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I don't sleep the whole night, largely because I wonder if he's going to show up for the next day's shift. I don't admit it, but there's a part of me...a large part of me...that hopes he does.
The same as the day before, Liam arrives about an hour after my shift starts. From the sneaky way that he and Bethany are eyeing me, I'm sure that the traitor has told him my entire week's shift schedule. I ignore him again, but I do have Bethany bring him one of the chocolate chip cookies that the cook just pulled out of the oven. His limo trails me home again that night as I walk home after my shift.
The rest of the week passes the same, and I can feel my resolve weakening. Maybe we could just be friends. Maybe we could even be more. What if this is the time that I finally don't disappear? What if I can grow old here?
Just as soon as the thoughts come in my mind, do I push them out. I've learned the hard way that love doesn't have an ending. You don't turn it off or change its path. You forever love and suffer with it when it's lost. Time will dull the pain into an ache, but the hole it leaves behind is an open wound forever. I feel the beginning of a breach.
I can't let that happen.
The next week I get into the limo and allow Liam to take me home. I don't say a word to him, but it feels like I'm letting the proverbial gates fly open. '"It's getting colder,"is the excuse I give myself to not waste a perfectly good...and warm, limo ride.
We do this for weeks, and by the end of the month I've decided that Liam should be nominated for sainthood for sitting in a greasy diner for weeks on end when he should be in the gleaming glass skyscraper that I know his company inhabits, thanks to my obsessive google search of all things Liam.
I'm wiping off the counters in anticipation of the diner opening, when I finally decide that I'm going to talk to him. At the very least, I need to try and come up with a better explanation as to why I'm trying to stay away from him. I owe him that much for his efforts.
Despite my silence over the past few weeks, I feel much closer to Liam than before. He has become quite talkative during our nightly limo rides, chatting away, apparently nonplussed by the fact that I don't ever open my mouth in return. In spite of my best intentions, he has managed to worm his way into my heart to where at least I feel like I have to be nice to him.
The time when Liam usually shows up at the diner comes and goes, and he's nowhere to be found. Every time the door chimes, I immediately look up, hoping that it's him. My heart squeezes tightly when it's not. The rest of the day is nothing but disappointment, and I realize what a colossal idiot I am to have pushed him away. Or maybe this is an answer to my prayers, and I'll be able to avoid all my past mistakes and save Liam and I the inevitable heartache. Regardless it's painful in a way that I didn't predict.
The walk home that night feels almost as lonely as all those first times waking up in a new time and place. I'm both devastated and furious that Liam has the ability to make me feel this way. As Boston is prone to do during the fall, a steady drizzle starts that accompanies me the whole way.
I pick up a box of wine on the way home, intent on drowning my sorrows. I walk into my trashy apartment, and immediately unscrew the lid on the box, choosing to drink straight from it instead of bothering with a glass. I grimace at the taste and think longingly of the exquisite wines I've had the privilege to drink in the past.
As I'm prone to do when I drink, my mind spirals into all the dark thoughts I do everything to avoid. It's like looking through someone else's eyes, not my own. A looking glass fogs the outer corners, so everything resembles an old movie. I see James head over heels in love with the woman he made his queen after I disappeared. Instead of being arranged, it's a love match and their passion surpasses anything he thought he felt for me. I envision Will dying in a plane blasted out of the sky or captured by the Nazis and tortured to his death, his last thought of the fiancé who stopped writing him. I think of Landon spiraling into madness, the darkness that I always sensed inside of him taking over his rational thought. I think of Gabriel and him dying of a broken heart in our cottage that overlooked the sea. I think of...I stop my line of ruminations right there, the next idea too painful to think about without wanting to carve my heart out and tear it into a million pieces.
Liam giving up is a blessing, a way to save me from my exhausted heart.
The wine makes me blissfully drowsy, and I fall into a fitful sleep where fire and gunshots and gravestones haunt my dreams.
The pounding on my door startles me awake.
"Juliet," calls a familiar voice as the pounding starts up again.
It sounds like Liam, but why is he here? I go to the door and open it, and he comes bursting through, wrapping me up tight against his chest.
"Don't pull away," he says. "I need to hold you."
In my drunk fog, I'm having difficulty understanding what he's saying.
"Where were you today?" I blurt out, feeling so very vulnerable in that moment.
"We had an emergency at the office. Reports came in that one of our senior VPs had been sexually assaulting multiple members of our staff. It's a nightmare for any company, but especially one that is going to be going public soon. I should have sent someone to the diner since you've refused to give me your phone number. When I realized that my driver hadn't gone to pick you up tonight to make sure you got home safe, I almost lost my mind. Please forgive me?"
I feel so stupid for being so upset. It's ridiculous to expect someone to wait at a crappy diner day in and day out in the first place, but to freak out when they don't show up one day? I feel impossibly ridiculous.
"There's nothing to forgive," I tell him, before bursting into tears.
Liam kicks off his shoes, and then sweeps me into his arms. I'm snug and protected, burrowed into his side, his grip on my body powerful and strong. Liam has somehow become my happy, secure place, in a world that has let me down a million times over.
He carries me into my bedroom, which consists of a mattress laying on the floor and my clothes stacked neatly against the wall. He lays me on the bed gently, and then crawls in behind me. We curl up in the center, with my back to his chest, legs and arms entwined. Warm kisses on my shoulder slowly soothe my soul. I'm not sure how we got to this point, but I'm grateful for it. I've been without human touch for so long that I soak up his warmth. It's like I'm a plant, eagerly soaking up sunlight after a long winter without it.
I listen to the steady rhythm of his breathing as he falls asleep in seconds. I'm not far behind, and before I know it, I'm sinking into another world of troubled dreams.
The faces of my lovers, all contorted with sorrow, swirl in my head. It becomes a labored struggle to draw in air. Crying out for Liam over and over again, my voice goes unheard amidst the chaos. Surrounded by commotion, I become lost to him, left alone to suffer in silent stillness.
"Baby," I hear Liam call. I can hear him in the distance as I try to escape my nightmare.
"Liam," I cry out, the deep, heavy burden of my nightmares making it impossible to move out of them.
