Chapter 21 #3
Christopher Vale’s face filled the screen. Then Seraphina’s. Then the photos, the same ones from my phone, blown up and broadcast to millions. The anchor was talking about cheating allegations. A hotel bar. A secret meeting with his ex-girlfriend.
Was the marriage in trouble? Sources say the couple has been distant in recent weeks. Was the whirlwind romance a cover for something else?
I sat on the couch and watched my heartbreak become public entertainment.
They showed photos of us too. The gallery kiss.
The bookstore candid. The gala where he held my waist and looked at me like I was the only person in the room.
They put those photos next to the hotel bar photos and let the audience draw their own conclusions.
Before and after. Wife and ex. The story wrote itself.
My phone buzzed. Christopher. I didn’t answer. It buzzed again. Anna. I didn’t answer. It buzzed a third time. Unknown number. I turned the phone off entirely.
I sat in the dark living room and stared at the blank television screen long after I’d turned it off and made a decision.
I was leaving.
Not because I was strong. Because I was a coward.
I’d always been a coward when it came to confrontation.
When Aunt Eliza called me ungrateful, I didn’t fight.
I walked out the door. When things got hard and the person standing in front of me had the power to destroy me with a few words, I ran. Every time. I ran.
I knew I was doing it again. I knew it and I couldn’t stop it.
The thought of standing in front of Christopher and asking him about Seraphina, about the papers, about whether any of it was real, the thought of watching his face while he answered, the thought of hearing him say something careful and strategic and perfectly composed while my heart lay open on the floor, I couldn’t do it.
I wasn’t built for that conversation. I was built for cooking and caring and leaving notes with smiley faces, not for standing in front of the man I loved and demanding he tell me the truth.
So I did what I always did. I wrote it down instead.
I sat at the island in the dark with a pen and a piece of paper and I wrote.
Christopher,
I don’t know how to start this, so I’ll just start.
You are the most complicated, infuriating, brilliant man I’ve ever met. You make me want to scream and laugh and throw things at your head and cook you dinner all in the same hour. You are impossible. You are maddening. You are the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me.
Your words saved my life when I was fifteen.
I was on a bathroom floor and I didn’t want to exist anymore and then I heard your voice and you said I didn’t have to earn the right to exist. I just did.
I carried those words for ten years. I wrote them on the inside of my notebook and the lock screen of my phone and the wall of my first apartment in tiny letters behind the door where nobody could see them.
They were mine. You were mine, in the only way a stranger can belong to you, which is through the thing they said that kept you alive.
And then I met you. The real you. And the real you destroyed my restaurant and lied about a kiwi allergy and let me spend weeks believing I’d almost killed someone. Your actions nearly ruined me at twenty-five.
And somehow I fell in love with you anyway.
Which makes me either brave or stupid and I’m not sure it matters which.
I know about Seraphina. I saw the photos.
I saw the divorce papers on your desk. I understand.
You can’t compete with history. You can’t make someone choose you when their heart is still in someone else’s hands.
She was first. She was there before me. And whatever you two had, it’s not something I can fight, and I won’t try.
I’m releasing you from the contract. The money doesn’t matter. The remaining days don’t matter. I won’t stand in the way of whatever you need.
Thank you for the quote. Thank you for writing it down for me when I asked.
Thank you for the peonies and the ice cream and the way you kissed my forehead when you thought I was sleeping.
Thank you for the you played with my nose like I was something precious.
Thank you for showing me that the man from the interview was real, even if he was also more complicated than I imagined.
I love you. I’m sorry that’s not enough.
Miley
I folded the letter. Walked to his study. Put it on the desk beside the divorce papers. I picked up the pen and signed my name on the signature line. My hand was steady, my eyes were not.
I left both side by side. The letter and the papers. Everything I felt and everything he’d planned, sitting next to each other on the same desk.
I went back to the bedroom. He wasn’t home yet. The bed was made the way I’d left it that morning, and the room still smelled like his cologne and the ghost of the kiss he’d left on my lips seven hours ago when he said he’d be home early because he had something to talk about.
I looked at the bed for a long time. The pillows. The sheets. The indent on his side where his body had been. The empty space on my side where his arm had reached for me in the dark.
I picked up the framed photo of my parents from the nightstand. I picked up the handwritten quote. I couldn’t leave that behind. Even now. Even with the photos and the signed papers and my heart in ruins. I couldn’t leave the quote.