Chapter 31 Evan
Dread fills my body this morning. Flo’s leaving to catch her flight to Florida to begin the trip of a lifetime, where the possibilities are endless.
She could fall in love with Georgia or Yukon and decide to move there.
She could meet a guy along the way, who gives her everything she asks for, and who doesn’t have responsibility looming over his head.
She wouldn’t get mixed up with the press, and things wouldn’t be complicated. They’d be easy, and she’d be happy.
“Well, I guess I’ll be on my way,” Flo says with her bags by the door, crouching down in front of Leo, who pouts his bottom lip before throwing his arms around her.
He’s a smart kid, but doesn’t quite understand the severity of the situation.
There’s no guarantee that Flo will come back, and if she does, there’s also no guarantee she’ll want to be in our lives.
She might be in a completely different place with hers.
“I’ll see you at Nathan and Mae’s wedding, okay? I bet you look dapper in a suit,” Flo teases my son while giving him the biggest squeeze, using the distraction to wipe the tears from her eyes so he doesn’t notice.
“Donkey will miss you. And I will.”
“I’ll miss you too, buddy. So much.” She gives a quick peck on the head.
Then she stands and faces me, and it feels like my heart is slowly being pulled apart, but for her sake, I don’t let it show. God, I feel like Elsa. “Come here, trouble,” I say while opening my arms, and kiss the top of her head while rubbing her back.
“You’ve turned me into a softie. I hardly ever cried before I met you.”
“I have that effect on women,” I joke, trying to lighten the mood.
We pull back, and when Leo drops down onto the ground to continue his colouring, I cup Flo’s cheeks and give her the most passionate kiss I can muster. “One more for the road.”
She melts against me, but soon pulls away when her eyes begin to water again.
“Please don’t talk about me too much to him.
He’s been left once,” her throat bobs, “and I don’t want him to feel the same way again.
He’s young, and the last thing I want to do is hurt him.
Six months is a long time to miss someone, Evan. "
That last part was for me. We both know it won’t be healthy for Leo, or for either of us, to text and call as if the future is certain.
It’s best to let Flo go cleanly and effectively.
No long, emotional texts. No late-night phone calls.
No pretending that we can just be friends for the time being.
It’s the only way to protect what I have left.
We’ll see each other again, but I just don’t know in what context.
If Flo finds her calling somewhere far away, then that’s where she’ll go, and I won’t blame her, won’t hold it against her.
We both knew this wasn’t a forever thing, no matter how much I wanted it to be.
“I hope you know my door is always open for you, trouble.”
“You’re going to have to stop calling me that now.” She laughs sadly. “No more pet names.”
“I don’t think that’ll happen.”
More tears slip from her eyes, and one leaks out of mine, too.
After more tears, thanking each other and stalling, Flo leaves the property, and I watch from the porch with Leo on my hip, after having helped her load up her bags.
Regret rushes through my veins.
I regret not telling her a lot of things.
That Gracie really never had anything to do with the interior of the cabin. I picked the blue colours of the furniture out because they matched the flecks in Flo’s eyes, and I couldn’t get them out of my head.
That I’ve had plenty of time to call people to fix the roof of the cabin, but I hated the idea of her moving back into it, so was never going to get someone out here to patch it up.
That she’s made me feel more like myself than anyone ever has. My old self, before the press began to hound me and my insecurities I try so hard to bury forced their way into every crack and crevice of my body.
That I love her. I love her so much that it’s causing me physical pain watching her car turn the corner off my land and take my heart with her, knowing it’ll never belong to anyone else.