33. Breaking Up is Hard to Do…
Hudson
This is nothow this evening was supposed to go. I was planning on taking Allie out for a dinner at a cozy little Japanese restaurant before karaoke, where we’d talk about the future, plan a duet to sing, and celebrate her victory. It was supposed to be the start of a new phase in our relationship—the totally-worth-it, long-distance phase, which would involve lots of weekend flights and late-night phone calls until we could figure out phase two—the being-together-all-the-time part.
Instead, I ate supper alone in my condo while I waited for her to answer my can we talk?text, and I’m now just pulling into the parking lot of the Off-key Emporium, even though I know going in there is quite likely a horrible idea. But it’s not like I have much choice, especially when the team has some fun send-off planned for me. I can only hope she’ll give me a chance to explain, although I guess technically I already did and it’s not exactly helping my cause. I fucked up. Big time. And I’m not sure if she’ll ever be able to trust me again. And the thing is, I don’t blame her.
Her car is already here, and my stomach tightens, knowing she’s inside. She managed to avoid being alone with me for the entire day, and ducked out early when I was distracted with Edward, who downloaded a new ‘facial symmetry’ app that he was dying to try out.
I hurry through the parking lot, a cool wind against my face that fits my mood. I screwed up. I get that. There’s nothing I can do to change what happened. All I can do now is convince her that I love her, and that I’m never going to make that type of mistake again.
The entire team is already here, sitting at one long table near the front. Gwen and a guy I assume is her boyfriend are up on stage, singing an ear-splitting version of a Celine Dion song. The only positive of them being up there is that there’s an empty seat next to Allie at the moment. She’s dressed in a red V-neck top and her hair is piled on top of her head in a bun. The sight of her nearly does me in because she’s so incredibly gorgeous and there’s a distinct possibility that as of a couple of days from now, I’ll never see her again.
As soon as I sit down, I can feel her mood change from relaxed and happy to cold as ice, even though her eyes haven’t left the stage. I wave a quick hello to the rest of the team, then lean in to Allie’s ear. “Hi. I really need to talk to you.”
“You really don’t.”
On stage, Gwen is belting out, “SOMETIMES I AM FRIGHTENED BUT I’M READY TO LEARN…!!!!!!”
I wince, but Allie stares up at her friend as if she’s Celine Dion herself. “Allie, I need to fix this.”
“Not possible.”
“ABOUT THE POWER OF LOVE….”
“Definitely possible and absolutely necessary. I need a chance to explain.”
She scoffs, then turns to me. “Explain what? How you tricked me into sleeping with you?”
The crowd erupts into applause, which I’m pretty sure is because they’re finally done torturing us all.
“I didn’t trick you,” I say, feeling my desperation morph to irritation. “I wanted you just as much as you wanted me.”
Shaking her head, Allie says, “Don’t bother. Seriously. There’s nothing you can say that will change anything.” She gives me a hard look. “I don’t even know why you’re here.”
“I’m here because I’m in love with you and I need to find a way to get back to what we had.”
“What we had was a giant lie,” she says. “Now, you’re sitting in Gwen’s seat, so if you don’t mind…”
“No, of course,” I answer, getting up. I turn and see Gwen standing in front of me.
She smiles, seemingly unaware of what’s going on. “Hudson! I want you to meet Ty.” She turns to him. “Ty, this is Hudson. Allie’s new fella.”
Urgh. Not anymore. I hold out my hand and we shake hands. “You do a mean Celine.”
He rolls his eyes in a self-deprecating way. “If you had told me a year ago that I’d be on stage singing, I’d have said you had the wrong guy,” he says, throwing a smile at Gwen. “The right woman’ll change you in ways you never expected.”
While we’re talking, Gwen pulls an empty chair from the table behind ours and pulls it up to the table. “Here, now you and Allie can sit together.”
Allie stiffens, and out of desperation, I say, “You know what? I think I’m going to get up and sing. You know, get it over with early before I overthink it.”
Gwen claps her hands and grins at Allie. “He’s going to sing for you!”
I walk over to the DJ, whose face immediately lights up when he recognizes me. “Whoa! You’re Hudson Finch.”
“Hi, nice to meet you,” I tell him. “I’d like to go with The Righteous Brothers, ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’.’”
He gives me a nod. “Solid choice. Watch the beginning because you have to start singing before the music kicks in, so you really have to follow the prompter.”
“Good tip. Thanks,” I say, giving him a thumbs up.
A second later, I’m standing with the microphone in my hand, feeling stupid. I take a deep breath and say, “This one is for the beautiful, talented, incredibly smart Dr. Allegra Cammareri, who’s just made the most important discovery in SETI research since the late, great Frank Drake.” The team starts to cheer, but Allie just purses her lips and gives me a quick eyebrow raise that says she’s not impressed.
I give the DJ a nod and he starts up the song. “You never close your eyes anymore…”
My heart pounds and I feel a cold sweat break out on the back of my neck, but on the outside, I’m giving Tom Cruise in Top Gun vibes. I’m really going for it, occasionally pointing at Allie, smiling at other people from the team, holding the mic out on the chorus to get everyone to join in. Pretty soon, everyone in the place is clapping along and belting out the lyrics with me. To anyone here, I look like the most confident guy in the world, but inside, I’m dying. This isn’t working and I don’t know why I thought it would. I just want to throw her over my shoulder, take her back to my place, and beg her to give me another chance. But since obviously that would be illegal, I just keep performing. When the song ends, the group gives me a standing ovation, and I high five people as I make my way back to my chair.
As soon as I sit down, Allie gets up. “My turn to sing.”
“Oh! Some Dolly?” Gwen asks.
“Nope. I’m going with something different for a change.”
Gwen grins at me while Allie walks away. “I bet it’s for you!”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
Allie takes the mic and says, “This one’s an oldie but feels particularly relevant today.”
It takes me a few seconds to recognize the tune, but when I do, my heart sinks. She’s singing Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots are Made for Walkin’.’ I sit, watching her, embarrassed at the thought that her coworkers might pick up on the fact that this is for me.
“Huh, this seems like a weird choice,” Gwen says, having a sip of some sort of fruity-looking cocktail. “I didn’t even think she likes this song.”
Trying to look nonchalant, I say, “Oh really? That is odd, then.”
I stare at Allie as she dances a little to the beat while she keeps on singing, her glare growing stronger by the second. She’s really selling it as a woman who’s about to leave a bad man in her dust, and the crowd is loving it. They’re all cheering while I sit here, knowing I’m the bad man who deserves to be left behind.
Gwen leans over to me. “Hey, is she pissed at you about something? She looks pissed.”
Rather than give a direct answer, I say, “You know her better than me. Do you think she’s pissed?”
She squints, then nods. “Yeah. She’s pissed.”
As the song starts to wind down, Allie puts the mic back in the stand, then makes her way over to the table, keeping her steps in tune with the beat. She grabs her handbag and her coat, then struts her way through the tables and right out the door.
Ty narrows his eyes. “Huh. She’s really committing to this.”
Tina, who’s sitting on the other side of the table, says, “Is she … actually leaving?”
Yes, yes, she is.
I grab my jacket off the back of my chair and follow her out.
Chad shouts, “Hey, Hudson, we haven’t done our song for you yet!”
“I’ll be back.”
I hurry out into the dark parking lot, jogging over to her car just as Allie’s hunting around in her bag for her keys. She glances up at me, then shakes her head. “Dammit, why can’t I ever find my keys in this thing?”
“It’s because of all the partially-finished packs of TicTacs,” I tell her, hoping a private joke will help soften her up.
It totally backfires of course. She stops digging through her purse long enough to glare at me. “Nope. No callbacks. You do not get to make me laugh. Or smile, or do anything else fun or otherwise pleasant ever again.”
I rub the back of my neck. “Ever again?”
She stares at me, the pain in her eyes nearly killing me, then turns her attention back to her bag. “You heard me.”
“I know I screwed up. I promise, I get it, and I would never, ever think about doing anything remotely that dishonest again.”
“When we first met, I made it one-hundred-percent clear to you how I feel about liars,” she says, starting to pull things out of her bag and place them on top of her car. “And you told me you would never lie to me again. I shut off all the alarm bells going off in my head—the ones telling me you were just too smooth and too perfect to be real, the ones telling me a guy like you was never going to fall for a girl like me, the one telling me I had already seen how easily lying comes to you.” She tosses a couple of lipstick tubes and some balled up napkins on the roof so hard they bounce. “But did I listen? No! I ignored all my instincts because I wanted to believe for once in my stupid life that I was worth something. That maybe I could be the girl who gets the guy for once. That maybe fairy tales do come true. I mean, Gwen got her fairy tale ending, so it didn’t seem so far-fetched somehow, but it was all bullshit.”
“It was all real. It still is.”
“It was all bullshit.” She digs around some more, and I pull my phone out of my pocket and turn the flashlight on, then hold it so she can look inside her purse. She tsks loudly, then says, “Oh my God, can you stop please?”
“Stop what?”
“Being so fucking helpful?” she asks, lifting her keys out of her purse and giving me a hard look. “It’s impossible to hate you when you do shit like that.”
“I don’t want you to hate me. That’s the last thing I’d ever want.”
“Well, then you shouldn’t have pretended you wanted me when all you wanted was to distract me. It was a shitty thing to do.”
“Yes, it was.”
“And it ruined everything,” she says, furiously tossing everything back into her bag.
“Yes, it did. And I’m asking you for another chance. One I know I don’t deserve.”
“One you’re not getting,” she tells me, her voice shaking. “It’s over. This is over. I have to get out of here. You should go back inside and let the rest of the team serenade you. They’ve worked really hard on it and they’ll be super disappointed if you take off on them.”
I glance at the building, not wanting to let her leave and not wanting to go back inside, but knowing I really don’t have much of a choice about either thing. “Allie, I would do anything to fix this. Anything.”
“You can’t. I know you’re not used to people saying no to you, but believe me, this is a very real, very hard no with absolutely zero chance of me changing my mind,” she says. “Please do me a favor and don’t come back to the institute. Just … say goodbye to everyone tonight. Tell them you got called back to Hollywood for some … movie emergency or something. And don’t be there tomorrow when I get there. That’s really the only thing left that you can do for me.”
I stare down at her, wanting with everything in me to wrap my arms around her and kiss her until she remembers how perfect we are for each other. But obviously, that’s not an option. “Okay, that’s what I’ll do then.”
“Good.”
“If you ever change your mind?—”
“I won’t.” She yanks open the car door and tosses her bag on the passenger seat, the contents spilling everywhere. “Shit,” she mutters, before turning back to me. “Goodbye, Hudson. Good luck with your movie. You’re ready.”
“If I am, it’s because of you.”
She wrinkles up her nose as if I just let out a huge belch. “You seriously can’t stop yourself, can you?”
“Not really. I think it’s some sort of disorder,” I tell her.
“Fuck,” she mutters, getting into the car. “Ridiculous.”
Shutting the door, she starts up the engine, then pulls out, leaving me standing alone in the cold night air, wishing there was something, anything I could do to convince her to give me a second chance. But there isn’t, and I know it. That was goodbye forever. And I know, without a doubt, I will never finish getting over her.