With one hand holding my wine and the other flipping through things in the box, my hands find what I was looking for. A Palmetto Grove Gators Baseball is emblazoned on the front of the tee shirt in jungle green. I flip the shirt over and read the back. BROUSSARD and the number 44. I used to tease him and say I’d stolen the shirt, parading it around often but the truth is he gave it to me. He’d confessed he liked his name on me. That admission had sparked several conversations with us lying on a blanket beside the bayou, talking about our future together. The girl that coveted this stupid T-shirt would have never believed how things turned out. With the shirt in my hand I crawl into bed. The first glass of wine goes down with balmy smoothness. The second glass goes down smooth even with a knot in my throat getting in the way. The third glass is trickier. The knot is bigger, the tears keep welling and I keep blinking them away.
I miss him.
I even miss Palmetto Grove because it’s where he is.
Coward, Self-Loathing taunts. You ran off on that poor guy yet again. You probably gave him a complex.
We can figure out a plan, Practicality says tapping her chin, and she paces slowly.
Years. Years you’ve been pacing coming up with one of your plans and we’ve yet to see one that works, Negativity says snidely.
On that note my brain turns into Jerry Springer and this is an episode I very much want to turn off. I finish off the glass of wine in my hand in two big gulps and rifle through my bag before I get wise enough to abandon opening the blank envelope while fairly drunk and extraordinarily depressed. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and sniffle, looking down at the rectangle of paper. Gently bending the fold back I pluck the contents from inside. A folded sheet of paper with something inside is what I find. With a deep breath I unfold the paper, finding Sy’s neat handwriting scrawled across the blank white sheet.
“I shall do one thing in this life - one thing certain - that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.”
-Sy
I think if I could breathe, a sob would come out of my mouth but my wailing is silent though no less deafening. Tucked inside the sheet of paper with the quote from Far From The Madding Crowd is the page in the book that the quote is on. He roughly tore the page from the book; its frayed edges telling of the brashness with which he ripped away the yellowing material. Along with the page is a lustrous, thick magnolia leaf the size of my open hand that I would bet money is from our tree at the secret bayou. The edges are already browning but the rest is the same deep green they always are. Gently ghosting my fingertips over the leaf I cry and let all the hurt and pain pour over me. Emptying the rest of the wine out I drink down the last drop, knowing I’ll go grab the other one from my wine rack. Tonight seems like a worthy occasion for getting drunk.
My cell phone chimes and I leap towards it, a part of me hoping against hoping that its Sylas but I see it’s a text message from momma.
Momma: Promise me you’ll begin looking for a therapist tomorrow Raegan.
Me: Yes momma. I will.
And it’s true. I will. But for now, I plan to get stupid-drunk and throw the biggest goddamn pity party on the planet as I reread words I couldn’t forget if I tried. They swim in my DNA; they’re a part of me as a person. I couldn’t forget them, outrun them, or deny them if my life depended on it.
Chapter 29
Raegan
11 months later…
It’s odd the things that distract the mind when reality is too overwhelming. I was raped and impregnated by a monster. I distracted myself with hate and a whole host of negative emotions to push back against everything that had been broken. I lost Teddy. I lost Sylas. I lost trust in human beings and I lost trust in my own judgment. Worst of all, I chose to not deal with my traumas.
Therapy has helped me recognize these truths. Like Dale said, “I wasn’t coping with some things, and now I am.”
Tonight the thing that is too overwhelming is the event I’m at and the little whisper of possibility in the back of my mind. The weight of the sequins glittering down the length of the black Burberry evening gown is a welcome weight, despite the very uncomfortable four-inch heels I’m wearing. Its heft is what distracts me tonight. It keeps me from getting lost in too much thought on a night when overthinking could and likely would lead to a meltdown. The beaded fabric makes a subtle swish on its way, slinking down my legs as I step out of the chauffeured car and into the night.
It’s late summer, but it’s still hot as hell here in Washington DC and this dress weighs a thousand pounds like the weighted blanket that helps me sleep at night. The Ambien deserves honorable mention as well.
Despite my resolve to get through the night without overthinking anything, here I am before the event has even begun considering things like useful distractions and sleep aids and therapeutic weighted blankets that help me with my own posttraumatic stress disorder.
My heart weighs a metric ton.
I smooth my left hand over my hip and readjust the black satin clutch in my right hand while pageant-smiling for the media should they take my picture. Photographers and journalists are stacked ten and twelve deep for as far as I can see over an expanse of bobbing heads. Cameras flash all over and reporters rattle off questions directed at guests but from what I can tell no one is looking at me. Not really. Certainly not beyond the cursory perusal of attire and entourage and all the other equally shallow things people stop to stare for. No, tonight I am not the focus. No entourage. All black attire, black accessories matching my black hair. I blend well in a sea of tuxedos and no one pays me any mind. Not when Senators members of Congress, ambassadors and diplomats and big name White House staff including The President and his VP are in attendance. Events honoring the military always bring out the big wigs and they play nice like good little children for the most part since it’s one of the few subjects both sides of the aisle agree on. The ones that don’t actually give a fuck about the event fake it well enough for the night.
Too-important people with too much money and too little integrity shuffle their way into the hotel where the gala is being held. I disappear into the mix of people, unnoticed. No one needs a picture of a campaign manager, even if it is Sweeney’s chief political strategist. It’s my job in fact to make sure they want a photo of the candidate I work for, not me. Despite my mood, I’m a duck in water.
I’m solo tonight, which depresses me tremendously, because it only serves to remind me of him. I bounce between thoughts of him possibly being in attendance and me being alone. It’s a sad state of affairs in my world tonight. However, I can’t discount the fact that attending as my own date only perpetuates my public image no matter how false it is.
Unattached.
Ruthless.
Workaholic.
The best goddamn political strategist money can buy. All of those things used to be true of me and they still are to an extent. Just not to the degree they once were. I’m still a duck in water I just no longer enjoy paddling around the pond no matter how good I am at it. The waters are toxic and swampy and full of snakes. It isn’t the snake’s fault. It’s not even the water’s fault. The pond hasn’t changed, I have. God, how things have changed. As recently as nearly one year ago I did not mind at all—in fact I preferred the poison waters of work versus reality. Nothing can alter a person quite like the chilly, binding tendrils of depression, loss, and regret. Terrible bedmates, the lot of them. My chatty inner circle doesn’t lend any help whatsoever. Either way, I have a reputation to maintain and a career to cultivate. I have nothing else, after all. So, quack, quack.