AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I didn’t—” I nearly defend myself, I nearly explain to her simply because she’s more than a boss and a friend, she’s someone who will need answers. It’s who she is; I should know because it’s who I used to be.
My shoulders rise as my lungs fill with a steadying breath. “I make no statement. I will not participate in the investigation and I have no desire to refute any complaints that have been brought forward.”
“Miss Jones, you have to know,” David Perry speaks. He’s another lawyer, older, the same age my father would be.
“I accept whatever decision the board makes.”
“She is not well,” Claire says once again, although she doesn’t rise from her seat and her fingers lace together in front of her.
All I can think, as the discussion continues without my voice being needed, is that I loved this. I loved all of this for so long. It’s yet another love that has turned to goodbye.
With their voices muted and my vision blurring, the crack of wood split with the hiss of a fire envelops me. The flames rage in the back of my mind, wild and untamed. A piece of my sanity whispers, it’s unethical as well. My passion is buried the soot of what happened in the last months. My fervor is no longer logical, it is not black and white and line by line of precedence and rules. The burning need for justice is still there, not even buried beneath the surface, I feel it still and I doubt that will ever change.
Regardless of what these men and woman say today or tomorrow, I am not fit any longer, but not for any reason they could possibly imagine.
Maybe if they knew our story, all of it from every one of us, they’d realize I should have never been in a courtroom. I wasn’t meant for a life of what is right and wrong. My life was meant for one moment, one travesty that created a ripple of transgressions.
Cody
It’s not the worst thing in the world, I think to myself.
As if resigning is what’s on my mind. As if that’s what has me staring forward at a battered dartboard across the bar. The lively room is at odds with every emotion that’s dim and muted inside of me. This constant loss that seems to only hollow out more and more of me as the days wear on.
I have nothing left. That’s all I can think. Every piece of my world crumbled so quickly and without any chance at all of me stopping the wreckage. It was foolish for me to think I had any control at all or that I could keep up with the lies and sins.
With every tick of the clock, I accept my role and how I set the pieces into motion. I let each cog of the wheel turn, only watching as the time passed and the inevitable occurred.
There’s a rousing cheer from my left, a group of men happily clinking their bottles together in celebration of whatever just played on the televisions that line that wall.
At one point, I would pretend to share their sentiment, for no other reason than to blend in so I could continue to hide my secrets in plain sight.
Now, though, I seem to prefer fading. It feels … justified to say the least.
Ghosts of a glass filled with white wine and an easy laugh sit at the end of the bar where I first laid eyes on Delilah. I knew then the person I was and still, I tainted her. I remember how she twirled a curl of her hair between her fingers that night years ago. I remember how she glanced at me. I remember thinking I could never give in. And yet … I did. Now all I have left are memories that never should have been.
Even as another patron takes the seat next to mine, a beer in both hands, one for him and one for the woman beside him, all I think about is her.
The scent of white wine and florals that drifted from her when we sat across from one another at a high-top table like this. The night she first kissed me will haunt me forever.
For what it did to her and the series of events that followed, I can’t bring myself to feel anything but a deluge of regret.
“There you are.” Delilah’s voice is amiable, which doesn’t fit right on her. Even the grace of a gentle smile in greeting only adds to the loneliness.
With her small hand raised, the bartender recognizes her and brings over a glass. All the while we wait in silence and I drink her in.
“How are you?” I ask the simple question and I never realized how much it means to me. To go days without knowing and suffering in each moment that I question it, it truly carries the weight of the world in three small words that are so commonly spoken without regard.
