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It’s been a month without him, and it feels like a year. It’s been six years without you, and I still can’t believe it. It’s just so weird that you’re dead and he’s missing.
Wish you were around.
XO
Lizzie
I toss everything in the top desk drawer and my breath catches. I quickly get up, lock the door, and fall apart with his Eiffel Tower key chain clutched in my hand. He really did leave me, he’s not thinking things over or playing hard to get. That slim piece of hope that I was using to exaggerate the situation is gone.
I put the key chain with mine in the zipper pocket of my wallet and attempt to compose myself. I run to the bathroom to splash water on my face but when I get back, my door is open. Dax is rifling through a portfolio on the sideboard that I hadn’t paid any attention.
“Can I help you with something?”
Dax whips around and the contents spill onto the floor. I’m shocked and confused why he’s here.
“Hey.” I kneel next to him and help pick things up. He snatches some papers quickly, and I notice they’re pencil drawings of me and I realize it’s Hayden’s portfolio.
He reaches silently for the picture and I clutch it to my chest.
“Please tell me, where is he?”
“Can’t.”
I don’t relinquish the drawing. I lean towards Dax. I’m desperate to know what happened. “Why was he in a rush to leave?”
“Think.”
His economy of language is staggering. He gathers the rest of the spilled papers and boards. It must be their presentation I never saw. I didn’t realize it was here all along. I flip it over to see what they were going to pitch before I usurped the opportunity. My face falls and my body goes limp as I realize in an instant my entire life is a lie. I might just have trust issues a little more severe than previously observed.
“You ok?”
I’m pale, numb and cold. I’ve turned into a selfish and horrible person. Damn, that is not where I thought Bette would end up. I got to pull this back. I have to fix this. I run my fingers over the presentation boardthey’re ours. It’s my words, his art. The one we tweaked and fussed about; it’s our true collaboration.
“Where’s your pitch? The other one?” I say frantically. He shrugs. “You don’t know where your pitch is? The one you worked on together behind our backs. Where is that fucking pitch?” Oh God. This can’t be happening.
He cocks his head to the side and raises an eyebrow. “There wasn’t one.”
I’m the biggest asshole in the world.
“What are you saying to me?”
“Pretty clear,” he says, nonplussed.
“Be more clear! Sophie told me she overheard the two of you talking about a whole new thing and it was the ultimate prank.”
He rocks back onto his butt. “Fucking Sophie.” He blows out an exhale.
“Watch yourself,” I warn.
He pins me with a stare. “I want her. But that doesn’t seem to register with her.”
I sit down, too, and lean against my office wall.
Dax scratches his wrists and says, “That’s why she did the art, you asked. She wouldn’t say anything, then asked me to leave Chicago.”
I say to him, “Give her a minute.”
“Same.”
