Of Love & Regret

by S. H. Kolee

  By the time I had calmed down enough to get a hold of my bearings, I realized that I had been walking in the wrong direction for a long time. I wearily held my hand out for a cab, relieved when I got the first one I saw.

  Numbness had overtaken me by the time the cab dropped me off at my apartment. It was a welcome relief from the searing pain that had been tearing me apart since I had seen Logan and Ella kiss. But that wasn’t what had hurt the most. What hurt the most was that I knew my relationship with Logan was unsalvageable. He would never be a part of my life again. I told myself that it was a good thing, because apparently, I had never known the cruelty he was capable of.

  I ended up taking multiple sleeping pills that night, because I couldn’t get the image of Logan and Ella out of my head. I was relieved when the empty blackness finally enveloped me and I fell into a deep asleep.

  The sun streaming through my bedroom window the next morning was an unwelcome sight. I pulled the covers over my head, not ready to face the world. Despite my attempts to go back to sleep, I couldn’t push the thought of what had happened last night from my mind. I tortured myself with the image of Logan and Ella kissing over and over again. I didn’t want to think about what else had transpired between them after I left.

  Once I realized that it was going to be impossible to go back to sleep, I decided to get rip-roaring drunk instead. I got out a half-empty bottle of vodka that I rarely touched and decided I would spend the morning drowning myself in screwdrivers.

  I was in the middle of making my third drink when I heard a text come through my phone. I quickly picked it up, sloshing some of the orange juice and mostly vodka mixture out of my glass in the process. I shouldn’t have been expecting to hear from Logan after last night but that didn’t stop my heart from twisting in disappointment when I saw that it was from Emily.

  What happened? Is everything okay between you two now?

  I had told her yesterday about my intentions to try to fix things with Logan. I dreaded having to tell her how horribly it had gone.

  No, it’s over between us. For good this time.

  My phone rang seconds after I pressed the send button on my text. I didn’t want to answer it because talking about it would make it too real, but I knew Emily would be relentless if I didn’t pick up.

  “Hey,” I said lamely before taking a big gulp of my drink.

  “What happened?” she asked, sounding concerned. “I texted instead of calling because I thought you two would still be in bed from all the make-up sex you had.”

  I laughed bitterly at her words. If only that were true.

  “I’m sure Logan had plenty of sex last night, but it wasn’t with me.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Emily was practically screeching and I took a deep breath before unloading the whole story on her. Her shock at the outcome of things was evident in her silence while I told her everything.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me!” she exclaimed when I was done. “Are you sure you’re not just delusional and you dreamed all of that up?”

  “I wish,” I said glumly. “I have to face the fact that Logan and I are over. The worst part is, I feel like I never knew who he really was. I never thought, in a million years, that he’d treat me like such crap. I understand him being angry, but I never thought he could be so cruel.”

  “I’m sorry, Madison,” she said, her voice full of sympathy. “This totally sucks. I can’t believe it. I wish I could come over so we could spend the day eating ice cream and drinking large amounts of alcohol, but I have a crazy day at work.”

  “It’s okay, I’ll be fine. I’d rather be alone, anyways. I’m miserable company right now.” As much as I appreciated Emily’s concern, I didn’t want to deal with anyone today.

  “I’ll come over after work,” she insisted. “I’ll pick up some dinner on the way.”

  We argued for a few minutes, but in the end she acquiesced, although she made me promise to call her if I changed my mind. I was relieved when I was finally able to end the call. All I wanted was the silence of my apartment and the bottle of vodka at my side.

  I was completely sloshed by the time the afternoon rolled around, and I ended up passing out on the couch. When I woke up, groggy and feeling like I had cotton balls in my mouth, I had no idea how long I had been asleep, but I was surprised that it was already getting dark outside. I got up and staggered to the kitchen, downing multiple glasses of water.

  I was bleary-eyed as I looked at the clock on top of the stove. I had been asleep for hours; it was almost eight o’clock. My head throbbed, and I felt half-drunk and half-hung over. The worst combination ever.

  I opened the fridge, thinking that I should get some food in my stomach, but I closed it without taking anything out. The thought of eating made my stomach roil in protest.

  I groaned when my phone rang; the sound of it was painful to my aching head. I picked it up and answered it without checking to see who it was to stop the torturous sound as quickly as possible.

  “Hello?” I said grumpily, resenting whoever it was that had made my phone make that piercing noise. My irritation deepened when all I heard was silence. “Hello?” I repeated crossly.

  I took the phone away from my ear to check the screen. It was a blocked number, and I frowned as my mind immediately went to Adam. I wondered if he was trying to play games with me. I put the phone back to my ear.

  “Is this you, Adam?” I said angrily, in no mood to deal with his antics. Instead of a response, I heard the click of the call disconnecting. A thought flitted through my mind. Could it have been Logan? But why would he call me from a blocked number? And why would he say nothing?

  I almost shook my head at that ridiculous notion, but the pounding headache stopped me. Logan had shown me last night that he wanted nothing more to do with me. Everything between us, our friendship and our romantic relationship, was over. I didn’t expect him to contact me again. I expected him to drop out of my life.

  And I was right.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I sighed in satisfaction as I pressed send on the email with my column attached to my boss. It had been a long week, and I was happy to have work out of the way. It was late Friday afternoon, and I was excited for the weekend to start. Emily and I were going to the Indiana Dunes, a stretch of beach on Lake Michigan’s shoreline, for some much deserved rest and relaxation. We were going to spend our days swimming, biking, and eating way too much food.

  I was already packed, and I had about an hour to waste before Emily was supposed to pick me up in the rental car. I turned on the TV and flicked through the channels, trying to find something that would hold my attention. I paused at the classic movie channel that was showing Rear Window. There was a dull ache in my chest as I watched a scene between James Stewart and Grace Kelly. It was a reminder of who I had last watched the movie with, even if it had just been over the phone.

  I quickly changed the channel, banishing the thought. I finally settled on the news since there was nothing else on. A few minutes later, my cell phone rang and I saw that it was Emily calling.

  “Hey!” I said enthusiastically. “Are you almost done with work?”

  “Even better. I got out earlier than I thought I would, so I’m on my way over now. I should be there in about five minutes. Are you ready?”

  “Yup. I’ll be outside waiting for you. See you soon!”

  I grabbed my suitcase and my sunglasses, and locked the apartment door behind me. I wrestled my suitcase down the long flights of stairs, and opened the door to the balmy summer heat. It was early June, and it was sticky hot and humid. I put my sunglasses on and sat down on the front steps to wait for Emily.

  I didn’t have to wait long before she pulled up in front of my apartment building and double-parked. I waved as I grabbed my suitcase and quickly ran down the steps. After I had stowed my suitcase in the trunk, I opened the passenger side door and climbed in, grateful for the blast of air conditioning that hit me.


  “This heat is killing me,” I complained as she pulled back out onto the road. “I’m sweating so much that I look like a drowned rat.”

  “Pretty soon we’ll be lounging on the beach by the water,” Emily said. “Plus, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of eye candy in the form of hot guys wearing barely any clothes.”

  I laughed at the eager look on her face. “I can get on board with that. I’m so glad you were able to get away this weekend.”

  “You’re telling me! I’m getting pretty sick of my job. Sylvia doesn’t seem to realize that I have a life outside of work.”

  Although I knew Emily appreciated that her boss trusted her enough to depend on her so heavily, it put a serious cramp in her personal life. It had gotten even worse recently, since Sylvia’s interior design business had expanded.

  “That sucks,” I said in commiseration. “Would you ever think about leaving?”

  Emily frowned as she thought it over. “No, I’m just hoping to stick it out until I get a promotion. I need her to stop thinking of me only as her assistant and give me the chance to do some designs on my own.” She sighed heavily. “Let’s forget about work for the weekend. For the next two days, work doesn’t exist!”

  Emily and I spent the rest of the drive chatting about nothing important, from TV shows to Hollywood gossip. The further we got from Chicago, the more relaxed I felt and the tension in my body dissipated. The hour drive went by quickly, and soon we were pulling up to our hotel.

  The hotel was small and quaint, and we were quickly checked in. Emily and I dropped off our suitcases in our room and decided to have dinner at an Italian restaurant that was within walking distance of our hotel.

  We had a relaxing night filled with delicious food and multiple bottles of wine. Afterwards, we decided to continue our little party of two and bought a bottle of wine to drink by the pool back at the hotel.

  We giggled like high-schoolers as we snuck past the gate and settled into a couple of lounge chairs. Despite being closed, the lights in the pool were still on, providing us with some illumination.

  “I feel like we’re kids sneaking alcohol from our parents,” Emily said as she passed me a plastic cup filled with wine. I could tell she was as buzzed as I was and I lay back in my lounge chair with a satisfied sigh. Brilliant stars twinkled in the night sky, and even though we were only an hour away from Chicago, it felt like we were a world away.

  “I remember one time when Cassie stole a bottle of rum from her parents,” I reminisced, staring up at the night sky. “We made rum and Cokes, although you could hardly call it that since we barely put any rum in them. Still, four drinks later, we were drunk off our asses. We ended up eating everything in her kitchen and then proceeded to puke it all out.”

  Cassie’s mother had found us laid out on the living room couch moaning about how we were dying. She had been furious, but I had begged her not to tell my father. He was stressed enough about work, and the last thing I wanted was to give him something else to worry about. After swearing up and down that I would never do anything so stupid again, Mrs. Brooks had kept it from him, and had told me she trusted me to not make the same mistake again. I had taken my promise seriously and it wasn’t until college that I drank again.

  “To this day, I still can’t drink rum and Cokes because they make me nauseous.”

  “I’m glad you’re able to talk about Cassie,” Emily said gently. “You never used to bring her up but now I get to hear about the good memories with her.”

  “I realized that by holding onto her death and how she died, I was blotting out all the good things I wanted to remember about her. It wasn’t fair to her. She deserves to be remembered as the person she was when she was alive, not for how she chose to end her life.”

  Emily took a long sip of her drink before responding in a hesitant tone. “Do you ever think about Logan?”

  The mention of his name made me slam a mental door on my emotions. The only way I knew how to cope with the loss of Logan was to try to forget about him, although I knew deep down it was impossible. It had been a little over a year since he disappeared from my life, and there had been no contact since then. I never mentioned him, and Emily followed suit because she knew how painful our breakup had been. I was surprised she was mentioning him now, and I attributed it to the copious amounts of alcohol we had imbibed. It’s also what made me answer honestly.

  “I try not to, but so many things remind me of him,” I confessed quietly. “You’d think by now that I’d be over him, but I still avoid things that make me think of him. I can’t go to the aquarium anymore because I think about all the times I dragged him there. I can’t even go to the Half Pitcher anymore to get some damn nachos because it reminds me of Logan.” I gave Emily a rueful smile, trying not to dampen the mood. “Maybe I just miss the idea of Logan.” My smile faltered because I knew how false that was. I missed everything about him. I’d even just take friendship with him again because the lack of his presence in my life had left a gaping hole. It would be painful and hard not to have anything with him beyond a friendship, but nothing could be harder than having him completely absent from my life.

  I shook my head at my wandering thoughts. They were useless because I doubted I would ever see him again.

  Emily had been silent during my ruminations and I glanced at her. She had a funny expression on her face and I wondered if all the wine was getting to her.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, concerned. “Maybe you should stop drinking. You have a weird look on your face like you’re going to be sick.”

  She turned to fully face me and took a deep breath. “I didn’t know whether I should tell you, but I’d rather warn you than take the chance of you being caught off guard.”

  I frowned at her, confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Logan is back in town.”

  My stomach dropped at her words but I was silent as she explained.

  “Sylvia got commissioned to redo the offices of Walker & Parkson. At first, I didn’t know why the name sounded so familiar, but then I realized it’s the law firm that Logan works for. I didn’t think much of it, since I assumed he was still at the L.A. office. But I saw him this past week when Sylvia and I went in for a meeting.”

  My emotions were in turmoil, but I tried to pretend like it wasn’t a big deal. “That doesn’t mean he’s back in Chicago for good. He could have just been there for a meeting.”

  Emily bit her lip and watched me closely as she spoke. “I talked to him. I was just so surprised to see him, and I couldn’t really avoid him since he saw me, too. He told me that he’s just moved back to Chicago because the senior partners want him to help restructure the firm’s organization here. They like the changes he made to the Los Angeles branch, and I guess he was pretty successful in growing that office.”

  For a moment, I couldn’t process everything Emily was telling me. Even though I had desperately missed Logan, there was a cold comfort in knowing he was in L.A. I never had to worry about bumping into him. But now he was back in Chicago. What would I do if I saw him? What would I say?

  I gave myself a mental shake. The chances of me bumping into Logan were few and far between. Even if I did, I doubted he would even acknowledge my presence. Life without Logan would continue, regardless of whether he was in Los Angeles or Chicago.

  “Did I do the right thing by telling you?” Emily asked anxiously when I didn’t say anything. “I thought it was better that you know.”

  I tried to smile to reassure her. “I appreciate you telling me. It’s better that I know, but it really makes no difference whether he’s here or in L.A. I doubt I’ll ever see him, but if I ever do happen to run into him, at least I won’t be taken totally off guard.”

  Despite my nonchalant tone, I desperately wanted to ask her if Logan had asked about me but I forced myself not to. She would have mentioned it if he had, and there was no point in looking pathetic in front of her. I drained my cup in one gulp.

  “
I’m beat. Let’s go to bed so we’re refreshed for tomorrow.”

  Emily agreed, but I was aware of her still watching me, probably to make sure I was okay. After the shock of the news of Logan being back in Chicago wore off, I was able to convince myself of my earlier words. Nothing had changed between us. He might as well be in China, because the distance between us was so much more than physical. Still, it was a while before I fell sleep that night.

  The next day, we woke up to a beautiful morning, and I was able to push back the thoughts of Logan to enjoy it. I refused to let it ruin my weekend getaway, and I especially didn’t want Emily to regret telling me.

  After a hearty breakfast, we rented a couple of bikes and navigated a bike trail that eventually led us to the beach. It was a perfect, blissful day as we lazed on the sand, but I couldn’t totally relax. I knew it was idiotic of me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Logan. Most of me fervently wished that I would never see him again, but a tiny part of me was desperate to bump into him. I came to the conclusion that I must be a masochist, and for the hundredth time, I lectured myself for thinking about him.

  We went back to the hotel and took a quick nap to recharge our batteries. Afterwards, we changed into more formal attire and treated ourselves to dinner at a fancy, upscale French restaurant. The food was delicious, and Emily and I kept the conversation light, and I was almost able to forget about Logan. We ended the night at an outdoor terrace back at our hotel, sipping glasses of wine while gazing at the peaceful, starry sky.

  I was reluctant to leave when I woke up on Sunday morning. We spent a few more hours at the beach and then finally packed up our things, checked out of the hotel, and got back on the road.