AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That’s it, Fay. That’s the way it has to be for me.”
If he had slapped me in the face, he couldn’t have hurt me more than he did with those words. I loved him. It was something I had suspected before this awful meeting, but now that he was telling me that he was leaving, I knew it without a shadow of a doubt. I loved him, and for the second time, he was leaving me.
All of a sudden, I was sure I was going to have a complete meltdown if I didn’t get out of his house. I stood up abruptly, so quickly that I knocked my glass of wine onto the floor where it shattered into tiny pieces. Under any other circumstances, I would have stopped to clean it up, but at that moment, I couldn’t stop. It was like I was being chased by something terrible, and the worst part of it was that the something chasing me was inside of me. So instead of cleaning it up, I ran out his front door and just kept running. Some silly, naive part of me kept expecting him to chase me, and it was something I held onto up until I got to the diner.
When I walked inside and saw Courtney staring at me, I knew it was all over. I collapsed into a heap on the floor. She hurried towards me, scooping me up as best she could and cradling me in her arms. Dimly, I could hear the man from the nature magazine somewhere behind her, asking what was wrong, and if there wasn’t something he could do.
Of course, he would be here to witness my fall. Why wouldn’t he be? It was like the last nail in my coffin, the last bit of proof of Courtney having been right this entire time. Maybe if I hadn’t been such an idiot, hadn’t been so sure that it would be Neil and nobody else, I wouldn’t feel so much like I was going to die. I would have done what Courtney told me to and learned that there were all kinds of decent guys out there, and it wouldn’t feel like Neil’s leaving was the end of my chance at love. There were plenty of maybes, but none of them changed the fact that my heart was breaking. Instead of subsiding, my sobbing only grew worse, and Courtney pulled me in tighter, doing her best to comfort the comfortless.
“What is it, Fay?” she whispered fiercely into my ear, rocking me like I was a distraught child and not a twenty-six-year-old woman. “What’s the matter? What happened?”
“You were right!” I sobbed, feeling like it would kill me to say it out loud. “You were right the whole time!”
“Right about what? I don’t understand, lady. Right about what? What’s going on?”
“Right about Neil. He’s leaving. He’s getting on his stupid private plane, and he’s leaving. For all I know, he’s gone right now. He’s leaving, and he’s not coming back. He’s not ever coming back.”
The two of us sat there that way for a long time, Courtney only getting us both up to take me out onto the porch and call somebody to come and work for the both of us. She snagged a bottle of liquor, and the two of us passed it back and forth, getting drunk and feeling like shit. When we heard the incredibly loud sound of a plane taking off and flying away, we didn’t say a word.
Chapter 20: Neil
“What the hell, boy?” Eli asked. “I thought you were long gone. We heard your plane take off, brother. It’s not like there’s a bunch of them coming in and out of Ashville.”
“Who do you mean by we?”
“I mean everyone, man. That was what, a week ago? Everyone knew you were gone the minute you took off. The whole fucking town was talking about it. Even if I had somehow managed to miss it all, Courtney would have filled me in on it. We’ve been spending a lot of time together. I think I might have something there.”
“Good. That’s good. Try not to fuck it up, okay? It’s the worst goddamned feeling in the world when you do.”
I wasn’t sure if Eli was right about the timing of everything or not. The time since I had gotten onto my plane and flown away from Ashville was all mostly a blur. I could vaguely remember speaking to Fay with a nasty, asshole tone, and her running out of my house in tears.
At the time, it hadn’t mattered to me, not any of it. The only thing I could think about was that old man’s words, telling me to get out or else I would regret it for the rest of my life. I had been so sure he was right, I hadn’t once stopped to think that maybe it would be the other way around. I hadn’t stopped to think that maybe I would regret losing Fay for the rest of my life, although I was sure that a much smarter man would have seen that immediately.
I had been such a jackass that I had actually convinced myself that there were plenty of women out there just like Fay, that she was nothing all that special. It had taken me about two days to realize how wrong I was, and once I had realized it, I had known I had made the biggest mistake of my life. And I had done it for the second fucking time! I had done it for the second time, and how many times did I think I was going to get away with it, anyway? Just how many times did I think I was going to be able to walk all over her and break her heart before she was done with me once and for all?
I wanted to ask Eli these questions and more, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t ask because I was terrified of what answer he would give me. So I settled on a question I hoped he would recognize as a stand in for all of the rest of them.
“How is she, Eli?”
“Come on, man. Why do you ask me that?”
“Because I want to know, Eli. Christ, why else would I ask?”
“How do you think she is? You acted like a jackass, man. I’m a guy, and even I could see that. She’s been a wreck. She threw out all of those romance books she used to like to read. And you should hear the way she talks now. It’s not good, man. Courtney’s been having to work to keep her from turning into a constant partier, doing all of those things she’s always avoided. It’s been hard.”
“Shit.”
“Why are you here, Neil? I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to have you, but why are you here really? Because if you’re just going to fuck with her head, don’t. Courtney’ll kill you, and she’ll want me to help, and I don’t want to be in the middle of that. And Fay’s a good girl. She doesn’t deserve any more of this shit. No more, all right?”
I nodded at him, but I wasn’t really listening. I was already half out of his shop and headed down the street towards the diner. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, could feel it going so hard it felt like it might actually explode. For the first time, I was confronting the very real possibility that I was too late to make any difference, and it was a possibility that scared the shit out of me.
There was also a pretty good chance that Courtney was going to claw my eyes out, but that was something I was willing to take. I shoved my hand deep down into my pocket, kept it there for comfort, and shoved open the door to the diner. The first person I saw was Courtney, and she was very clearly not happy to see me.
“Oh no! Hell no, Neil. Not again. You’re not doing this to her for a third time. I’ll go to jail before I let you do that.”
“Please, Courtney. I’m not here to hurt her.”
“Ha! Oh really? And I’m just supposed to believe that? You’re so full of shit. You know that? I tried to warn her. I knew you were only going to fuck her up, but she was
