I nod smiling my best diplomatic smile. “Nice to meet you, Christine.”
Take your talons off him, I scream internally.
I shake her hand and hate her instantly like a shallow teen girl with a grudge. She’s a beautiful woman. Thin and blonde, tall with a kind smile and worst of all they look striking together. His dark features, chiseled face, hulking muscular build compliment her light features, subtle curves and lithe body. The lack of discrepancy in height makes them look… made for each other. I categorically hate the idea of them as a couple on its face.
They’d make gorgeous babies, Negativity muses and I internally flip off my bitchy bedmates. Fuck you, depression, loss and regret! Nobody invited you to the party.
“Well,” I inhale deeply and sigh. “I’d better get to my seat. Work, work, work,” I singsong like any one of the other lying, phonies in this room. He slightly quirks one brow and studies my face for a beat.
“You good?” he asks, quietly as he steps closer to me. Chris turns her attention to the grandeur of the ballroom, thank fuck.
No! I’m awful!
“Yeah, of course.” I smile and hold my breath at the same time. I think for a flash of a moment he’s going to call my bluff like he’s so good at doing but he doesn’t. He simply gives one slow nod and a half-smile.
Allow me to run away please.
“You two enjoy the gala.” I smile fully, give a lame flappy wave and bat my lashes in rapid-fire fashion.
“You too,” he says amiably. I blink multiple times, hoping the tears don’t come until I make it to a bathroom stall. That’s the designated meltdown zone where falling apart isn’t exactly frowned upon, mostly because stalls are single occupancy and people can’t frown about things they are unaware of. Bathrooms are token safe-to-cry zones. Girl code, chapter one, line one.
Before my escape to Meltdownville, I watch as he walks away without a backward look, or a second glance. His broad, retreating back is swallowed by the crowd then, eventually disappears altogether. Just like my heart and any vestiges of courage I had before tonight. My therapist would be terribly delighted with me.
Isn’t that what I wanted, though? Isn’t this by design? Yes. I silently remind myself that I’m no victim here. Not in this regard anyway. He didn’t do this to us. I did. I am both the villain and the victim. This is all my handy work and as devastated as I am, I would do it all again because Sy has been spared knowledge that would hurt him and BCF isn’t dirtied by my reputation.
Four hours later, the party is over, the dress is discarded, the heels are by the front door, the makeup is wiped away and I’m blessedly alone, at least in the physical sense. Mentally, he’s here. But of course he’s always here. I’m the abandoned home, and he’s the ghost that wanders its corridors. I shower and do my best to wash away the tension that seeing him has spawned. It gathers in the form of a dense knot in my neck and an ache in my chest. I go through my nightly routine trying my best to escort myself through the tools my therapist has imparted me with over the last several months. These new techniques have significantly shushed all the mental chatting to myself.
When you feel yourself unraveling, picture a stoplight. It’s glowing bright red. You have to stop here, Raegan. Trace the edges of the light, the edges and plains and corners of the yellow casing, look carefully at the colored lenses, is the sky above cloudless or overcast? How high is the sun or moon…
The skeptical side of me thinks I pay way too much for this glorified version of counting to ten but the hurt, lost woman in me is thankful to have something—anything—to guide me forward.
Stoplights are better than runaway trains, so I’ll stick to the stoplight thing. Lost in thought I plop heavily down on my bed and glance at my phone. I open my music app and scroll until I find a song to match how I feel after tonight. The first notes stream straight through me and I inhale fully, allowing everything I feel to wash over me. As though the Universe has a vendetta against me, a text message from an unknown number comes through. I read the words and know exactly whom the message is from. It isn’t lost on me that while I deleted his number, he likely didn’t delete mine. A little part of me—the part that is a young girl in love with her best friend reaches out and clings to the fact that he kept my number in his phone even after all that has happened. My eyes slip shut and I breathe deeply. Like ripping a bandage off I hold my breath and do it quickly before I can chicken out.
Unknown: What’re you listenin’ to, Rae?
I can practically hear his voice in my head. The memory of that low, rich timber and his accent curl around my mind and I nuzzle into it like a forgotten house cat winding through her owner’s legs relishing even a tiny bit of attention. In my mind’s eye I can see his lopsided grin, his hands in his pockets, dark wavy hair falling across his brow, the mischievous glimmer in his eyes…
Me: After seeing you tonight with your perfect date then subsequently sobbing until my false eyelashes came unglued? Crying, by Roy Orbison. Of course. I miss you. I miss us. I think I always will.
I tap the text out carefully, slowly, and stare at it with my thumb hovering over the send button. Fresh tears tingle behind my eyes as the final depressingly relatable notes of the song ring out then I shift my finger to the backspace button. I delete each letter and space one by one and close the text then delete the thread and block his phone number. Communicating with him is the quickest way to rehash painful history then relapse on the drug that is us. I don’t think either of us would survive yet another trip down memory lane unscathed. We were lucky to make it through last time.
You call this making it through, Negativity scoffs. I’d hate to see my idea of not making it through.
Chapter 30
Sylas
Months.
It took me months, damn near a year to get Rae out of my head. I’ve spent the last eleven months alternating between burying myself under a mountain of work and getting drunk enough to wonder if I have developed a new drinking problem. I haven’t developed a drinking problem but after she ghosted on me again, I had developed a Rae problem. Again. I spent months distracting myself from my broken heart and dashed dreams. I’ve tried to date here and there hoping one woman could water down the memory of the other. It hasn’t worked. I tried everything I could think of before finally giving in to the hurt I felt. I surrendered to it and allowed myself to grieve the loss of the future I had envisioned for myself. I may be the fool who lost big but at least I sat down at the table and played a hand. It was that knowledge that was some consolation. So I let myself be hurt, and it was working. I was succeeding. Slow and steady wins the race and all that.
I wasn’t waking up every day instantly pissed off that I was reliving the same hurt from over a decade ago. I wasn’t feeling as though I had a sign on my forehead that read, “Dumbass”. I wasn’t feeling as though all the women in town were rolling out their bottom lip to pout and pity me when I went to the grocery store or just about anywhere in town.
Though I knew I’d never be able to forget Rae, I was content with at least not thinking exclusively about Rae.
I was on the road to recovering from Rae.
Then the trip to DC came around. I felt in my gut that there was a slim possibility she’d be there but I had dismissed it. Why would Rae go to a military event where I would be in attendance? She obviously wants zero to do with me and given the manner in which we always seem to part ways, I assumed she’d avoid me.