If she wants nothing to do with me, then this time, for once, I’m going to leave her alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Violet
I close the door behind me and lean on it.
For a moment, I just stay there. I don’t have the strength to move. My mind, which has been filled with all sorts of chaotic notions, suddenly feels empty. My body feels numb. My heart feels like it’s no longer in my chest, like it’s been shattered into a million pieces and those fragments have started to evaporate one by one.
Weird. It almost feels like I usually do after an orgasm—adrift like I’m out of my body, hollow, undone. Who knew pain could have the same effect?
I am in pain. I don’t know exactly what part of me is aching. I don’t even know if it’s my body that hurts. I don’t know why I’m hurting. I just know I am.
The strength leaves my legs and I slide down towards the floor. My legs spread out before me. My arms lie limp at my sides. A tear trickles down my cheek.
Why does it hurt so much?
It didn’t hurt nearly this much five years ago. I cried, too, yes. I felt sick to my stomach, too. When I got back to my apartment, I just lay in my bed in my dress for a while. But it didn’t hurt this much. This time, I can barely breathe. This time, I feel like something more has been taken from me. Something real and important.
But of course it would hurt more. After all, five years ago, I barely knew Asher. I cried mostly because I felt like trash, because I felt stupid. I blamed myself for my suffering. But now, I’m crying because Asher and I had something and now it’s gone. He said I threw it away, and a part of me believes that. But it’s not entirely my fault. I wanted to believe in Asher, but how could I when he wouldn’t give me a reason to believe? I wanted to be with him, but he didn’t seem to feel that way. It even felt like he was refusing to feel that way.
He said I was asking for too much, but I felt like he wasn’t giving me enough to hold on to. Was it really too much to ask for him to say he didn’t believe in love but he was going to try anyway? I wasn’t expecting him to say he loved me. After all, we still don’t know each other that well. I wanted him to tell me how he felt. I wanted him to let me in. It’s not so much that I wanted a label for whatever was going on between us, more like I wanted to know that we were in it together, no matter what it was.
I just wanted to know that Asher wasn’t going to disappear like last time, or at least that he would try not to. Is that really too much to ask?
It’s funny, isn’t it? When you don’t tell a man what you want, he thinks you’re a coward, that you’re a cocktease, that you’re playing tricks on him. You tell him what you want and it becomes too much and he runs away like a scared little boy.
At any rate, it doesn’t matter. Asher is gone. I’ve lost him. This time, I’ve really lost him. Before, I couldn’t say that because I didn’t really have him. He wasn’t really mine. But now, I can say he was mine, even for just a short while. I had him. We had something. And now, it’s gone. And it hurts so fucking much.
I clutch the front of my shirt as even more tears fall, silently, like raindrops making their way down a car window.
Why? Why did Asher and I have to meet again just for us to end up this way? Why did we have to be together again if we don’t belong together, if he can’t be with me anyway?
Asher has toyed with any number of women. Maybe I’ve played with a few hearts myself without knowing. But fate, fate is the real player. And the cruelest.
I hug my knees to my chest as I let out loud sobs, the pain too much for me to stay quiet.
Of course, I’m partly to blame, too. I’m angry at myself, too. I gave Asher a chance even though I said I wouldn’t. I expected more from him even though I said we would just have meaningless sex. I knew he was a man-whore. I had a feeling he was incapable of commitment. Still, I hoped.
What’s that saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Shame. That’s something I’ll have to live with. Because I have to live. I have to keep going.
I’m hurting. I’m scarred. But I have to keep going.
I have to breathe. I have to get up. I have to eat, to sleep. I have to go to work tomorrow and the day after and the one after that even if I don’t feel like it, even if I don’t want to.
Because I have to live.
Right now, I’m dying, but I will live. I don’t know how, but somehow, after these tears stop falling, I’ll find a way to make it through.
But first, I have to breathe.
~
Breathe, Violet.
I tell myself that as I step out of the elevator and walk to my office, my shoulders pulled back and my chin high.
I have to pretend that this is just like any other day at the office. After all, for everyone else, it is. No one knows what happened between me and Asher. No one can see my broken heart even though I feel like it’s hanging outside my chest. And no one has to know.
I’ve dried my tears. I’ve put on my makeup, including a generous amount of concealer. I have a nice dress. I have my full armor. I can’t let anyone see through me.
As I pass by a row of cubicles, I feel some stares, and for a moment I get worried that they might have found out that Asher and I had a fight. But then I remember that yesterday, I fled Asher’s office shortly after Ethan and Ryker showed up. That’s probably why they’re staring. That’s probably what they’re speculating about.
They can speculate all they want. I don’t care.
I manage to get to my office just fine. Yes, I’m fine. I sit behind my desk and start to work. I’m off to a good start, too. But then, the worst happens.
Asher passes by. He passes in front of my office and turns his head so our eyes meet for just a moment, too brief to convey any meaning. Then he’s gone. I freeze.
Once, when I was in an emergency room in Zurich because of a sprained ankle and I was waiting for the swelling to go down, I overheard the nurses talking. They were talking about one of their fellow nurses who had refused to show up to work because her boyfriend had broken up with her. I thought it was silly. Why refuse to work just because of a broken heart? Why not work so you can forget about your problem? That’s what I normally do.
But now, I understand why someone wouldn’t want to come to work after a breakup. And it’s even harder when the one you broke up with is your boss.
I close my eyes and draw a deep breath.
Breathe, Violet. Just breathe.
~
I can’t breathe.
I thought things would gradually get easier, but it’s been three days and the pain remains as sharp. Each time I see Asher, I feel like my chest is being opened and my heart is being broken to pieces all over again.
And I’ve just seen Asher. We were just in a meeting together which lasted more than an hour, and the whole time I was sitting next to him pretending to be okay, trying not to look at him. But I ended up looking at him anyway, and I still couldn’t help but think about how hot he is and I still ended up feeling miserable knowing he’s no longer mine.
So here I am hiding in an empty cubicle, trying to breathe.
If I don’t, I just know I’ll start crying, and I can’t do that right now.
Just breathe.
“There you are, Ms. Cleary,” Asher’s voice interrupts my breathing.