Chapter 26 – I Guess This Is Goodbye

Los Angeles – Nine days before wedding

Adeline laid in her bed with her door closed and watched outside the window. The day's last sunlight filtered in through the blinds, casting a shadow on part of the room. The trees outside swayed in the light wind, and she used her fingernail to repeatedly trace the scroll pattern stitched in silky thread on her pillowcase. Droplets dotted the fabric underneath her head in various places, the gray darkened with her tears.

These days, her bedroom was the only place she could come to get the privacy away from Stephanie to cry freely. She loved her best friend, but at the mere sight of a single tear Adeline knew she would go into hyper-drive and try to convince her to call him. Stephanie knew nothing about his phone call and Adeline intended to keep it that way.

She didn't know what to think about it, truthfully. She had been busy on the computer when her phone rang that night, and since he hadn't called in so long she hadn't been screening calls for the past few days before it. She picked it up without thinking about it, without even looking at the screen.

When she heard his voice, she had been too surprised to say anything. If she had wanted to say anything, she wouldn't have known what to say to him. She heard it in his voice that he had been drinking – a lot. His words slurred together and his voice lulled, like he hadn't slept in days.

And when he started talking to her as if he didn't know she was on the other end, she realized that he thought he was talking to her voicemail. She was relieved; even though it made her a coward, it meant she didn't have to say anything to him. She let him ramble on and on, listening the entire time until the phone inexplicably clicked on the other end and her screen told her the call had ended.

It surprised her how she had lost control of herself the minute she heard him start to cry. It happened in an instant, her own tears coming as soon as she heard it in his voice. Never once in the time that she had known him had he acted like that. In fact, he had built up so many walls to keep those emotions out, she didn't know he was capable of them.

It had left her confused for days. Men who were happy with their fiancees didn't drunkenly call their exes in tears, and since he had stopped calling after Mackenzie had come back into his life, she assumed he was happy. At the same time, he had been unusually and outrageously drunk, transposing words and bursting into tears.

She had waited for him to call again the next day, but that call never came. So she could only assume the random late-night phone call had been a complete mistake – one that he realized he was making the minute he said 'I love you' and he hung up. And for her, that hurt worse than the phone call itself did.

She heard the front door close, and she buried her face in the pillow to let a few more tears slip out. The door closing meant that Stephanie was home from whatever had kept her out for the past few hours, and she would have no more private time for today. She sniffled and shifted herself to move from the bed, grabbing a tissue from the bedside table to quickly wipe her nose and her tears away – all evidence that she had anything on her mind gone from view.

As she heard footsteps approaching up the stairs and down the hall, she threw the tissue on the table and swiped under her eyes, hoping to diminish any puffiness that might be there. The door opened as she took her last sniffle.

“Oh me, oh my,” Stephanie said as she came through the door, far more cheerful than Adeline herself. “That butcher at your supermarket is one hot piece of meat – pun intended.”

When Adeline didn't respond, Stephanie turned to look at her.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Aside from you not knowing general etiquette and how to knock on the door, no,” Adeline responded.

“Have you been in here the whole time I've been gone?”

“Not the whole time,” she said, grateful that she didn't have to put on her poker face since it wasn't a complete lie. “I've been laying down. I have a headache.”

That wasn't a lie either. The tearing up had brought on a massive throbbing behind her eyes and in her sinuses, which had only made her want to cry more.

“Come downstairs and I'll get you some aspirin and some tea,” Stephanie said, her hand already on the doorknob. “Oh and I find that a little bit of concealer under the eyes really hides that puffy look from all the crying.”

Adeline looked up at her friend.

“You should try a little harder to hide it,” Stephanie said, and walked out the door.

Adeline sighed and grabbed another tissue from the box, wiping away the rest of the tears from the corners of her eyes. She grabbed both used tissues and threw them in the trash can beside her bed, and stood up and headed over to her dresser's mirror.

Looking at her reflection, she saw what Stephanie meant. She wasn't hiding it as well as she thought she had been. Her under eyelids were puffed up and dark from crying and lack of sleep. Her eyes were also bloodshot instead of the pure white they were normally. Her cheeks were streaked with tear tracks which she wiped away. Her clothes were rumpled from laying in bed the past couple of hours, and she looked horribly under-dressed in a white t-shirt and dark blue sweatpants.

“I'm the poster child for the romantically heartbroken,” she mumbled to herself as she tugged on her shirt and waved her hand at herself in the mirror before she walked out of the door.

Downstairs, she found Stephanie in the kitchen at the stove minding a tea kettle. A bottle of aspirin was already placed at the island for Adeline as she walked in and sat down at one of the stools.

“Have I told you yet that you're wearing out your welcome in my house?” Adeline asked.

“In two weeks, it won't be your house anymore anyway, so unless Marc shows up at that door to kick me out himself, you're shit out of luck sister.”

Stephanie turned around and smiled as she put a mug in front of Adeline.

“Besides, you need someone here to take care of you,” she said.

“I'm twenty-seven, I think I'm capable of taking care of myself, believe it or not,” Adeline responded as she took two pills out of the bottle.

“You're capable, but it always helps to have a good friend around when you're heartbroken.” Stephanie sat down in the chair next to her. “Watching sad movies and eating your own weight in cookies is better when you share it with someone you love – which by the way, isn't a lot of cookies for you. Have you been eating?”

Adeline shrugged. She couldn't say she had been starving herself, but her appetite hadn't been the same recently.

“I don't eat when I'm not hungry,” she responded.

Stephanie sighed.

“Can we try something?” she asked, looking her in the eyes. “Can we try not lying anymore, or giving vague answers that aren't the truth but aren't a complete lie? I know you're not eating well, I know you're hurting, I know you've spent the past few days crying when I'm not looking, and you suck at trying to hide it all.”

Adeline chuckled as Stephanie ran two fingers through her hair.

“There is no shame in admitting to me that you're sad, Addy,” Stephanie said with a mothering tone in her voice. “I'm your friend. I know I'm a bit persistent--”

“You're a flat-out pain in the ass,” Adeline said, lowering her eyes.

“That hurts,” Stephanie responded, sticking out her bottom lip in a slight pout.

The two of them stayed silent as she went on running her fingers through her friend's hair, fixing unruly curls. The simple feel of gentle fingers was enough to make the tears start coming again.

“I know he called,” Stephanie said lowly.

“You didn't snoop through my phone, did you?”

“My fingers might have accidentally picked it up,” Stephanie said. “They also might have accidentally found your recent calls list and scrolled down through it. I'm not saying they did, but they might have.”

“You're nosy.”

“I'm a flat-out pain in the ass, remember?”

Adeline found her emotions breaking down so quickly that all she could do was lean into Stephanie's shoulder and let the wall break down. Stephanie quickly put her arm around her and rubbed her shoulder. They remained that way, completely silent, until the kettle whistled.

Stephanie got up to fill both of their mugs, and Adeline used that time to collect herself and wipe away her tears once again. Her headache hadn't completely diminished, but she could feel the medicine already starting to kick in.

“Tonight, I'm taking you out,” Stephanie said as she sat back down with both of their mugs. “And you're not fighting me about it.”

“I'm not feeling up to going out,” Adeline said.

“No, you're not, but sometimes you have to make yourself do things you don't feel like doing. I'm making dinner then we're going out to some crappy club with crappy music and crappy men. You're going to meet some guy that you have absolutely no interest in, but you're going to talk to him anyway so you can say that you did it.”

“That will help me how?” Adeline questioned.

“If you don't start going out and trying to meet people, the neighbors will think I'm your new lesbian lover,” Stephanie said.

“And that's a bad thing?”

“I love you my dear, but not that much,” Stephanie responded with a smile.

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It had been a long time since she had made herself do something forcefully, on principle alone. She didn't want to be at this club, but she realized that Stephanie was right. Without a job and without her husband, she had done a lot of sitting at home doing nothing except watching TV and moping. Even as down as she had felt lately, she knew that did no one any good.

She sat at the bar through an entire Beyonce song, wondering what everybody thought was so great about her, until the end of the song when she found herself humming about putting a ring on it.

“Fantastic,” she mumbled to herself. She signaled to the bartender, who came right over. “Vodka martini, please – feel free to go heavy on the vodka,” she said to him.

“You're either a very gutsy woman who can handle her alcohol, or you're trying to forget something.”

She turned her body slightly towards the voice behind her. A man in his late-twenties with dark auburn hair smiled back at her.

“Maybe it's both,” she said to him before she turned back around towards the bar. The last thing she wanted to deal with tonight was someone trying to impress her with their list of bad pick-up lines.

“In that case,” the man said as he sat down on the stool next to her, “maybe you should go with the vodka straight.” He held out his hand to her. “My name's Martin.”

She reluctantly held out her left hand to greet him.

“I'm Adeline,” she said.

“I'm assuming what you're trying to forget has to do with a man,” he said. “And it probably has something to do with that ring on your finger.”

She looked at the ring on her hand and sighed.

“Promise ring? Engagement?” he asked.

“Engagement,” she said.

“At least you're not married,” he said. “I always end up hitting on the married women without knowing it.”

She smiled. “Well, technically, Martin...I am married.”

“Shouldn't you have that on your other finger then? With your wedding ring?” he asked.

She held up her right hand to show him. “I took that off. I filed for divorce about three weeks ago.”

“And you're still wearing your engagement ring?” he asked.

“Different man, different engagement,” she said. “Not the one I'm divorcing.”

“So let me get this straight,” he said. “You're married, but you filed for divorce. And now you're engaged, but to a different man?”

“I was,” she said. “He went back to his ex three weeks ago – and he's marrying her in nine days.”

“Oh honey,” he said, motioning to the bartender immediately. “You need another drink.”

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By the time an hour had passed, Adeline was feeling a bit fuzzy from the drinks she had consumed. She had been talking to Martin the whole time and he was a nice guy, but she was pretty sure deep inside he had ulterior motives.

She had no idea where Stephanie had ran off to – and she was feeling betrayed, because she could use rescuing before the alcohol took over and tonight became one more mistake in her life. Now more than ever she wished that Lance was here to pull her away and take her home, to put her into bed like he had done the night of his Halloween party.

She had tried to avoid slipping into thoughts of what that night would be like because there were so many ways it could go, and it was unfair to Martin to be thinking of another man when she was honestly enjoying his company. Not to mention, she had to remind herself several times that she was living in the here and now instead of that slightly blurry dream in her head – but the dream was so tempting.

“My luck that the one time I find a beautiful, single girl in a club, she has so much baggage she needs an extra closet to put it all in,” he said with a smile.

“I'm so sorry, Martin,” she replied.

“Oh I'm not sorry,” he said. “Baggage or not, this is the best conversation I've had with a woman at a bar in two years. Dating in the city is rough.”

“I wouldn't know,” she said. “I haven't tried. I don't think I'm ready. I needed tonight to convince myself that I could take the first step to getting over it, if that's even possible.”

“I know how that goes,” he said, stirring his drink with the fancy swizzle stick the club had given him. “I've had my fair share of heartbreak.”

Another Beyonce song came on and Adeline groaned.

“I guess I should probably be going, it's getting late,” he said, and she could pick up on his reluctance. He didn't want to leave her.

She couldn't help but think about when she had finally picked up her phone to text Lance a week ago. All she could muster was congrats, so she could let go of the guilt that she knew would come later if she didn't at least congratulate him. When he had sent back a thanks, she had sat in her bedroom and cried for half an hour. She had considered responding, maybe asking him how he was doing and asking if he was happy, but she was afraid to hear the answer, and had chickened out before she could press the send button.

For a moment, she wondered why she was hanging onto Lance so hard. He had obviously moved on from her. He would be getting married in a little over a week. He was probably in his bed right now, laying next to Mackenzie, holding her like he used to hold Adeline, close and tight to his body. He was probably warm and content, while she was cold and lonely in this bar – cold and lonely all over.

She couldn't even hate him for it. She couldn't hate him for choosing the person he loved more. If she had the chance, she might have done the same thing.

Regardless of how she felt now, or how much it hurt, she knew it was time to move on – or at least try.

“My friend seems to have bailed on me,” she said, feeling her throat tighten. “Do you think you could give me a ride home, Martin?”

“I can do that,” he said with a nod.

They both pushed their drinks aside and stepped down from the stools, gathering their belongings. He reached behind him and it startled her when he grabbed her hand, lightly in a non-committal way – but it was enough to set in motion a string of feelings that she wasn't sure she was ready for.

But some things, whether she was ready for them or not, she had to force herself to do – otherwise she would never manage to move on.

“I guess this is my goodbye,” she whispered to herself as her fingers tightened into his and she let him lead her away to the door.