Chapter Thirty
D ays were so long. Too long. Alli could swear that someone had put at least six extra hours into every day. And given that she didn’t know what to do with the usual twenty-four hours, she certainly didn’t know what to do with six extra ones.
Three days since she’d been fired and she had no idea what to do with herself. Other than think, of course, and that wasn’t something she particularly wanted to do. So when Izzy rang, she found herself accepting an invitation to coffee.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” was the first thing that Izzy said when Alli showed up at the small cafe.
“I can leave again if you like,” said Alli.
“Please don’t.”
“I’m not entirely sure why I’m here myself,” Alli admitted as she took a seat. “Other than that I’ve got nothing else to do.”
“Don’t you have some high-powered job?” Izzy asked.
Alli sighed. “I did. Now I don’t. I got fired.” She glared at Izzy as though expecting her to say something.
But Izzy just shrugged. “That’s bad luck, I’m sorry. Interviewing for something new?”
It occurred to Alli that perhaps not everyone thought in the same way she did. Her job had been her life, and her life was now empty without it. Yet for someone like Izzy, a job was just… a means to an end, perhaps. “Not yet. ”
“What about Bea?” Izzy asked as the waitress brought over two cappuccinos.
Alli frowned, both because she hadn’t ordered anything and because she wasn’t exactly sure what Izzy meant about Bea. “Sorry?”
Izzy snorted. “Do you really think that none of us knew? We’re not idiots. You two were staring at each other like Romeo and Juliet, and you snuck out of your room every night. Those rooms had thin walls, you know.”
Alli stopped stirring her coffee. “What?”
“It’s fine. Nobody cared. You’re adults. We all thought it was cute. So where is she? Why didn’t you bring her along?”
“We, uh, we broke up.” A weird, full feeling in her chest made Alli catch her breath. Probably the coffee. Probably made with real milk. Except she hadn’t drunk anything yet.
Izzy put her spoon down. “Oh, Al, I’m sorry. What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay, but we’re friends. If you wanted to talk to someone, you could talk to me. I wouldn’t mind,” Izzy said.
And Alli cracked a little bit. Just a tiny fraction. For an instant, she imagined telling Izzy everything. Telling her about her whole life. Telling her that she thought about Bea every minute of the day. Telling her that she didn’t think she’d ever regretted something as much as losing her temper that day. Telling her that Bea wouldn’t answer her calls.
Then she remembered that the last time she’d opened up it had been to Bea, and look how that had ended.
“It’s nothing,” she said sharply.
Izzy shrugged. “If you say so.” She took a sip of coffee. “Except I remember breaking up with my Ken. It was right before we got married and we had a horrible argument, and then it was like the bottom had fallen out of my world. Like I didn’t know what to do with myself and I couldn’t even take a full breath.”
That sounded familiar. “So what happened?” Alli asked suspiciously.
Izzy grinned. “He apologized for losing his temper, came over with a big bunch of flowers, talked about how it wouldn’t happen again and I forgave him, didn’t I?”
“Wait, he lost his temper with you? I thought you were the one with anger management issues,” Alli said.
Izzy looked away. “It was a one off. Anyway, it never did happen again and we’ve been happy ever since. Sometimes you just have to forget and forgive, you know?”
Alli wasn’t entirely sure she could either forget or forgive what Bea had done. Except the little bit of happiness she’d let into her life with Bea had left a hole that nothing could fill. Except, she had to admit to herself, she missed having someone. She missed a whole lot right now. She had no idea what she was doing with her life, other than sitting at a table with a practical stranger.
“Actually,” Izzy was saying. “There was something that I wanted to tell you. I don’t want you to be angry with me or anything, but then there’s the chance that you might be in the same boat, so I wasn’t sure whether to say anything or not.”
Alli shook her head. “We’re not in the same boat,” she said. “I can tell you that right now. I don’t really know why you asked me out for coffee, and I’m not sure why I agreed.” She was lonely, she realized. She’d thought that maybe meeting someone would make her feel better, make her miss Bea less. But it wasn’t working.
Izzy had gone pale. “Oh, right, well then…”
“Well then I should leave,” Alli finished, standing up. She put money on the table. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Izzy looked up at her. “Not everyone hates you.”
“What?”
“I said, not everyone hates you. You don’t have to be on the defensive all the time. You treat everyone badly so that you don’t have to be disappointed by them, to protect yourself. My kids do the same thing sometimes. But you’re not a child, Alli. And believe it or not, some people actually would like to be friends with you. And you do deserve friends, even if you act like you don’t. ”
Alli closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure how to deal with this. She didn’t want therapy right now. “People don’t like me.”
“Because you treat them like shit,” countered Izzy. “If you were a bit nicer, maybe they would.”
For a long second, Alli looked at her, then she gave up and walked away. She couldn’t deal with all of this. All of this change, it was like losing pieces of herself at every turn, and she didn’t know what to replace the lost pieces with.
She should never have agreed to meet with Izzy and she was going to block her number as soon as she got home, she decided. And then, then she was going to start looking for a new job and she’d put all of this behind her. Work made her happy, therefore work was going to be the solution to whatever this blackness was that she was feeling.
DARREN WAS LOUNGING against the front door, phone in his hand when Alli returned. She wasn’t sure whether to spit at him or slap him.
“I come in peace,” he said, holding up his hands when she saw him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m your friend. I’m here to check on you.”
“My friend?” Alli spat. “You fired me.”
Darren sighed. “Can we just go inside, please?”
Alli let him in and then promptly wished that she hadn’t. Her usually pristine flat was a mess, with blankets on the couch and half empty cups on the table. Darren took it all in.
“Taking it well then?” he said.
“How was I supposed to take it?” Alli asked. “You fired me. I lost everything, I had a job and then I didn’t and I had a girlfriend and then I didn’t and—” She stopped, realizing what she’d just said. And then, to her horror, her eyes began to fill with tears.
“Jesus, Al.” Darren took her hand and led her to the couch, sat with her and then, finally, put his arm around her.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Ali sobbed .
“Right, yes, very fine,” Darren said, handing her some tissues from the table.
“I am,” she hiccuped.
“You’re not,” he said. “And you haven’t been for a very long time.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s supposed to mean that as great as you were at your job, it was killing you, Al.” He looked at her. “You think that I didn’t see the bags under your eyes, the massive amounts of antacids that you took? That I didn’t notice the missed meals? The anger that was always there?”
“But that… That was all part of it,” she said.
“No, no, that was someone working their way to a heart attack,” he said softly. “And whilst I wasn’t happy that you lost your temper in front of a client, I did sort of hope that it would be a chance for you to relax, maybe learn to handle the stress better.”
“Then you fired me.”
“No, then you didn’t complete the simple thing that you were asked to do in order to keep your job,” Darren said reasonably.
“But that wasn’t fair!”
“How?” She told him and he shook his head. “The woman made an honest report about you and was just doing her job. Who are you to criticize that? You’d be the first person to say that doing your job well was an important attribute to have. And frankly, it sounds like this woman cared about you.”
“Cared about me?” screeched Alli. “She was my girlfriend and she stabbed me in the back.”
Darren laughed. “She didn’t stab you in the back. She didn’t need to. You did that yourself. She was doing her job. It sounds to me like you need to apologize to her.”
“Yeah, well, she won’t answer my calls,” Alli muttered, balling the tissues into her hand.
Darren sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It must feel like you’ve lost everything.”
Alli looked out of the window, wheels clicking into place inside her head. “I did. I have.”
“But you need to stop blaming other people for that,” he said. “You’re the one to blame for all of this, and you know it. You and your temper.”
She closed her eyes. “I know.”
“Do you? Do you really? Because nothing’s going to change until you can admit that.”
With the greatest effort, she opened her eyes again and turned to look at him. “I have a problem.” The words hurt.
Darren took her hands. “Okay, that’s the first step. Is this a problem that you’re willing to try and solve?”
She’d lost her job. She’d lost Bea. What else did she have to lose? She took a deep breath. “I think I need to go into an anger management program.”