Chapter Twenty-Six
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
NOW
“WHAT THE FUCK WAS that? ” Elizabeth storms into the bedroom at the same time I come out of the bathroom. I can feel my eyes widen as she all but slams the door closed and crosses the room to jab her finger into my chest. “‘I knew I’d never be able to go on without her…I can’t imagine the day I have to.’” She scoffs. “Are you fucking kidding me? We are getting divorced in a few months, or did you forget that?”
Why is she so mad? She’s the one who wanted me to play along this weekend because she didn’t want her friends to suspect anything was wrong. I was only doing what she wanted, right?
Wrong. I had crossed the line. Maybe it was that last glass of whiskey or maybe it was because I was feeling a little too sentimental, but my admission out by the firepit was not what she wanted from me this weekend. I had let my guard down a little too far and now I was facing the consequences. Now it was time to clean up that mess…
“I was just…playing along,” I say as my shoulders raise with a shrug.
“Playing along?”
“Yeah, that’s what you wanted, right? You don’t want them to suspect anything, so I was just doing what you asked.”
Elizabeth narrows her gaze before throwing her hands up with an exasperated sigh and walking into the bathroom.
“I could’ve told them the truth. Would you have preferred that?” I ask, leaning against the doorframe, meeting her glaring gaze in the mirror. “You don’t want me to act like the doting husband—”
“Because you’re not the doting husband!”
“Because you didn’t want me to be!”
“Didn’t want—” She scoffs, shaking her head. She looks up to the ceiling as if asking God the Creator for help. “Didn’t want you to be?” Elizabeth finally turns from the mirror and storms to meet me. “You’re the one who stopped caring, Josh. You’re the one—”
“Don’t feed me that bullshit. I never stopped caring about you. You’re the one who walked out, Liz, not me.”
Elizabeth takes a step back; her tongue wets her lips before she pulls them between her teeth. Another scoff. “Sure, okay. If that’s what you need to tell yourself to feel better about this…be my guest. But I’m done . I’m done waiting for you to wake the fuck up and realize everything you could’ve had and lost. I can’t do it anymore, Josh.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Get out.” She tries to close the door, but I won’t budge.
What the fuck does that mean? Could’ve had and lost . We had been broken up for months before she finally decided to leave, so what does that even mean?
“I said, get out!” She tries to push me from the bathroom, but I grab her wrists and hold her in place, bending to meet her gaze.
“Everything I could’ve had? You never planned on staying, Elizabeth!”
And she doesn’t deny it. From day one, I told myself not to fall in love with her because, at the end of the day, she was going to leave. That was always the plan. Her plan. But it didn’t matter because no matter how hard I tried, I did fall in love with her. Through the years, we walked a fine line between what was real and what was a result of circumstance, constantly teetering from one side to the other. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t stop myself. I fell completely, hopelessly in love with Elizabeth Regina Cain, even though I knew it was going to crush me when our time was up.
And when it did…when things came to an end that final time, she made it clear there was no going back. We would live out the rest of the arrangement separately unless it was something we had to do.
The ache in my heart was worse than anything I could’ve imagined. Knowing it was the end—that despite my best efforts, she wasn’t coming back, she was leaving—I had to do something to try and dull the pain, even in the slightest. So, when Wichita happened, I thought it might be the universe allowing me to move on.
Elizabeth’s phone rings in the bedroom, and I feel her body jump from the sudden burst of noise, but she doesn’t move. She stands there a moment longer before she takes a deep breath and says, “You’re right, Josh. This was always the plan.”
Slipping from my grasp like butter, she walks into the bedroom and pulls her phone out of the nightstand drawer. There’s a slight hesitation when she looks at the screen. She starts to swipe to answer but then decides against it. She stuffs it back into the nightstand and slams the drawer shut before huffing back into the bathroom.