after this night (camren)

33. Lauren

Like goodbye.

......

I clicked on the flight tracker and watched the black arrow snake across the Southwest. I dropped my head in my hand, and looked back up minutes later, as if the phone would tell me something. As if she'd appear on some futuristic TV screen from the plane, waving saying I was forgiven.

"It's okay. I know you were just so caught up in loving me that you forgot to tell me" she'd say with a twinkle in her brown eyes, then a pretty wink. She'd press her soft lips against the screen and blow me a kiss, "I'll be back" she'd say and the screen would crackle out, like static, fading to black, but everything would be okay and she'd return to me.

Instead, my life was up in the air. Because I'd been an ass. I'd been scared, wanting to secure my future before I faced my present. Of all people, I should have known better. You don't ask someone to sign until you give them all the facts, and spell out the terms. I'd gone about it the wrong way, thinking that by asking her to move in first, I'd be able to keep her without reservation. But you don't get the girl until you've gotten the girl. And even then you have to put in the effort every single day to keep her. You don't win before you've won. You keep playing, and fighting for love every day.

I reached for the screen, running my index finger across the cartoonish line of her airplane, scurrying her back to Miami. Was she sleeping on the plane? Watching a movie? Having a drink? Vodka on the rocks, probably.

Wait.

If she was drinking, it was whiskey.

Whiskey for loneliness.

But then, maybe she wasn't lonely, I figured as I set down my phone and made my way to the kitchen, opening the cabinet. Maybe she was happy and toasting with champagne to better days without me. Chatting it up with the random stranger next to her in seat 2B. Sharing her story. Telling the stranger about what an ass I had been. They would laugh at me and I deserved it. Maybe I didn't deserve anything but to have lost her this way.

This foolish way.

I should have taken the chance and told her when it happened with Austin's change-up, rather than waiting. Waiting never did anyone any good. When you waited, the world passed you by. Life passed you by. And the love of your life flew in the dark of night over the country, stretching the distance between you to so much more than three thousand miles.

I left the kitchen and opened the door to my balcony, walked to the railing, and stared at the city as I emptied my glass, the liquor burning my throat as I wanted it to.

We should have spent those precious last few hours tangled up together. Or having lunch together. Or shopping together. I wasn't fond of shopping, but I'd have happily taken her anywhere, letting her pick out the towels she wanted, the new bench for the balcony. Hell, she could redecorate the whole place from stem to stern, any way she wanted. We'd have shopped, and then wandered through the neighbourhood, my arm around her, discovering the places in the City that would become ours: a café here, a store there. I'd have gotten her worked up at lunch, touching her legs under the table, slipping my fingers under her skirt, driving her so wild I'd have had to pull her into the restroom at a café and fuck her against the wall, her legs wrapped around me, certain that she'd be returning to live with me.

Instead, I was left with this loneliness that could have been avoided with a few simple words spoken hours before.

Avoided with the truth.

I held up my glass, cocked my arm, and considered chucking it five stories down to the street below. Cabs and cars streaked by on a Sunday night, and soft jazz music floated up from a few floors below me. Some kind of melancholy John Coltrane song that might as well have been ordered up for me by the gods of regret.

Maybe that's what whiskey was good for. Maybe whiskey was best for regret, because that was all I could taste tonight.

I lowered my arm, the glass still in my hand. I wasn't going to make a mess for someone else. I'd somehow have to find a way to clean up the mess I'd made of this love.

I left the balcony, closing the door behind me as id I could seal shut the memories of all we'd done there. But I couldn't. She was everywhere in my home. She was naked on my couch. She was undressing on my stairs. She was laughing joyfully over a gift in my kitchen. She was dancing in my bedroom. She was sleeping peacefully on my bed. She was giving me her most vulnerable yes in the bathroom, telling me she'd leave her life in Miami for me.

Like a ghost shadowing me, she was everywhere and nowhere.

I returned to the kitchen, dropping the glass into the sink.

Turning around, I reached for the whiskey bottle, and tucked it back into the cabinet. But the bottle rattled. I steadied it quickly, then peered in the cupboard to see what had knocked it off-kilter.

An envelope.

I took the envelope, fat and stuffed. My name was on the front, and my stomach dropped when I read the words: "This belongs to you. Thank you for the loan. I always pay back my debts"

But there was no xoxo. No secret message to decode that would reassure me she'd be coming back. There was only money, all ten thousand dollars that she'd won, and I'd lost.

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this is quite a short chapter because i havent decided how i want the next chapter to go yet :) enjoy