Notes: Save Me belongs to Remy Zero.
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I feel my wings have broken in your hands
I feel the words unspoken inside
They pull you under
And I would give you anything you want you know
You were all I wanted...
She had no right to miss him.
She told herself that too much over the years, all the while knowing that it was doing no good. Because she did miss him, more than she ever thought possible, and there were so many nights when she would sit alone in her apartment with the phone in her hands and will herself to gather the courage to dial his number. Her trash barrel filled with discarded drafts of reconciliation letters that she never mailed, and his Yankees t-shirt that she had accidentally scooped up with her own clothes still hung in the back of her closet, hidden but not forgotten.
But she had been the one who had left him, and she knew that he would never forgive her for it. So she built herself a new life on the west coast, and tried to ignore the doubt that gnawed at her whenever she gave it a spare moment. It wasn�t that she regretted leaving, she would tell herself. It just hurt, knowing that he was so utterly gone from her life.
She met Richard at work, and even though he could never be a replacement, he was at least a distraction, and so as her career and life rebuilt themselves around her, she began to rediscover what normal relationships were like. There was the awkward first date, and the even more awkward next morning in the office, but as time passed and they saw each other more, she began to enjoy herself.
She had nearly forgotten what it was like.
It couldn�t have been more different from the life she had lived with him, and yet she found that she was just as comfortable in this normal kind of existence as she had been in their crazily domestic situation. They were on the same track in their careers, and so their victories were the same, and their defeats were softened because they had each other to cushion the blow. Time passed, and she found that the man in her memories was fading and the space that he had occupied was being filled by the man of her reality.
Then came the night when he whispered to her that he loved her, and it was in that single moment that she discovered she had been lying, to him and to herself, and so she left.
Leaving, it seemed, came easily to her.
She got a new job that she wasn�t happy in, and life went on in the way it had for years. She was better than the work she was doing, and she knew it, but there was nowhere else for her to go, so she existed, and tried not to notice that she had all but forgotten what it was to live.
Her firm was a supporter of the Democratic party, and when she was chosen to go to a Washington fundraiser as their representative, everyone told her that it was an honor, and she almost believed them. It wasn�t until she arrived that she discovered that it was more of a chore than an honor.
The one upside to the night, she decided as she made her way from one dull conversation to another, was that she knew she looked fabulous in this dress. Other than that, the trip had been a waste, and even with the glances she knew she was getting, she was starting to think that she probably would have been better off handing over this terrific honor to someone else. It seemed that everywhere she turned, she was having an identical conversation with an identical man in a suit, and she was wondering vaguely how anyone ever survived in this town when she saw him across the room and stopped thinking altogether.
He had changed, and it was for the better, because he had always been this man trapped in the body of a college student, and now he finally looked like the person she knew he was. He had less hair, and less of a smile, and more lines on his face that had been drawn by both the passage of time and the pressure of being who he was. But his eyes, which she could see as he turned a little and waved his arms emphatically at the man in front of him, were the same, only sadder, and she wondered if it had been her that had put that sadness there. She hoped it hadn�t, because she already had enough to forgive herself for.
He finished arguing with the man, and turned away in that dismissive manner to focus his attention on the red haired woman next to him. The man left, and the two of them talked for a few moments while she watched, unseen. He didn�t reach out to her, and she didn�t lean towards him as they spoke, but there was something there between them that made her want to turn and run for the door before he noticed her, but then he caught her eye and there was nowhere to run.
An eternity passed as he made his way across the crowded room, but it still wasn�t long enough for her to think up an appropriate greeting, so a strangled �hi� was all that emerged, followed by the painfully commonplace �I haven�t seen you in�� and then she trailed off, because time had stretched in his absence, and she couldn�t truly remember how long it had been.
�Four elections,� he replied, and she smiled because it was so perfectly him to count time in elections rather than years. He introduced the redhead as Andrea Wyatt, and she recognized the name as a congressional candidate from Maryland, so they talked a little about the race, and she found that she couldn�t dislike her, as much as she wanted to. Andi was distracted eventually, called away to other conversations, and there was something in the way she brushed her hand across his arm as she walked away that was possessive without meaning to be.
There was an awkwardness between them when Andi left that had never been there before, and when he suggested they go and sit at the bar, she found that the distraction of movement was welcome. By the time drinks had been ordered and they had settled themselves into a booth, some of the ice between them had thawed, and she found herself talking mindlessly about her life back in California. She was surprised, when she stopped to listen to herself, at the discontent that seeped into her words, but there was no disguising it because it was true, and she had never lied to him.
When he talked, it was of the frustration of his campaigns, and she found that she wasn�t surprised that he had lost each of them, because he looked for things in a candidate that were incompatible with victory, things like integrity, and honor, and the real thing, whatever that was. She asked, at one point, what he thought that was, and he confessed that he had never found it, even in his tragically principled candidates, and he was beginning to wonder if there was such thing as a good man in politics.
She considered telling him that he didn�t have to look very far to find one, because he was one himself, but it seemed hokey and contrived, so she didn�t. Instead, she found herself trying to explain why she had left, and she knew then that the drinks were getting to her. But he didn�t stop her, even when the pain of his memories clouded his eyes, and he let her talk herself in circles, trying to make some kind of reason out of an unreasonable situation. He waited patiently until she ran out of words, and when she did they drank in silence for a few minutes.
�I knew why you did it,� he finally said, and she waited for more to come, but it didn�t, and when she looked up from her glass into his eyes she saw that he did understand, and that the words, as always, had been only a formality, only an attempt at vocalizing that which needed no explanation. But she felt better for having said them, and she could see, despite his response, that some of the pain had left his eyes, at least for the moment. She lost herself in that gaze, she didn�t know for how long, and when she leaned toward him and softly brushed his lips with hers, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
His hand stole up to tangle in her hair and bring her closer to him, deepening their kiss, and she found that nothing had changed, nothing but the practiced roughness of his fingers as they danced up her back, and the rasp of his beard against her cheek. But then he pulled away abruptly, and she saw in those eyes that everything had changed, everything that had ever mattered to her, and she knew before he spoke that he was gone already.
�I can�t do this,� he whispered in a raw voice that she barely recognized, and the words were unnecessary, and told her nothing. But his next words struck her with the force of a blow, and she wondered vaguely how she had not seen them coming.
�I�m engaged to Andi.�
She pulled back to the far end of the booth and gasped out something that may have been an apology, or perhaps a goodbye, and she stood shakily, wondering how she could suddenly feel stone cold sober. He watched her go, and there were no words, no lingering glances, just the briefest of looks that spoke volumes from his conflicted heart. She fled, in the way that only the guilty can, and she hoped that he knew that this time she was not leaving because she wanted to, but because she needed to, for her sanity and his.
And that night, when she opened her hotel room door with shaking hands and collapsed in tears onto the bed, she tried not to remember the feel of his hand twining through her hair, and the taste of scotch and him on her lips.
Part Six: Summer Quickly Faded