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“That is not why I said it. Where are you going?”
“To England!”
“Seriously? When?” That infuriated me. “You’re just going to walk out before we even discuss this any further?”
“There is nothing to discuss. I’m going to get a flight for as soon as possible.”
She couldn’t be serious. Just like that? It was so abrupt and wrong. “There are a million things to discuss.” That she would just dismiss me and our relationship was not cool. “If you book a flight today, it’s over, Felicia. I’m not kidding. You don’t get to walk out like that.”
She stopped in the hallway and turned slowly. “You don’t get to throw out ultimatums. I feel like you need to retract that statement.”
She sounded icy cold, which annoyed me even further. I was the one getting done dirty. Hadn’t she thrown out an ultimatum?
“No,” I said and it wasn’t even totally out of stubbornness. “You can’t make life-altering decisions without me and expect I’m just going to be cool with it. By the way, you accused me of poking holes in a fucking condom and I’m supposed to just be fine with that but I can’t be upset with you moving across the ocean?”
Her answer was to walk into our bedroom and slam the door shut.
I sipped my coffee and stewed, staring at the unlit Christmas tree. My life had gone from bland to amazing to shit all in less than forty days. That had to be a record.
My anger was preventing me from being heartbroken at the moment, but I knew that was going to show up later like a punch in the eye.
Wandering through the mess of high-top tables and chairs, I found the bar station.
Uncapping the whiskey, I splashed some in my coffee.
I looked at the Christmas gift I’d wrapped and put under the tree for Felicia and added more whiskey.
* * *
I begged off Christmas Eve dinner out with my parents by saying Felicia and I were exhausted from the engagement party. They bought it. Sean didn’t.
He showed up and found me sitting alone in a dark apartment, surrounded by the catering crap. I was eating leftover crab puffs and getting filthy, stinking drunk.
“Dude,” he said when he opened the door to my apartment and came in. “You’re actually breaking my heart. This is pathetic.”
I didn’t really care. “Want a drink?”
“Yes.” He walked into the living room. “Now explain to me why you’re drinking alone in the dark twenty-four hours after your engagement party?”
“We had a fight and Felicia’s going back to England.” Then I frowned. “You know what? It wasn’t even a fight. She just decided she’s going back.”
“So the ‘immersion dating while living together’ experiment didn’t work out?”
I shrugged. My chest hurt. It was like someone had reached into my ribcage and pulled my heart out with their bare hands. “I thought it did. I thought she wanted to be with me but she wanted to go back to England and wait for the official fiancée visa to go through before coming back. Because she doesn’t have a permanent visa.”
“Ah, now it all makes sense.” Sean sat down with a heavy sigh and looked around at the cluttered coffee table. “Jesus, look at this place. Well, that doesn’t sound like a breakup to me. She just wanted to make sure nothing went wrong with the application process. I can’t fault her for that.”
“She’s pregnant.” I tossed back the rest of my bourbon in one hot, burning swallow.
“Oh, shit.”
“I put an offer on a townhouse two days ago. Yesterday she finds out she’s pregnant. Today she says she’s going to England. It’s a big fucking mess.”
“That visa will come through in a couple of months. She’ll be back here way before the baby is born. Don’t stress out. It will work out.”
“Except that she accused me of getting her pregnant on purpose and said I should have made a speech at the party saying I love her. No, not a speech. A declaration of love. Then I said if she left against my wishes I was done with our relationship.” I rubbed my forehead. “It fucking went off the rails, man.”
“Do you love her?” he asked.
