Chapter 52
Chapter Fifty-Two
Flora
After packing up my belongings, I quickly wrote a note, a very brief note that would get the message across. I didn’t need to write chapter and verse containing insults, vitriol or declarations of hurt and pain. No, short and to the point with a reference to his own words would do just fine.
I folded the piece of paper in half, added Maurizio’s name and propped it against a cup. Placing my keys next to it, I took a last look around the place that had been my home these last few months and left with my belongings packed in a suitcase and a backpack.
Daylight peeked through the crack in the curtains. God, my head hurt and my eyes were so sore they barely opened.
“Good morning, sunshine.” Ash pulled the curtains back and turned to me. “Fuck, you look like shit.”
“I feel worse than I look,” I replied, my voice breaking, moving to a sitting position in the bed.”
“You haven’t seen yourself.”
“No, but I know how much hurt I feel.” I sobbed, acknowledging the pain slicing through me.
“Oh, darling.” He joined me on the bed and pulled me in for a tight hug. “Sweetheart, perhaps you should talk to him.”
“No! I heard enough of what he had to say. I just need a few days to get my shit together and to stop crying and then I’ll go home . . . to Maddie.”
“Okay, if that’s what you want.” Ash pulled me closer. “Maybe you should give Maddie a call and let her know.”
I laughed, a single, cold laugh. “I can’t speak to her, she’ll know something’s wrong and then she will be on the next train down here to cut Maurizio’s balls off.”
“If what you think he said is true, perhaps he needs his balls cutting off.” Ash sniggered. I didn’t.
“I don’t think I heard anything. I did hear.
Every word he said with my own ears. There was no misunderstanding; he loves Sophie and sees his future with her and the children.
” The devastation of that reality, the pain I’d felt when I first heard those words only intensified now.
Curling up tight with my legs in my chest while my arms wrapped around them, I pulled them close enough so that I could drop my head to my knees, burying my face.
Ash still held me, rocking me, but nothing soothed this pain, and I feared it never would.
“Why does it hurt so much?” I asked between gasps and cries, unsure if I wanted or needed a response but I got one.
“Because you loved so much.”
Time passed by and every time I thought my tears had passed, more followed until I didn’t think I could cry anymore.
My bones ached and my insides throbbed in real physical pain, and my heart was being torn in two.
The last time I had felt pain like this had been after my parents had died, the physical pain of grief and loss, and while Maurizio hadn’t died, a part of me and the future I thought we might have had did.
Like a child, I cried myself to sleep and when I woke alone I risked looking in the mirror.
I looked as though I had been in a fight or mugged, and still I felt worse than I looked.
I considered climbing back into bed, curling into the foetal position and crying until there really were no more tears to cry, or perhaps until the pain subsided or at least until I became numb.
That’s what I needed, to feel nothing, and maybe to forget for a little while and I knew just how to achieve that.
Ash had been dubious about my plan, but being the good friend he was, or at least the concerned friend, he went along with it.
We had mixed our own cocktails using whatever Ash had available and while they weren’t cocktail bar worthy, they were strong and were beginning to kick in, giving me a buzz. It wasn’t the usual drunk, happy buzz, but a hazy indifferent buzz, and in that moment, that was a win.
I found a couple of bottles of sour shot stuff and some Tequila in the cupboard and in the absence of shot glasses, I lined up some egg cups and ramakin dishes that I filled.
Grabbing the salt and a lime that had seen better days, I added the finishing touches.
Ash and I had downed them all, ten, maybe twelve shots and that is when my feeling of indifference shifted to angry.
Unsure exactly what I was saying, I ranted, swore, and made awful threats against anyone and everyone who had ever hurt me which led me to talk about my parents.
I knew I was at risk of becoming out of control and needed a distraction.
With my phone synched to Ash’s smart speaker, I set about devising a playlist. “Music!” I squealed as the first bars of Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like A Woman! rang out. “I am a strong independent woman and I don’t need a man.”
“Preach it, sister!” Ash called as he pulled me up to dance as I sang loudly.
My independent woman soundtrack only lasted for Kelly Clarkson, Pink!
Chaka Khan and the classic break-up song of I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor.
Then with Ash looking down at the phone in my hand, I paused at Adele’s Water Under the Bridge, he delivered a single, “No, no Adele, and no Lewis Capaldi, both musical geniuses who tear your heartstrings out, so no, not tonight!”
“It had to have meant something, right? I had to have meant something to him, didn’t I? But how could he have really loved me only to do this, to love and want Sophie?” The tears were back, as were Ash’s arms around me, unlike the feeling of indifference and numbness I was hoping for.
The glass in my hand that was still half full suddenly disappeared. “No more alcohol, let me make coffee or something, but yes, you had to have meant something to him.”
Huddled in the armchair nearest the speaker, I continued to play my sad songs and cry.
Even when Ash returned with coffee, the songs kept coming; Unbreak My Heart by Toni Braxton, I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston, Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, until I came full circle to defiance and outrage as the effects of the drink wore off ever so slightly to the sound of Flowers by Miley Cyrus pointing out all the things I could do for myself, but the truth was, I didn’t want to.
In an attempt to stem the tears threatening to overflow, I continued on my one-woman concert as I moved from angry to regretful, me and Celine Dion warning Maurizio to think twice before committing to the words he’d said and then back to sad I went with Abba of all people.
How could they, the kings and queens of the pop anthem and sure fire dancefloor fillers since 1974 be the ones to make me sob?
Lyrics I’d sung as a little girl as my mum had been something of a fan and now, although the words hadn’t changed, my emotions and interpretation of them had.
Barely able to see the space in front of me I now sat in silence as words of a lonely bed, wishing to be somewhere else, of being lonely and waiting for a call.
It was me. I was the one of us they sang of, and if I didn’t wish I had never left, but I’d had to, he hadn’t left any choice, had he?
It was now that I noticed Ash had disappeared and in that moment, I needed him to be my wing man, so I went to find him, and yet again, not twenty-four hours since I’d last been betrayed, I heard him talking on the phone, about me.
He was explaining that I was broken hearted and very drunk, that he didn’t know what to do or how best to comfort me, and that although I hadn’t planned on returning home until I was able to speak without crying, Ash was worried about me so had turned to the only person he knew that might be able to help, Maddie.
I was seething. He had suggested calling Carrie and Bea when I’d first arrived and again this morning, but as much as they were my friends, Bea had a conflict of interest and I knew Carrie would be supportive but possibly insist on thrashing this out with Maurizio, citing the similarities in her relationship with Gabe to ours and holding them up as a shiny beacon of hope.
I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t see his handsome face, or hear his voice, inhale his glorious aroma.
That would break me in two, to know that he and all of the things I loved about him belonged to someone else, always had.
Plus, my friends were both heavily pregnant and didn’t need the added stress of me.
Also, I hadn’t wanted any drama, and now, the one thing guaranteed to be brought to the party with Maddie on the war path which she would be was drama. Shit!
My anger was being redirected from Ash for telling my sister to Maurizio, Sophie, but most of all, to myself.
I decided that before Maddie arrived, and she would be arriving, I was going to deal with The Walkers myself and not allow Maddie to fight my battles.
All thoughts of being broken at the sight and sound of Maurizio were gone and I was retreating from my eavesdropping position, heading for the backdoor and leaving to the sounds of Lewis Capaldi’s Forget Me behind.
I was heading back to the house I had ran from the night before, but why, perhaps Lewis was right? I was still holding on.