Adumbrate (Book One of the Lane Series)

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Copyright © 2014 by M. E. Mathis

All rights reserved.

3. Love Is For Children

The sound of my Jimmy Choo pumps clicking furiously on the marble floor echos loudly through the lobby as I make my way from the elevator doors to the main entrance. My Blackberry is pressed firmly against my ear as I recite Henderson Inc.'s address to the cab service on the other end of the line. From behind me I hear the day secretary call out for me but by then I am already pushing past the double glass doors, letting out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Standing now on the sidewalk, I can't help but feel dissappionted that he didn't follow me. Immediately I am scolding myself for such a childish idea. That only happens in movies, the couple breaks up and the woman walks out. The man, realizing that he's madly in love with her, runs out to find her and confess his love. They get married, live happily ever after; the end. In reality, the man is a first class douche, and the woman is an overdependent robot.

There is no happy ending and he sure as hell doesn't love her enough to run after her through the streets of New York. Love is for children. That's what my mother would say. She raised me on her own, I never knew my father and according to my mother, neither did she. "We don't need men. That's the problem with women these days; they think they need men when in reality they need us," that's what she would say to me from time to time. My mother was a firm believer that a woman could function perfectly fine on her own. All her life my mother did just that, she wanted the same for me. I was taught from a young age that I had to be independent. By the time I hit my teen years, I had never even considered boys as even friends.

My "independence" led to my social awkwardness. Not only that but I was the top of class and maintained an A average all through both middle school and the two years of highschool that I attended until my guidance counsler recommeneded that I skip senior year and go straight into college. So now here I was, twenty years old, already a senior in college and working on my master's degree in creative writing at New York's most prestigious art school, Pratt Institute. I am pursuing the line of work that my creative mind has always dreamed of despite the disappiontment and crushed dreams of my mother who wanted me to major in economics.

I have a stable internship at Henderson, a job I love despite the constant traveling and jetlag. My life is, was perfect, well close enough to perfect. Everything was great except for Zane. My relationship with Zane Clark was always the weak link of my stable life. And now he's gone.

There's a saying that says that you never really know what you have until its gone. But as I stand here now, alone waiting for a cab, I realize that that theory doesn't apply; I never had Zane. He was never mine to begin with. He'll never be mine. As much as I hate to admit it, the thought saddens me to the core. I can feel the corners of my eyes begin to prickle, the tears threatening to release.

Just as the cab pulls up to the curb, I am find myself falling apart completely at the seems. For the first time in my twenty years, I drop my guard and cry. Its an awful, silent gaspig-for-air cry. I cry not because of Zane, but because of the thought of being alone is tearing me up inside. I am terrified. It doesn't matter how many times I swallow, the lump in my throat refuses to go down. I am comsumed, I am drowning in my self-pity. The night that Zane walked out in Milan, I thought that my heart had been torn out. Now sitting in the back of this cab I realize that it was merely hanging by a thead. It wasn't until I, myself walked out on him that our break became final. When I stood there alone on the sidewalk, when he never even made an attempt to run after me, that's when the thread broke. Now my heart's in my hands and I don't even have the strength to carry it.