19: The Last Day of Our Acquaintance
“Do you feel as horrible as I do?” Zooey wondered when Justin answered his phone after their two weeks of non-communication.
“That depends. What do you feel horrible about?”
“Me and my sister are fighting and… I wanna kill myself.”
“Well, I kinda wanna kill myself too, so I guess so,” he let out a forced chuckle.
“That sucks.”
“That’s life.”
“I guess things with Scarlett haven’t gotten any better…”
“They’re at a fever pitch,” he admitted quietly. “She said she needed space, so I’m giving her space.”
“Hmm.”
“I told her I was in love with you.”
Zooey immediately choked on her own saliva and almost dropped her phone. “You did what?”
“She asked me and I didn’t wanna lie.”
“That’s… wow.”
“What’s wow about that?”
“You’re in love with me?” she nearly shouted into the phone. “I thought we were just, like, liking each other.”
“I thought so too. But then I really thought about it and I realized that… it’s definitely something deeper than that. And trust me, the last thing I needed was to have fallen in love, but it’s the truth. You stop my heart.”
“That sounds detrimental to your health,” she smiled wistfully. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“It pretty much has been detrimental, but… what can you do.”
“So what are you doing for Memorial Day,” she abruptly switched subjects. She needed to be able to discuss something less uncomfortable.
He shrugged as if she could see him. “Umm… Nothing special. Probably go golfing and hang out with my dogs.”
“Now would that be your actual dogs, or are you referring to your friends?”
He laughed tiredly at her question and its validity. “My actual dogs.”
“Aww, that’s so pitiful.”
“That would be me...”
“I have nothing to do either. I’ll probably call Em another hundred times and get a little more acquainted with her voicemail.”
He smirked at the thought. “You’re just as pitiful as me, apparently.”
“Weren’t we happy as hell just a couple of months ago?” she mourned for their past. “What happened?”
“I guess life can underwhelm you that way.”
She nodded to herself. “Well. I just wanted to check up on you since I haven’t heard a peep in a while.”
“Much appreciated.”
“Call me when you get lonely, all right?”
“Will do.”
They ended their call on a solemn note and Justin stared at his phone for a long moment. He recalled the day Zooey had been added to his phone, immediately under a pseudonym. It was right then that he should have known his world would be turned upside down. He’d known her only a matter of hours and he was already planning to deceive his wife… and himself, if he was finally being honest.
He tried to analyze their situation and ask himself, truthfully, how he would react if given the opportunity to do it all over. Would he not have given Zooey that fifty-five cents? Would he have erased her number as soon as he got home? Would he have still married Scarlett? Would he have slept with her on his birthday?
He had so many opportunities to do the right thing, and he’d made so many wrong decisions with a completely clear conscience. He was of sound mind when he was courting her. And even worse, after everything that had happened, he still didn’t feel regretful. He hated that he’d hurt his wife, of course, but he didn’t regret a second of his time with Zooey. What an odd feeling, he thought. And then he finally stopped staring at his phone and decided to call Zooey back.
“Hey,” she answered, surprised to hear from him so quickly. “Everything all right?”
An ironic smile tugged the corners of his mouth. “I’m feeling lonely.”
____________________
When the weekend of Memorial Day arrived, Zooey and Justin were both feeling very estranged from their own lives. Zooey, whose sister had yet to speak to her, didn’t feel comfortable going to her friends for any help or advice, because they all had the same thing to say about Justin. And Justin, whose wife was still in New York ignoring him, didn’t want to entertain all the questions from friends and family about exactly what was going on. So they leaned on one another.
“You ready to do this?” she greeted him as they met at the elevators in the parking lot of LAX Airport. She laughed at his conspicuous disguise of a Dodgers cap, sunglasses, and a hood pulled over his head.
“What are you laughing at?”
“It’s ninety degrees and you’re dressed for a winter day in LA. I dig it.”
“I look stupid?” he smiled.
“Only slightly.”
He decided to take off his hat and put it on her head, leaving him in sunglasses and a hoodie. “Better?”
“Except I’m a Red Sox fan, and if you ever put a Dodgers cap on my head again, I will fuckin’ strangle you.” She took the dark blue thing off and stuffed it in his backpack for him.
“So how are we gonna do this?” he wondered, as they stepped off of the elevator and headed for the crosswalk.
“We said we would pick a place and just go, so…”
“I know, but I mean, how does one just ‘pick a place?’”
“We’ll look at the departure board,” she suggested, “and… whatever city is right in the middle, that’s where we’re going.”
“What if there’s an even number of cities?” he wondered with a grin.
“Well then we’ll go with whatever city starts with the first letter of one of our first names.”
“Okay, but whose name?”
She was trying to make this as random as possible, but he was making it rather difficult. “Umm. We’ll put our iPods on shuffle, and we’ll go with whoever has a better song come up.”
“Fair enough.”
“This will be fun,” she decided for them, pulling her long locks into a sloppy ponytail before they had to cross the street. “Right?”
“I think we need this,” he nodded. “Maybe to get a little sanity back.”
“Who needs sanity?”
With matching grins, the two of them walked into the American Airlines area of LAX, side by side, and headed straight for the Departure board. Sure enough, there was an even amount of cities staring back at them, so they pulled out their iPods. Following Zooey’s made up rules, they put their libraries on random and waited for the results.
“I have an awesome onnne,” Justin teased with raised eyebrows, looking down at his device.
“I guarantee you it is not awesomer than mine.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s hard to beat ‘House of Cards’ by Radiohead.”
“That is a strong contender,” she agreed. “Very strong. But…” She pulled the earphones from her iPod Touch so that he could hear what she did. “All I wanna do is zoom-a-zoom-zoom-zoom and a boom-boom. Just shake ya rump!”
“You did not just bust out with ‘Rump Shaker,’” he was cracking up.
“The iPod wants what it wants,” she shrugged. “And I think we can both agree that I win.”
“Tough call, but I’ll allow it,” he sighed. “I’m just interested to see what city you could find that starts with a Z.”
She looked up at the board proudly and found one in less than a minute. “How does Zihuatanejo sound?”
“It sounds like you don’t know what the hell that is.”
“I honestly doubt that I even pronounced that correctly, but I do know it’s in Mexico. And that’s where we’re going.”
“Mexico?” His apprehension was glaringly obvious. “Do we really wanna experiment with Mexico?”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
“Because… it’s Mexico.”
“You racist son of a bitch. I picked Zih… whatever. And that’s where we’re gonna go.”
____________________
As it turned out, Zooey’s choice ended up being pretty spectacular, because apparently, Zihuatanejo was an absolutely beautiful region of Mexico, right off of the Pacific coast. After asking around, they were told that the best resort in the town was La Casa Que Canta, and they were not led astray. A unique little village, it was perched on a cliff and surrounded by the sea of Zihuatanejo Bay, boasting breathtaking views of the water.
Zooey hadn’t really been privy to the more glamorous side of Justin’s life, but she certainly got it that weekend. With only an hour’s notice, they were offered their own private villa with its own fresh-water pools, private access to the beach, and a full golf course as a back yard. The two of them were in precisely what one would call paradise.
“God, I could get used to this,” Zooey proclaimed, coming in from her midnight swim. Running a towel through her wet hair and throwing on a robe over her bikini-clad body, she took a seat beside Justin.
He looked up from his new iPad with a contented expression. “I could, too.”
“You should be used to this. You’ve been rich for… ever.”
“I’m not referring to a lavish lifestyle here.”
She looked down seriously before her eyes darted back up to him. “I know.”
“Does that scare you?”
“A little bit.”
“Why?”
“Because there would always be this sinking feeling “ this fear “ that you’ll just up and leave one day. That… I dunno…”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust your heart,” she confirmed for herself just as much as him. “But I don’t trust mine either, so don’t feel bad.”
“Zooey, if I say that I’m in love with you, shouldn’t that reassure you that I’m not going anywhere?”
“I mean, I’m sure you said that to Scarlett, too, so… no,” she chuckled uneasily. “And I know you mean well, but… that doesn’t do much to reassure me of anything either.”
“You’re so cynical,” he smiled sarcastically. “I don’t know how you function that way.”
She smiled sadly in response. “I thought you liked that about me.”
“Not so much.”
She stood up from the couch, her robe open and showing peeks of her dampened, tanned skin, and she ran her fingers over Justin’s soft short hair. “I’m gonna get ready for bed.”
Before she could walk away, he grabbed her hand and pulled her back towards him. He wrapped his arms around her tiny waist and pulled her close, letting his face feel the flesh of her stomach.
Slightly alarmed, she continued to let her fingers tenderly graze his head. “Are you all right?”
He nodded, but refused to let go, and soon, he found himself crying softly.
When she heard him sniffling, her heart sank. “Hey,” she called out to him worriedly, receiving no response but more tears. “Hey.”
He held onto her waist even tighter and continued to cry. “What did we do?”
She could feel herself tearing up as well, because this moment, though she hadn’t pictured it exactly this way, seemed inevitable. The moment where regret smacked him in the face and realization punched him in the stomach. The beginning of the end. “Hey,” she softly comforted him, still rubbing his head. “This is fixable. Everything will be fine.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t. I guess. But I know that your wife loves you,” she admitted quietly to his sobs. “I know that you love her. Completely. Even if you maybe got bored for a bit, or you saw something in me that lit a different fire for a while. She’s who you’re supposed to be with, and so… that means something. That has to.”
“I do love you, Zooey.”
“I know.”
“I can’t just… leave you.”
“I don’t want you to,” she came to realize. “But… you have to do whatever it is you have to do.”
“What’s that supposed to be?”
She sighed with a heavy heart. “I don’t know.”
____________________
The next morning, Justin awoke to an empty bed, which he thought odd, because Zooey still hadn’t come to bed when he fell asleep. He immediately got up to look for her, eventually finding her sitting by their pool, yet again. “Hey,” he greeted as cheerfully as he could. “Have you been out here all night?”
All I can ever be to you is a darkness that we knew
And this regret I got accustomed to
“Yeah,” she replied hoarsely, putting out her cigarette in the ashtray next to her. Next to that was an empty bottle of wine and her cell phone.
He took a seat next to her, rolling up his pajama pants so that he could dangle his feet in the water as well. “You all right?”
“You can’t be in love with me, Justin.”
He laughed, thinking this was another one of her weird statements. “I don’t think it works that way.”
“I’m serious. I wasn’t in this for… love. This was supposed to be fun, carefree, a break from the monotony of reality.”
Once it was so right, when we were at our height
Waiting for you in the hotel at night
“What are you talking about?” his eyebrows knitted in confusion. “You can’t help who you fall for.”
“Did you try?”
“I didn’t know I would have to.”
She shook her head at the whole situation, trying to find it in herself to be angry with him for managing to fall in love with her. “You were supposed to be a parenthesis,” she finally stated seriously. “This wasn’t supposed to be a real anything.”
“A parenthesis?”
“Yes! You suck the fun out of it when you start to attach these intense feelings to everything.”
I knew I hadn’t met my match
But every moment we could snatch
I don’t know why I got so attached
“I guess I didn’t get the memo.”
“What were you expecting to get out of this?” Her irritation was obvious, and it was like she was barking at him all of a sudden.
He was silent in response, because that was one thing he never knew in the first place.
“You don’t even know,” she scoffed.
“Where is this coming from?”
“It’s coming from the fact that you say you’re in love with me one minute and then the next minute, you’re crying into my hip, lamenting over your wife. I mean, you feel regretful, fine, but you have to pick a fucking feeling and stick to it!”
“Why are you yelling?” he frowned.
“Because this is frustrating as fuck! And you don’t seem to get that shit. You don’t know what the fuck you want, which is just completely unfair to both of us. To all three of us.”
“I-I-I’m sorry. I thought I was just… venting. I didn’t mean to make this harder on you or whatever,” he supplied genuinely. “I certainly didn’t mean to hurt you, Zo.”
“You didn’t hurt me. You’re pissing me off.” Which wasn’t true, of course. She was deeply hurt. And confused. And she hated doing this to him, but she didn’t know what other way to make him to move on but to break his heart.
It’s my responsibility, and you don’t owe nothing to me
But to walk away, I have no capacity
Justin was staring at her, trying to read her emotions, trying to gauge the enormity of what he’d done, not only to himself and his marriage, but to her as well. “I’m just, like, stunned by all of this. You seemed fine last night.”
“I’m tired, Justin,” she exhaled as if on cue. “You have exhausted me with all your indecisiveness, all your contradictory emotions. I don’t have it in me to do this anymore. This isn’t fun anymore.”
“I thought we were in this together,” he looked down into the water. “I didn’t know… I mean… I thought you were just as excited about us.”
“There is no us, Justin! There’s you and Scarlett, and then there’s me! And I can’t be the second plus in this equation anymore.”
We could’ve never had it all, we had to hit a wall
So this is inevitable withdrawal
He watched her get up and begin to storm off, but he quickly went after her. “Hey,” he grabbed her arm, still baffled by everything. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t pretend to be okay with this anymore. I have to go.”
“Zooey, stop it.”
“Let go of me,” she demanded tensely.
“You cannot just run away from this.”
“This is nothing, Justin!” she shouted trying to wrestle out of his grasp. “There is nothing here for you!”
“Stop fucking screaming!” he yelled back.
“Let go of me!” She began to punch and slap him in the chest with her free arm, still screaming. “Let me go!”
“Stop it, stop it,” he was hissing at her. “Stop it, Zooey. You’re mad because you’re hurt.”
“I’m mad because I’m mad, you fucking pretentious asshole! Let me go!”
“Calm down,” he demanded. “Stop it.”
“Let me go,” she finally whispered as tears streamed down her face and she melted into his embrace. “You have to let it go.”
“I don’t wanna let you go.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
So we are history, your shadow covers me
The sky above ablaze
Feeling completely torn and defeated, and unsure of whether he wanted her to be right or wrong, he relented. She clearly did not want him this way “ not that he could blame her “ and there wasn’t anything he could say to change her mind. So he went inside to begin repacking, preparing to go back home. Alone.
Zooey sat outside for another hour, wanting to give Justin enough time to get his things together, but also, so that she could really think about what she was doing. This man, who had come into her life and made her genuinely happy, would leave it thinking that he did exactly the opposite. She hated knowing that that was the only way for him to move on.
Reentering the house for the first time since the previous night, still in a bikini and a robe, she found him upstairs in the bedroom, sitting on the bed. “You all right?” she asked, standing in the doorway.
He nodded and looked up at her. “I kept… going a lot of places and ending up somewhere I’d already been,” he proclaimed sullenly. “Until I met you. And I thought… ‘Wow, I’ve never been here before.’ And being somewhere new, well… I liked it. I loved that feeling.”
“I liked it, too.”
“But I guess you’re right. And we have to go home at some point.”
She nodded. “You gotta be able to explain things to yourself when the lights go out and you get into bed. You gotta deal with you at the end of the day.”
“Yeah. And I haven’t done that.”
“You’re going back to LA?”
“I called Scarlett, actually,” he felt it necessary to admit. “And she didn’t hang up, she even spoke to me for thirty seconds. So I’m gonna go to New York, we’re gonna talk.”
“That’s good to hear. I think you two need each other.”
With his bag packed and his clothes on, there was nothing left for him to do but… leave. “So we just make a clean break for it, I guess?”
“That’s probably for the best.”
“You’re gonna be all right, right?”
“Of course,” she waved off as if this were no big deal. “To be honest, I think this was very uncharacteristic of both of us. I think… we were losing us, and one thing I never wanted to do when coming into this business was to lose sight of who I was. Who I am. So… before the people we once knew are gone, we should just… go.”
I wish I could say no regrets and no emotional debts
‘Cause as we kissed goodbye the sun sets
“And I just ignore you if we run into each other?”
“Come on, we’re not animals,” she smirked. “I’ll say something funny, and you’ll laugh, and we’ll go our separate ways. The way it should’ve been.”
He took a deep breath and held back tears as he took her hand into his. He kissed the palm of her hand and then closed it so that she could keep it forever, if she so chose.
She looked down at his hand, enfolded over hers, and it suddenly dawned on her how much she would miss this. How much she would miss him. “I hope I was worth it.”
So we are history, your shadow covers me
The sky above a blaze that only lovers see
“You were.”
Watching him leave the room, she smiled as brightly as she could, if only to hide how chokingly sad she was, and she began to think, maybe her agent had been right. Acting might have been right up her alley.
He walks away, the sun goes down
He takes the day, but I’m grown
And in your grey, in this blue shade
My tears dry on their own
Lyrics: “Tears Dry On Their Own” “ Amy Winehouse (Back to Black)
Author's Chapter Notes:
It's been a year since I started this story, which is crazy to me, considering how easy it's been to write. But work life has been hectic, and I just haven't had as much time as I'd like to do this, so please know that I appreciate the hell out of your patience. And here's another chapter to commemorate our time together lol! LOVE you guys.
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