Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Morgan Finch was the sickly-sweet candy Lee Holmes couldn’t help but indulge in—had indulged in for the last five years, even if the prospect of rotting her teeth, or worse, her insides, lay still at the back of her tongue, waiting to rear its ugly head.
Her good judgement of character had been predominantly right about Morgan all those years ago, beside the campfire.
It had told her that women like Morgan were like the first sip of coffee in the morning.
Eventually, what once was a pleasant treat would soon become her reason for waking up, her vice, even if the taste began to wane.
Only, even now, as the prospect of losing that initial sip of her morning wake-up call began to slip out of her fingertips, she acknowledged that the taste had never diminished.
Morgan Finch was still the same enticing mouthful she had always been, and she still needed that vice more than ever, if not, more so, which made the loss all the more somber.
It seemed like now, as an eternity without Morgan was spanning out before her very eyes at the back of her mind, she would be adopting a new wake-up call entirely; one that rotted her teeth and her insides all the same, only, without the pleasing taste to accompany it.
Lee Holmes had become conscious of her entire body the moment that Morgan had gazed at her with the same pair of green eyes she had become used to over the last five years.
The same pair of green eyes that did little to hide the hurt before she tore her gaze away and made her exit.
Lee became entirely aware of the way she exhaled, the way her arms hung at her sides like two limbs that were simply thrown there haphazardly, as if they were never meant to be there in the first place.
Perhaps leaving Morgan was like taking her advice in a morbid way. Staying now, all things considered, was like getting comfortable, and getting comfortable meant getting sloppy.
Opening her mouth now, Lee uttered a sound that was so quiet she wondered if any noise had even come out of her at all. If it had, Morgan Finch made no effort to decipher it, as she re-entered the room without a sound and made her way over to the closet, presumably to retrieve some of her things.
Lee wondered at that moment how Morgan was able to move at all, to be able to do anything except sit and feel her arms at her sides, wondering how they even got there in the first place.
Her own body felt heavy, and mismatched.
She thought that should she even attempt to move her own feet at present time, it would be like walking on the moon, each step uncertain.
Everything had all become uncertain as far as she was concerned.
Each and every moment that had followed since Edward Beckett.
She had helped Morgan then if only to maintain the relationship that they had with one another, and oddly, she found herself not regretting the act in the slightest. She only regretted having been in the apartment in the first place to witness it, perhaps.
She wasn’t sure at present time what was worse, obliviousness, or oblivion.
Watching everything unfold made Lee instinctively think about the concept between linearity and fate.
Namely, if human beings were destined to walk along a singular proverbial line of life, stage by stage, step by step.
She had always hated the idea that people had no choice or say in their actions, because it excused people from the worst, and negated any sense of accomplishment at their best. And yet, as she sat there, now, in that very room, the concept no longer seemed so distasteful.
It no longer seemed distasteful because if she truly was destined to live a predetermined existence then her entire life up until that point had simply been inevitable.
The things she had seen, and, worse, the things she had done, were fated to happen all along.
It also meant that she was powerless to prevent breaking up with Morgan.
It conveniently wiped her slate clean whilst acknowledging that each and every action she committed to were nothing more than automated lines upon a chalkboard.
Her once-girlfriend, now friend, or even acquaintance, it seemed, packed a suitcase in silence, placing each folded item of clothing with gentle precision.
Morgan Finch didn’t do anything with care, or diligence, unless it was murder, and so Lee Holmes made the rapid assumption that she was stalling.
It wasn’t a particularly naive plan, because the longer she spent packing, the longer Lee had to doubt herself, and truth be told, she was doubting.
If watching Morgan made it harder, she would retract herself from watching her entirely.
Lee Holmes lifted herself from the mattress and stepped outside into the hallway, and as she did so, she was met with the vicious reminder of why they had ended up here in the first place.
Rows and rows of hyacinths lined each wall, lighting up their surroundings with a vibrant purple hue.
It wasn’t the calling card necessarily that put the nail in the coffin so to speak, it was the notion that Lee had been sleeping next to a stranger for the last five years of her life.
A stranger that had murdered multiple people before they had met one another, and long after simultaneously.
Even when she had discovered Morgan’s truth, she only received tiny strands of honesty.
Those tiny strands didn’t include the fact that Morgan Finch was a killer dangerous enough to make podcasts about.
That she was dangerous enough to have her own nickname.
Morgan was the monster under the bed, not the one you went to bed with.
Everything made sense now—the reluctance from Morgan to move to a smaller town, away from New York, presumably because it would be easier to get caught.
The way that Morgan shifted the conversation whenever her mother attempted to invite herself over.
The apartment is too tiny for guests. We’re currently renovating.
Lee Holmes couldn’t escape the fact that she herself could have invited Diana over when Morgan wasn’t there and she would have been none the wiser.
Diana herself could have shown up unannounced and seen the incriminating flowers; tiny petals revealing the machinations of Morgan Finch.
Her entire future was balanced upon the precipice of chance.
Perhaps she liked it that way, but Lee Holmes did not.
A part of her, a naive part, perhaps, had half-expected her levels of anxiety to return to normal, for her breathing to become more regulated knowing that her life would no longer be a horror movie, and yet another part of her, a more rational part, understood that the anxiety would remain, if only because her life was no longer a romance movie, either.
Explaining the break-up to her friends didn’t bother her presently; even explaining it to her family didn’t bother her.
The fundamentals of the break-up seemed trivial in comparison to the weight of the break-up itself.
The fundamentals were nothing more than a feather, but the loss, that deep feeling of disconnect in the pit of her stomach, it felt like the entire universe had taken a day off and elected instead to sit on her chest and suffocate her.
Her first thought after that was to situate herself in the kitchen, or even the living room, perhaps, if she was prepared to do so.
Her second thought, as she sat down in the hallway, crossing her legs upon the floor as opposed to sitting at their desk a mere two feet away, was to remain in the hallway beside the bedroom, in limbo.
She was no longer looking at Morgan, but she could hear her, and, more importantly, Morgan’s body was still in close proximity to hers.
Closer than she would have been should she have moved to the kitchen or living room.
It made little sense, even to herself, why she desired to be as close to Morgan as she could without breaking down, despite being the one that had pushed her away.
But she reminded herself then that both parties were culpable in this instance.
Morgan had pushed in a less literal sense than Lee had, she just hadn’t explicitly said aloud that she was doing it.
Upon hearing the suitcase zip itself shut, Lee closed her eyes and exhaled, her mind working against her as it made the comparison to being seated on a rollercoaster beside Morgan on one of their first dates. Morgan had held her hand, then; she wouldn’t be holding it now.
The bedroom door opened with a creak, and Lee could still feel the weight of the universe pressed against her chest, even as she stood.
She wasn’t sure why she was standing, now, exactly.
She also wasn’t sure what the etiquette dictated in situations such as this one.
Standing, if anything, perhaps complicated things, because it opened the door to hugging one another goodbye, or sharing one final kiss.
That only made the break-up feel that much more palpable—either they would kiss once more, and only once, never to kiss one another again, or, worse, acknowledge that their final kiss might have already happened.
As Morgan stepped out of the bedroom, she looked at Lee for a moment, before her eyes diverted directly towards the front door. The voice inside Lee was begging, praying even, to an unknown entity, that Morgan would do something, anything, to acknowledge her not with her eyes, but with her body.
And yet, as the woman she loved walked past her now, edging closer towards the door, it was then that Lee realized that she would likely never acknowledge her in such a way again.
Morgan Finch turned her attention back towards Lee, her suitcase handle in one hand, and her hair in the other, playing with it, absent-mindedly.
This was something that at times had infuriated Lee but at present time it was a ritual she so desperately craved to witness.
Even now, however, as she looked at Lee, their eyes meeting, it felt as if Morgan were looking at a ghost, or the shadow of her without actually looking at her directly.
“I guess I’ll be seeing you,” she said, catching Lee off-guard.
The words felt so open-ended, which didn’t pair well with how conclusive everything felt.
When would they be seeing each other? Five years together, and only six words sat between them.
How did five years together boil down to pleasantries exchanged like “I guess I’ll be seeing you? ”
Lee Holmes knew more about Morgan now than she had ever known, making her the farthest from a stranger than she had ever been.
So why did it feel like they were more estranged to one another now than when they first met around a campfire?
“Yeah,” she offered back, quietly, formulating the word before she could even process her thought pattern any further. “See you later.”
She wasn’t sure when later was, she had established that herself mentally just seconds earlier, but when the door closed behind Morgan, and the hallway became silent, with nothing to occupy the space but her thoughts, she told herself that later just might become the death of her.
It was then that she decided that oblivion was definitely worse.