Chapter 2
Grateful that Priya had suggested they walk back to the apartment instead of taking the subway, Alethea felt uplifted by the breeze against her face. The walk would do her good as she needed to regain her bearings a bit. Her head just always seemed muddled lately, like she was walking around in one giant post-breakup fog. No more, she thought. She was angry and ashamed with herself for how broken she felt when clearly Jackson had zero problems moving on. Pull yourself together girl! admonished that little voice in her head. At that thought, something tickled at the back of her mind. Together. Together what? Something about putting things back together? Tiny scraps of her dream danced about and tried to form in her mind, but they were too fragmented to latch on to.
“Earth to Alethea!” Priya waved her hand in front of Alethea’s face, laughing. “You said you needed to stop at the grocery on the way back to your place, right?”
Blinking and pulling her thoughts away from that strange dream and back to the present, Alethea realized they had already walked almost all the way home. She had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed. “Oh sorry, um yeah, I do. Dandelion is acting like her royal-princess-self again and is only eating slow cooked rotisserie chicken from Mervin’s.” She rolled her eyes. “Be right back!” she said as she ran inside the small, family run market.
With a piping hot chicken in one bag and a few ready-made prepared meals in the other, Alethea balanced the bags in her arms as she unlocked the heavy front door to her apartment building. “I’d offer to help but…,” Priya joked, shaking all of the shopping bags she was carrying herself.
“Ha ha, don’t worry I got it.” Alethea held the door open so Priya could walk through, and the two of them made their way to the stairwell.
Dandelion liftedher head up and sniffed at the air. Mervin’s rotisserie chicken. She cocked her head to hear two sets of footsteps coming up the stairs. From the sounds of it, Alethea’s friend Priya was with her. Good. Dandelion was pleased that her friends were finally getting around to coming over. It had been three weeks of this nonsense, and Dandelion was starting to get impatient. The smell of that awful chicken was getting stronger. Dandelion longed for a meal of her regular morsels from the bag. Surely if Alethea was going out to yoga with Danica and having Priya over, she could give up her charade with the fake cravings, right? Dandelion hopped down from her secret napping spot, a pile of fuzzy sweaters on the top shelf in the closet, and slowly sauntered through the bedroom towards the door.
“Hey Dandelion, I’m home! I brought dinner!”
“Oooooookaaaaaay.”Priya said the word slowly, drawing out the syllables as she punched one final computation into the calculator app on her phone. “You’ve got two months.”
“Two months? Seriously, that’s all?” Alethea was panicked. The two friends were sitting in the charcoal leather club chairs in Alethea’s living room, the coffee table cleared of the takeout containers and now completely covered in papers and bills. Priya had her laptop open and turned it around so that Alethea could see the glowing screen. “You have enough in savings to cover your expenses for two months,” Priya repeated, pointing to the dollar amount at the bottom of her meticulous budget tracker, bolded in red. “But you really need to find an affordable place to live as soon as possible. It’s a good thing your lease is month-to-month.”
Two months! How on earth was she supposed to find a new job and a new place to live all at once and so fast? She tried to push down the tears that were welling up and starting to sting at the corner of her eyes. Of all the people in this world that Jackson could have picked to have an affair with, why did it have to be her boss? No, actually her ex-boss, she reminded herself. Unable to stop it, she replayed the horrid scene for the thousandth time in her head.
She had managed to catch an earlier flight home from her work trip thinking that she’d surprise Jackson, but it certainly ended up being the other way around. She had walked into the apartment to find Dandelion frantically pawing at the bedroom door. Putting her carry-on luggage down, she quickly walked over and opened it to see what Dandelion’s fuss had been about. And saw she did, Susan wrapped in Jackson’s muscular arms with a perfectly contented smile on her face.
It was the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday and she was home four hours early, so she had planned to surprise Jackson with a romantic dinner when he got home from work. She wasn’t going to actually cook of course. No one wanted to choke down a charred-black steak with undercooked rice pilaf (her last attempt at a nice meal). She had placed an order at Dante’s Bistro for lamb chops with a reduced balsamic cherry glaze and garlic mashed potatoes that were whipped to perfection and tasted like you were eating little potato clouds. She’d have more than enough time to shower and change before heading out to pick up their meal and then set the table and light some candles.
Alethea had wanted to plan a special evening for her and Jackson for a while, but she had been so busy lately with extra assignments, tight deadlines, and long nights. There was always another project that Susan had needed her to be working on. At the time, Alethea’s reaction to all of the extra work had been one of a sense of pride. Her boss had been increasing her responsibilities and had let her become more involved on the client management side of things, so much so that Alethea had been certain a promotion was close on the horizon. Susan had kept hinting that when their Senior Director retired at the end of June, someone would need to move up to fill his position. Now all sense of accomplishment at her hard work had vanished, as Alethea finally saw it clearly for what it was. She hadn’t been given these new levels of responsibility as a reward, she had been given them as a distraction.
That blissful smile on Susan’s lips as she lay entwined with Jackson was an image Alethea just could not blot out of her mind. It haunted her, burned into her mind as if by force. The worst part was that she had just stood there, like an idiot, gaping at the two of them. Her mouth hung open in disbelief but she couldn’t seem to form any actual words. What unfolded after that was a blur as Alethea had tried desperately to process what was happening. The next thing she remembered was Susan calmly and confidently walking out of her apartment, turning back to look at Alethea. “See you at work tomorrow morning?” she asked in an overly innocent tone, her conceited smile making her look like a spoiled child who knew she’d done something wrong but didn’t care.
“Are you insane!?” Alethea had finally managed to get the words out. “I don’t ever want to see either of you ever again!” This couldn’t really be happening to her, could it? “I quit!” she yelled at the beautiful blonde woman who up until a few minutes ago had been her mentor.
“Oh, well too bad then. Jackson, you coming?” Susan asked, and without looking back at him she sauntered out the door. Jackson just shrugged and walked into the bedroom, coming out a few minutes later fully dressed with a hastily packed gym bag in hand. He looked at Alethea, his expression blank. “I’ll send someone over to pack up my things tomorrow.” Then he walked out the door and out of her life. Just like that. Not even a single I’m sorry or acknowledgement that he had just destroyed everything they had spent the last few years building. No crying, pleading for her to forgive him. No promises that he would never do it again. He gave her nothing, like she had meant nothing to him, and that’s what had hurt the worst of all.
Alethea forced her attention back to the problem at hand. “Two months, Priya, what am I going to do?” Her emotions were starting to bubble over. “It’s not fair! I’m the one who was wronged but I’m the only one suffering any consequences from it. I hate that man with every fiber of my being!” Now there was no stopping the tears. Alethea slumped down farther in her chair, an opportunity that Dandelion seized to hop up onto her lap.
“Hey, you”re not alone.” Priya tried to console her as she broke down into full on sobbing. “You’re going to get through this, I promise! You’ve got Danica and me to help you get back on your feet. And Dandelion,” she added, smiling, as the little black cat began kneading Alethea’s thigh. “Besides, it’ll be good for you to move out of this apartment and into somewhere more ‘you.’ It was Jackson-the-Jerk who insisted on this place, not you, remember?”
It was true. Alethea had fallen in love with a sweet little two-family Craftsman for rent, with perfectly manicured rose bushes out front and even enough space on the porch for a potted herb garden. But this ultra modern apartment complex they had ended up in was slightly closer to Jackson’s work, and having a short commute was sacred to him. Alethea had never really gotten used to the sterile concrete and architectural sharp angles, but it had seemed like the sensible decision to make at the time. Mindlessly petting Dandelion as she sat up in her chair a bit straighter, she managed to choke back the tears. Priya was right, a new start didn’t have to be all bad.
“Look, I know how hard this is. But the one thing that you must do immediately, is knock off all the food deliveries! I don’t think you realize just how much money you’ve blown on DoorDash these last few weeks.”
“I don’t want to know,” grumbled Alethea miserably.
“Okay, I know you say you’ve never been able to learn to cook but maybe you’ve just never had the right teacher?” Priya’s huge smile was back on her lips. “It’s literally what I do for a living! Come on, let me help you, no arguing. It’s really not as hard as it seems.” Priya’s tone was resolute as she folded her arms. “It’s settled. I’m coming over tomorrow and we are going to finally teach you how to boil that pot of pasta!”
…..
Today had been hard,really hard, but having her friends’ support had made it bearable. Alethea put on her last clean pair of sweatpants and let out a sigh. She’d have to do laundry in the morning. How had she let herself fall apart so badly? She climbed into bed where Dandelion had already warmed up her spot for her. “Scooch over, Princess.” Her friends were right, she would survive this. There was no way in hell she’d let Jerk-Face-Jackson continue to consume every bit of her. It was time to let reality finally sink in and admit that he was never coming back. There never would be a way to hit the reset button and repair her life back to what it was. Sometimes things have to fall apart. That nagging scrap of last night’s dream was tickling at the back of her mind, but before she could grasp it, she remembered the promise she had made to Danica earlier. Sighing again, she reached over and picked up her phone. “MeditationSpace, huh? Well, at least this one I can’t be late for,” she said to Dandelion as she opened the app.
Dandelion tooka deep stretch then repositioned herself in the divot made by Alethea’s legs in the duvet where she could get a better view. Her human had fallen asleep after a few minutes, the soothing woman’s voice still blathering on about when to breathe and how to visualize the different chakras. So rudimentary and boring, Dandelion thought with disdain. But now, what Alethea was doing, that was actually interesting. With each slow exhale as she drifted deeper and deeper into sleep, the air directly surrounding Alethea seemed to…shimmer. Dandelion’s keen eyesight was even better in the dark than during the day, and she was absolutely sure of what she saw. Very interesting indeed.