For a second I yearned for Brody’s magical hangover cure – the one he’d got for me from the kitchen before. But I couldn’t ask him for anything. Not now. I wasn’t sure, without his prompting, I could say anything at all.
“Well,” Brody said. The word had a sense of finality about it. Like the conclusion to something. He was heading across the room – and I saw what I hadn’t noticed before: his suitcase standing at the end of his bed, packed and ready.
It was the third time I’d seen him pack it to leave, but this time I knew he was serious.
I wasn’t ready for the shock of seeing him leaving. I was barely dressed, wrapped up in the bedsheets – sheets we’d shared until last night. I hadn’t packed my things ready, so there was no chance to sprint down to the lobby with him and use the excuse to eke out a little more time.
“Uh,” I said, because I couldn’t think of a single other thing to say than goodbye – and I didn’t want to say it.
I needed to think of something else.
Something profound. Something that would make him stop and turn around and come back to me. Some way to twist things that would solve everything – that would get rid of all my reluctance and make him right and give us a chance. Some magical solution so that we could be together. I had to think of it now – before he left the room. I had to think.
“See you, then,” Brody said. He grabbed hold of the handle of his wheeled case, and I saw his fist tense, flexing around it. His back was to me. “Or, I guess, not.”
He turned to walk to the door, still not looking at me. Everything in his body language was final – a line drawn under everything. He was leaving. He opened the door. He was going to be gone.
I couldn’t think.
I had to say something. This was my last and only chance.
A hundred different words ran through my head, all of them useless. All of them were unconnected to what I really needed to say. None of them were a solution – the solution I needed to fix this. A way for us to be together without everything else getting in the way. A reason to give up on what I was holding onto. A reason to give in and just collapse in his arms.
He was leaving, and I hadn’t said a word to stop him.
He probably thought I didn’t even want to stop him.
Maybe he didn’t want me to stop him.
He reached for the door handle to pull it shut behind him and leave me alone in the room again.
Alone – for good.
I had to saysomething.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Until the last moment, I hadn’t thought I would be able to do it. My voice was quiet – so quiet I didn’t think he’d hear me, but he did, pausing with his hand on the door. “I’m sorry I can’t give you what you need.”
Tell me, I begged him silently.Tell me how we can fix this. Tell me how we can both get what we need and not have to lose each other.
Brody waited for a single moment more, not looking at me or saying anything.
Then he stepped forward and was gone, and I had to sit down on the edge of the bed to grab my own chest, figuring out from scratch how to breathe again.
By the time I wrestled my own head into deciding to run after him, it was too late – no sign of him down the hall, and I knew in my gut I’d left it long enough that he had left the hotel –
And I’d lost the best thing that ever could have happened to me.
Brody
I glanced at the date on my phone screen and grimaced.
One month since the last time I’d touched Ace.
Was this what my life was like now? A whole long succession of milestone markers telling me how long it had been since I was with him? First, it had been a week, then a fortnight – now a month. What next? Two months, three months, six months, a year? Was there ever going to be a time I would look at a date and not wonder how I had managed to lose the man who still haunted my every single dream and every waking moment?
I sighed and tossed the phone onto my coffee table, wincing as it made a dull thud. I was being reckless. Thinking about Ace kind of had that effect on me. I wondered how long it was going to be before the pain dulled.
I’d read about ‘the one that got away’ – heard songs about it. But I’d never understood how awful it could feel until now.
