Chapter Thirty-Two
“ W hat happened?”
“I don’t know; she hasn’t said anything yet. I just opened the door to find her there crying.”
“I can fucking hear you, you know.” Debs stopped the hushed conversation between Mica and Grace with a sharp rebuke, leaning against the door of the kitchen. She had to admit that she must have looked a shocking sight to Grace as she opened the door. She’d ducked into the bathroom once she’d been ushered inside the house, taking a look at herself in the mirror. Her mascara had run, cheeks black with streaks of it where she had tried to scrub away the tears on more than one occasion, eyes red-rimmed with still unshed tears, face pale with the shock of what had just happened. She wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, if she was honest, and while her friend’s whispered questions were valid and came from a place of love, she wasn’t sure she had any answers for them.
All she knew was that Sienna had literally thrown her out of her flat before breaking down uncontrollably on the other side of the door. She had stood there for nearly half an hour, listening to her cry, pleading with her to open up so they could talk. Ask anyone if Debs Brannigan was the type of woman to beg for anything, and they’d tell you she wasn’t. But for Sienna, she had fast found herself becoming someone different, and she wouldn’t consider a single one of the changes anything short of glorious. And when she was faced with the broken, haunted look of Sienna begging for her to leave, she felt her heart shatter into a thousand pieces.
“Are you okay?” Mica asked, and the concern and pity lacing each word made her skin crawl. She didn’t need the care; she didn’t need the sympathy. Sienna, however, did, but for some reason, she was shutting it all out. Throwing it all back in Debs’ face. Literally closing the door on her.
“I don’t know,” Debs answered truthfully, wrapping her arms around herself in an uncharacteristic display of vulnerability. Her suit felt stiff and constricting, and she wanted to rip it off her body, suddenly uncomfortable in it.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Grace said, dropping a kiss to Mica’s cheek before she walked past Debs, offering her a reassuring squeeze of her shoulder.
“She didn’t have to leave, you know. I know me turning up here has ruined your evening.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a Wednesday evening; what sort of wild plans did you think we had?” Mica said, busying themself with filling the kettle up with water. “Sorry, we don’t have anything stronger.”
“I know. It’s fine. Besides, I’ll have to drive home at some point, right?”
“So, this is to do with Sienna then?” Mica asked, leaning back against the counter. “I mean, you were meant to be at hers tonight, and now you’re here and not going back there.”
Debs made a weak, hollow sound that was meant to resemble a laugh. “I don’t think she wants me there,” she said, pulling out the chair at the dining table and dropping down on it.
“What makes you think that? Whatever happened, it can’t be that bad.”
“She screamed at me, told me to leave because she would only ruin everything eventually as it is, and when I tried to talk to her, she threw me out.”
Debs watched as Mica paused, kettle hovering mid-air before they slowly placed it down and turned to face her.
“What? Sienna? Sienna- hardly says boo to a goose -Sienna said that to you?”
“Yeah,” Debs breathed out, still disbelieving of it herself. The ride over to Mica’s house was spent trying to just decipher the past few moments, how she had gone from needing the comforting presence of Sienna after another unbelievably stressful day at work, needing her in a way which she had never needed anyone before, to having her happiness and everything she had imagined her future pulled out from under her.
The kettle hit the counter with a thud. “What the fuck happened?”
“I…” Debs shook her head, not even knowing where to start. Everything was still so messed up, so chaotic in her mind. A fresh wave of emotion washed over her, and she couldn’t help the tears as they rolled down her cheeks in another uncharacteristic show of hurt. She wasn’t sure she had ever cried this much; Debs had never been one for crying. It wasn’t that she was cold or hard-hearted; she was open with her affection, gave praise when it was due, and was soft with her children. But crying was not something she often did. Usually, it was reserved for that fateful day every year when she remembered her parents, when she and her brother would make the pilgrimage to the coast and eat fish and chips sitting in their car, even if the rain was beating down on the stormy sea and the wind whipped and howled around them. And even then, it wasn’t until she was in the safety and sanctity of her home, the steaming, almost scalding hot bath ran, candles lit, and a glass of wine poured, that she let herself cry.
And yet, even those days didn’t hurt like today. Those days didn’t cause the torrent of tears that had hit her from the moment that door closed in her face.
“Debs…”
“She’s been off for days. I knew something was wrong, but I just thought that if I gave her some time, she would tell me what was wrong.”
She heard the scrape of the chair being pulled up, looking up through watery eyes to see her best and oldest friend regarding her with a look she last saw over a year ago when she had knocked on their door once again, that time announcing the end of her marriage. Not even that monumental shift in her life had resulted in such a painful and crippling slam of emotions. Surely, the end of her longest relationship, the one which had given her two beautiful children and a decade of happiness, should have hurt more than this. Surely, that should have been the ending that caused her to feel ripped apart at the seams. But this…this sudden slap in the face, this tearing of her away from something that had made her so inexplicably happy and joyous… It was jarring.
“Debs, I’ve never seen you like this before.” Mica voiced exactly what she was thinking.
“I know. I don’t know why this is making me so fucking emotional.”
“I think I do. But let’s save that for another time.” Mica leaned over, wrapping their hand around Debs’ own and giving it a squeeze. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“I went round early. Work had been horrendous again, and I just… My last meeting was cancelled, and I decided I didn’t want to hang around. I just wanted to be with her. Just wanted to see her and lock ourselves away for the evening. But when I got there, she was different straight away. She just walked away, not even really saying hello. And when I got into the kitchen, she was so tense, and she wouldn’t look at me. When she finally did, I could see she’d been crying, but she wouldn't tell me why.”
“And then what?”
“She accused me of trying to fix her. Like I see her as some kind of project. And maybe she was right in the moment.” Debs sighed. “Right then, I was still so tense from work, I dropped back into my habit of trying to micromanage. James always said I did it when I was stressed. He always said I tried to deal with problems like they were something at the office I could manage. But that’s not what I wanted to do with her. I just wanted to know what was wrong so we could figure it out.”
“Maybe once you’ve both calmed down, you can explain that to her, and she’ll see you were only trying to help.”
“I don’t think she will want to talk to me at all. She was so fucking angry, Mic. I never thought she had it in her. And I don’t mean that in a way like it was bad—she wasn’t aggressive. She was just so…devastated. Like all she had to power her through was this rage, and I don’t know where that came from.”
“And she didn’t say anything, anything at all, that gave you a clue what it was that was making her behave that way?”
“No,” Debs whispered, wiping her hand across her face again as another wave of tears hit her. She wondered how she could still be crying, but then she figured this was probably going to last for the foreseeable future if the way her chest ached was any indication. “She just kept telling me she wasn’t worth it. That all she does is upset people and mess up their lives.” Debs choked back another sob. “But that’s not true, Mic. That’s so fucking far from the truth.”
Warm, familiar arms encircled her, and she let the tenuous hold she had managed to keep on her pain go, sobbing uncontrollably into the embrace of her best friend. Her body shook as she let it all out; the pain of Sienna’s rejection, the confusion of the past few hours, the hurt at not being the person who Sienna trusted to open up to anymore. She let it all flow out in huge, body-shaking sobs.
If this was the first time Debs Brannigan had her heart broken, then it was soul-destroying, and she never wanted to experience it again.