I couldn’t think about any of that right now.
I stepped up to him and wrapped my arms around his waist. His arms hung loosely at his sides. I let go and stepped back, smiling sadly, chin trembling.
“You need to go back home to the kids. To Agata and the Vicarage. You need to stay on track. I care for you, Charlie. More than you may ever know. But I will not be the reason you derail your life after you’ve worked so hard.”
I walked away.
I was done with LA.
I was going home to reality.
“Kate,” he gasped.
This time I didn’t turn around.
* * *
Charlie
I staredat the various alcohol bottles in front of me. So many options. Cheap or top shelf? Straight up or mixed in a cocktail?
So many ways to obliterate your entire life in just a few pours.
Christ, I missed Kate so much already. She’d probably not even gotten to Harrison’s house to pick up her stuff yet. I’d watched her go and then stumbled away from the studio and into this dank hole-in-the-wall. Just this morning, I’d held Kate in bed and explored her body thoroughly. How could it still be the same day when nothing when everything was wrong?
This early in the day, there was only me and a barfly. He ignored me, talking to the woman working behind the counter instead. I was glad for it. The bartender had glanced over to me several times. She said she’d be over to take my order in a minute, twenty minutes ago, when I first came in.
Kate herself said it had all been a fairy tale. Too good to be true. I was a few days of vacation for her, never meant to be more.
“Pfft,” I said loudly.
She accused me of manipulating the situation for control. It wasn’t about control. It was about protecting Kate. I had been right. She didn’t see that now, but she would. This stuff with the media might blow over if I let her go now, but if we were together all the time, this would be her life every single day. She said she didn’t mind, but it would never stop, not until she gave up on me and went back to a simple life. Nobody was worth the trouble.
Certainly not a reclusive recovering alcoholic.
Recovering for how long?
“She didn’t understand I was protecting her,” I said out loud, to myself.
The bartender sighed but still didn’t come over. God, I was embarrassing even when sober.
There was one thing I hadn’t considered when being with Kate. For as good as everything felt with her, the pain of not having her by my side was debilitating. I could have never come, could have never known how sweet and lovely she was in person. I wouldn’t have known that the chemistry we felt in our communications was a thousand times more powerful in person. That connection was not something I’d ever had with any other person. What were the chances? It was miraculous. She was miraculous. I shouldn’t have left Devon. I shouldn’t have come to LA.
It would have been so much better for everyone.
Everything hurt. My whole body felt achy and feverish from the second she gave me the goodbye hug that felt as final as the series finale of TF. It was over. I might never be okay again.
It always astounded me how fast things could be taken away. How quickly everything turned to shite. You could lose a career in a few months. A home in a week. A sports car in one drive. And the most important person in the world in just fifteen minutes. I was familiar with instant loss. Everything gone in a flash and would take years to get back. As if the faster you lost it, the harder it would be to earn it back. It had taken me years to build myself up to where I was now. And that wasn’t anything at all. I had a little house with a mean woman and some chickens.
My throat tightened unexpectedly at the thought of Lucy, Adam, and Freddy. Especially sweet, stupid Freddy.
I gripped my phone in my hand. Dropped my head to rest on it.
It wasn’t nothing though, was it? My life in Devon wassomething. Maybe not to everyone, but to me.
I hated hurting this bad.
I hated the pity in my best friend’s eyes when I told them about my relapse. I hated how it made me see myself. Hated how I hurt the people who, for some bloody reason, gave any fucks about me at all. I hated that I always seemed to feel things deeper than other people.
