the most radiant light in a world that has been dark for far too long.
I love you, too.
Matthew
I sat in silence as she read it again and again before finally tucking it back in my bag. I could see the wheels turning in her head as she composed what she was going to say next. Her eyes shone with sympathetic tears. It was then that I realized I was crying again. Embarrassed, I wiped my cheeks roughly with my sleeve.
“Those aren’t the words of someone who never wants to see you again.”
“Gracie, you weren’t there. He couldn’t get away from me fast enough. And to make matters worse, I screamed at him. I don’t know what I expected; it wasn’t that though. I made my choice and he rejected me. I didn’t handle it well.”
“So he let you leave, just like that?”
“He tried to stop me, I guess. But his heart wasn’t in it.”
I was so caught up in reliving the moment that it took me a minute to realize Gracie had my phone.
“What are you doing?” I asked, knowing full well the answer.
She chose to ignore the question. “He texted you last night. I’m assuming after you left?”
“Yes, but –“
“But nothing. He asked you if you were okay. And you didn’t answer him.” Again with the accusing eyes of utter frustration.
I threw my hands up in surrender. “What was I supposed to say? ‘I’m doing just fine. Thanks for checking up on me after you broke my heart’? Besides, so many of our conversations began or ended with ‘Are you okay?’ that he was probably totally right. The thought of us being together was stupid.”
Gracie busied herself by scrolling back through all of his texts. For whatever reason, they remained on my phone – every single one of them. It hadn’t felt right to delete them; perhaps I had always been nursing a crush on him. Now they provided a timeline for our short, confusing friendship. Kind of fitting that “Are you okay?” would be the last entry, the last thing he would ever say to me. When I had gotten back to Blake’s after circling the city for hours and actually read it, I had stared at the cursor through my tears, realizing there was nothing I could say in response. I didn’t know the answer.
“You need to talk to him,” she declared, handing me back my phone.
I shook my head. “There’s nothing left to say.”
“Lauren.”
“And don’t you get any ideas about calling him on my behalf. It’s better this way. It’s better if we don’t see each other again.”
“And what about Blake? She just went along with the whole thing?”
“I didn’t tell her. I packed up all my stuff in the middle of the night and left.”
“That must have taken you hours. So your stupidity was premeditated, then? Instead of texting him back or calling him or talking to the one person who knows him best, you hole yourself up in your bedroom and pack all your shit? You give up and walk away?”
“There was no other choice. I can’t make them live like they’re walking on eggshells around me. I won’t have them look at me in pity. I’m not going to be the third wheel, the elephant in the room. It’s why Blake moved out of Matthew’s house in the first place. Chris made her uncomfortable. I’m not going to insert myself in an equation like that. We barely know each other; there’s nothing to fight for. I don’t have any claim to Blake as a friend. Certainly not like Chris does to Matthew.”
“Something tells me that Blake wouldn’t take this kind of news lying down. I’m just supposed to believe that she accepted the fact that you moved out like nothing happened? That she didn’t confront you and ask for an explanation?”
“She knows what she needs to know. We talked this morning, briefly. I told her I was going to Indy tonight and let her draw her own conclusions.”
“You let her think that you were coming down to accept Eric’s proposal?” Gracie sighed, clearly not agreeing with my handling of the situation. “So what now?”
I shrugged. “I guess I find my own place.”
“Where?”
“Fort Wayne’s my home now. It’s where work is, and I need to make a living. It will be easy enough to hide in a city of a quarter million people.”
She snorted. “That’s what you think. They know where to find you. You’ll be at work fifty plus hours a week. Even if they do fall for the whole you’re still with Eric thing, you’re accessible.”
“They won’t try. If they were going to try to stop me, they would have done it tonight. But no one came after me. They’ve already moved on. And it’s best if I do, too.”
“So when you came over here, who were you crying for? Eric or Matthew?”
I stared down at my hands. “Both. But for different reasons. I loved Eric, and part of me will always feel something for him. He’s been my life for ten years; I can’t just turn all my feelings off like they were never there. I saw a side of him tonight that I’ve not witnessed before – I actually hurt him. He looked so lost, like he would do anything to get me to stay. At least until his anger showed up, and rightfully so.
“And Matthew, because just when I figured out what it was that I wanted, it slipped away. Or maybe it was never there to begin with.”
Gracie bit her lip to keep from saying something. I wasn’t used to her self-editing. It made me nervous. Finally, she condensed her thoughts into a simple sentence: “It’s always been there.”
We sat up for a couple more hours, staring mindlessly at the television and finishing off the open bottle of wine plus another. My brain hurt; a combination of alcohol, regret and way too much thinking. My eyelids became heavy though it was nearly impossible to tell if it was due to exhaustion or me bawling my eyes out. I felt myself nodding off and woke up slightly as Gracie covered me up with a blanket. However tir
ed I was I had enough wits about me to have a death grip on my phone, lest my friend have any bright ideas.
Chapter Five
I knew I was dreaming when I found myself back at the condo. There was no way I would ever return there on my own accord. The thought of my subconscious placing me there was disturbing in its own right. Even if I had left my most prized possession at Eric’s, I wouldn’t have been able to set foot in that place again. Better just to buy a new one of whatever it was than to face his wrath, his disappointment in me.
But there I stood, the engagement ring feeling like lead in my palm as I waited in the hallway for Eric to open the door. Time moved in slow motion as I shifted my imaginary weight from one foot to the other. Hadn’t I already been through enough today? Did I really have to relive the breakup over and over again?
As I counted the seconds that passed, I looked down the impossibly long corridor and decided maybe this was an alternate reality. There was no realtor box on the doorknob this time, no key in my hand like before. I had half a mind to pry open the lid on the black velvet box to see if anything was actually encased inside. Before I had a chance to, the door swung open and Eric stood in front of me.
“Did you forget your key?” he asked.
“I guess I did,” I said, shrugging.
He laughed at my apparent forgetfulness but instead of ushering me inside, he slipped out into the hallway beside me. He propped the door open with his foot while he tested the doorknob to make sure it was unlocked. Satisfied, he let it slowly close behind him.
“I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”
It was an odd thing for him to say. When I hadn’t immediately accepted his proposal, he had set a deadline of sorts for an answer, but had told me that if I made up my mind sooner to let him know. Wouldn’t he be happy that I showed up at his door a day early? His self-confidence would surely deduce that as a win for him, no matter what my planned response was. Arrogance was woven into his fabric; he would assume that I breathlessly sped down here to take him up on his offer.
Shattered Page 3
