Chapter 23 – Love Somebody

New York – A Week Later

Lance sat on the small balcony outside of his apartment, staring at the city skyline. It looked like a painting – buildings were nothing but a black silhouette, with the sky as the real focus, stroked with various colors of blue, pink, orange, and almost purple. Sitting here in the relative quiet despite the noises of traffic, with his coffee and the cold morning air, it would have been the perfect morning to spend with her.

But she wasn't here, and it was his fault. She had been gone a week and despite what she probably thought, he couldn't stop blaming himself.

She hadn't answered her phone, but that didn't mean he didn't keep calling. After a couple days, she apparently turned her phone off entirely. He had left a dozen voicemails for her, begging her to at least call him. He knew that if she would give him five minutes to tell her what happened, she wouldn't hurt so bad.

That was all he wanted, for her to hear his side of the story – for her own sake, not his. He wanted her to feel better, to be able to move on. If that's what she wanted, that is.

It wasn't what he wanted, though.

He sighed and leaned back against the railing, craning his neck. He was exhausted. He had tried to sleep, but the bed felt so empty and it made no sense. Up until two months ago, he had slept in an empty bed every night for a year. He wasn't a dependent person; he got along fine by himself.

It was all these women in his life. They loved him and made him fall for them, then they left him. They wouldn't text or call him back. Adeline had come into his life like a tornado, and this was the destruction she had left behind her.

He was about to fall asleep against the railing when his phone rang and startled him. He rushed to pick it up in case it was her – but was only disappointed when he saw Joey's name across the screen.

“Hello?”

“Are you ever going to leave your self-imposed jail cell?” Joey asked.

“I did leave it,” Lance responded. “I'm outside right now, sitting on the balcony.”

“That's not leaving,” Joey said. “Even prisoners get yard time every now and then. You need to carry your ass inside, take a shower and get dressed, open your door, get in your car, turn the ignition and go do something.”

“Joey, I have nothing to do. I canceled all the appointments that I had. There's no point in going out to do nothing. I'm fine here.”

“You're reverting,” Joey said. “You're reverting back to exactly the same person you were when Mackenzie broke up with you. For God's sake Lance, you have to stop this.”

Lance sighed again. All week long, Joey, Joanna and Jamie-Lynn had been calling him to check up on him. They had been trying to get him out of his house or to socialize with them, fearful that he would lock himself up again. Maybe that was exactly what he was doing – but he didn't feel like having company. He didn't feel like having to pretend he was okay for them so they wouldn't coddle him.

“Joey, I'm not reverting. I swear. I don't feel like going out. I don't want to go somewhere just to give myself something to do; I can be bored in the comfort of my own home.”

“Come to breakfast with me or something,” Joey said. “We'll go for breakfast, we can go see a movie, go play basketball...something to get you out of the house. What do you say?”

“If I agree to go with you to breakfast, will you get off my back?” Lance said.

“Breakfast and basketball,” Joey said.

“I'm terrible at basketball. How is that going to help?”

“Well, I was going to surprise you and let you win but now you've ruined that,” Joey said. He wanted his friend to laugh, but he only got silence in return. “So, I'll whoop your ass. Then I'll beat you at basketball, too.”

Despite trying not to, Lance chuckled. “Yeah, that really tempts me to go with you.”

“I'll buy you French toast,” Joey said in a sing-song voice.

Lance groaned, swiping his hand down his face. Any time one of the other guys wanted him to do something, they tried to bribe him with French toast because it was always what he said his favorite food was in the magazines. He didn't think it was that great, but by now it had become a running joke.

“Fine,” Lance said with a sigh, giving in since the sun was coming up and starting to hurt his eyes. “Breakfast and one game of basketball – then I'm coming home to take a nap, Joe.”

“At least it's something,” Joey said.

Lance met him at the diner they had agreed on an hour later and found him already sitting down with coffee. Both of them wore their sunglasses and baseball hats, keeping a low profile. It was an added bonus that with the sunglasses, Joey wouldn't be able to see his sleepless eyes, and with the hat, he wouldn't be able to see his messy hair.

Joey called the waitress over so they could order, and Lance ordered a large platter of pancakes, eggs, and bacon. He didn't think he could eat it all, but he hoped that ordering that amount of food would at least keep Joey from saying that he wasn't eating, either. If he wanted to say anything, Joey held back until a few minutes after their food arrived, making small talk instead.

“Have you heard from her?” Joey said quietly. He didn't make eye contact with Lance, instead immediately shoving a forkful of eggs into his mouth.

“No,” Lance said. “She won't answer her phone.”

Joey was quiet for a few moments, most of it spent chewing and putting more food in his mouth. Lance picked at his food, occasionally taking a bite but feeling like he would throw up every time he swallowed.

“You could go to Los Angeles,” Joey finally said.

“And it starts,” Lance said with a smile. “I knew you couldn't go more than fifteen minutes.”

“I'm just saying,” Joey said. “She can ignore her phone as long as she can hold out. If you show up, she has to see you until you leave.”

“Or until she has me arrested for trespassing.”

“It's Los Angeles,” Joey said. “That gives you a good half an hour before the cops show up. Half an hour should be enough to tell her you're a moron.”

“Oh Joey, you don't have to be so nice to me,” Lance said sarcastically. “Besides, she already knows I'm a moron. That's what made her leave in the first place.”

Joey shrugged in agreement, shoveling more eggs into his mouth.

“I couldn't go to Los Angeles anyway. I don't know where she lives. My luck, her husband would be there and I'd leave in a body bag.”

“Doubtful. Her husband was never there for her before you came into the picture. You could probably walk right into her house and plant a flag claiming the place. Stephanie should know where she lives.”

“Stephanie will barely talk to me,” Lance said. “In a week, she's called me once, and that was to tell me to check my own damn email. When I asked if she had talked to Addy, she told me she had stuff to do and she couldn't talk.”

“You're in it with pretty much every woman in your life, aren't you?” Joey asked.

Lance turned up his nose to Joey in disapproval.

“Who can blame them, though,” he said. “I'd like to say it wasn't my fault but she wouldn't have left if she hadn't seen Kenzie kiss me. I feel played by my own life. I didn't kiss her, I didn't even want to kiss her – she took me by surprise. And I'm the one who's paying for it.”

“If Kenzie is the one who kissed you and not the other way around, why is Addy punishing you?”

“She doesn't know that's what happened,” he responded. “I was outside and she was inside. A twenty or thirty minute conversation that only left me angry at Kenzie, and that's the fifteen seconds that Addy had to walk into, of course.”

“Why didn't you tell her?” Joey asked.

“She wouldn't listen to me. She was so mad that she had her bags packed by the time I got home. It killed me to see her in tears because I hurt her, Joe.”

“Well, in her defense, you didn't leave her with a very sure feeling about this relationship that night.”

Joey went along continuing to eat, but Lance stopped with his fork in mid-air.

“Wait, what do you mean?” he asked. “She was having doubts?”

“Doubts that you put in her head, idiot,” Joey said, pointing his finger at Lance from across the table. “She was unsure whether you wanted to marry her. Telling her that maybe she feels forced to take off her wedding rings and in a year she might regret leaving her husband for you. When you've got the runaway bride walking down the aisle, you don't hand her the reigns to a horse and a one-way ticket out of the country, dude.”

“I didn't mean it like that. I didn't want her to feel pressured into marrying me because I tried too hard. I had no idea she felt that way.”

“You didn't give her a chance to tell you,” Joey said.

“So you talked to her about all this?” Lance asked. “And you didn't tell me?”

“We talked about all this that night, in fact.”

“It's nice to know that my fiancee talked to you more about our relationship than she did to me,” Lance said.

Joey detected a bite in Lance's tone.

“And let me guess,” he said with a chuckle, “you're mad at me for that? Because that's easier than admitting you were wrong again and you fucked up?”

“Why do you always have to call me out like that?” Lance asked.

“Because she did,” Joey responded. “Because she called you out when you screwed up, and you actually listened to her.”

Joey went on eating, but Lance sat his fork down and thought – specifically, about the time she had called him out on his poor attitude after he had Lisette stay the night at his house. She did call him out on his crap, constantly and consistently. She looked sweet and innocent, and she was, but her bite matched her bark. He had fallen in love with that.

“Go ahead and get mad at me,” Joey continued. “Maybe that will make you get your ass on a plane and go find her.”

Lance knew he was right. It was no one's fault but his own that Adeline had left. At any point during the chain of events that night, he could have made a different choice that would have changed everything. His own doubts about their relationship had gotten to him, and unknowingly, he had allowed them to dictate his fate.

“I gotta go,” he told Joey, pulling out his wallet and removing a twenty dollar bill, setting it in front of him.

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” Joey asked, surprised.

“I've got some thinking to do.”

Lance quickly put his wallet back in his pocket and exited the diner before Joey could say another word, leaving him partially dumbfounded.

“Idiot,” Joey said, shaking his head after his friend had left.

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It was almost dark by the time Lance got back to his apartment building. He had spent a long day walking around the park, thinking to himself. He would have stayed out longer, but it had started lightly snowing and by evening the snow had picked up.

He had forgotten gloves and a scarf at his apartment, and by the time the elevator carried him to his floor, he could feel the numbness in his fingers start to subside. Cupping his hands over his mouth one more time and blowing into them to release some heat, he reached his door and was about to reach for his keys.

“Lance.”

He heard the female voice from a bit down the hall, and he thought he might be hallucinating at first – it sounded like her. When he turned to see her, his heart fell.

“Kenzie,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” she asked. “I came to find you.”

“Wanted to screw up my next relationship before it even began?” he said jokingly, only half-amused.

“I deserved that,” she said with a smile. “I heard she went back to Los Angeles. Lance, I'm sorry.”

“Not half as sorry as I am.”

He put the key in the door and had the knob half-turned by the time she walked up to him.

“Can we talk? Please?”

He released his hand from the door to turn to her.

“Last time you wanted to 'talk', by the end of it I had your face pressed up against mine,” he said. “That's not talking.”

“I really am sorry.”

“You messed everything up for me, Kenz,” he said, looking her in her eyes. “Addy left, she won't talk to me or answer my phone calls, return my texts, I don't even know if she's coming back.”

“She was married. It was wrong.”

He smiled. “Oh, okay. Because kissing a guy you knew was engaged isn't. I got it now. Next time I question whether something is moral, I'll come to you for a consultation first, okay?”

He put his hand on the knob to open the door, but her gentle hand stopped him.

“I did it to protect you,” she said quietly. “You have to believe that.”

When he turned to look at her, he saw a different person than the one that had approached him at the party. It was as close to the real, genuine Mackenzie that had left his apartment that day as he could recognize. She had a strange fear in her eyes, a fear that he couldn't place but that made him uneasy.

“I didn't mean to hurt you, but I love you too much to see you get hurt...by her,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “Please, let me come in so I can talk to you.”

He was hesitant at first; after all, this was the woman who had managed to ruin his life twice so far. But after looking into her eyes for a few moments, he felt a wave of emotions coming back to him – trust being one that he didn't expect.

He sighed, and finally opening the door, he waved his hand to invite her in.

“Would you like anything?” he asked after they were both inside, closing and locking the door behind him.

“I've had one hell of a day,” she responded after throwing her coat over a chair. “I could go for some wine, if it wouldn't be too much.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No problem. I'll be back.”

As he watched her sit down on his couch and he walked into the kitchen, he questioned exactly why he had invited her into his apartment.

“Joey's right; you're a moron,” he mumbled to himself as he walked to the cabinet.

He pulled out two glasses and the bottle of wine, and as he was about to reach for the corkscrew in the cabinet, his eye caught sight of the label. Pinot grigio – a favorite of only one person he knew. He had made sure he had this bottle before they left for Mississippi, to have when they got back from the party on New Year's. He had hoped they would have something to celebrate.

“Fucking idiot,” he said as he grabbed the corkscrew angrily. “One woman in your life who makes you happy, finally makes you feel complete. You had to go and screw it up. Now she's gone.”

Now she's gone, he thought as he popped the cork on the wine. And she's not coming back.