I absolutely believed he thought he’d given it his best shot. In hindsight, everything from stargazing on rooftops to gifting me Billet-doux had been tactical. It just wasn’t enough for me anymore. “I know. But I’m not going to discuss it while you’re drunk.”
“We have to. That’s why I got drunk. How else was I supposed to work up to telling you all of this?”
I wrestled free of his grip. “Don’t do this now. You’ll regret it in the morning.”
He brought his wrist to his face, squinting as he tried to read it. “It’s already morning, and I already have many regrets.”
“Stop talking, Adam.”
He ignored me. “Maybe you should get drunk too. Then we can reminisce about all the horrible things my mother put you through when you got here. And when that subject runs dry we’ll move on to the torture my friends inflicted.”
“Don’t – ”
“No, let me finish. There’s plenty more I don’t want to talk about. How about all the times I let you down? All the times I refused to see what was going on because that was easier than trying to deal with it. Your time here’s been a living hell.” He shook his head, speaking with pure regret. “I’m such a selfish bastard. I did nothing to save you from it.”
I couldn’t argue with the truth. The best I could do was remind him of why I endured it. “I love you, Adam.”
He grimaced as if my words had caused him excruciating pain. “You gave up everything for me. Don’t do it anymore. I can’t give up anything for you.”
It was the most honesty I’d seen from him in a long time. I reached for his hand and held it tightly. “I’m sorry for that, Charli.”
“I’m sorry too,” I replied, dully.
“Why did you put up with it for so long?”
“Because I thought it was temporary. You let me think we were leaving.” It was important that I kept calm. He was barely thinking straight. If I overloaded him with anger, there was a chance the conversation would end up in a place we couldn’t recover from. “What did you think was going to happen? Did you think you could string me along indefinitely? Show me enough magic every now and then to keep me loved up and happy? You know me better than that, Adam.”
He shrugged but at least he had the good sense to look contrite. “I don’t know what to tell you, Charli. Love makes you do all sorts of unreasonable things.”
It was the same cryptic quip Gabrielle had confounded me with a hundred times, only this time, I understood its meaning perfectly. It was the very reason I’d stuck it out as long as I had, and why he’d duped me into staying.
“You lied to me,” I said, dropping my hold on his hand.
“Every. Freaking. Day,” he admitted, enunciating every word. “I won’t do it any more. I’m exhausted. I know you’re leaving me. I know our five minutes are up.”
Of everything he’d just confessed to, those last seven words were the ones that wrecked me, especially the blasé way he’d said them. I covered my face with my hands, willing myself not to cry.
“You’re okay with that? Do you want me to leave, Adam?”
He pulled my hands from my face, forcing me to look at him. So many emotions crossed his handsome, wasted face that I truly couldn’t pre-empt his answer.
“No Charli. I want to rip your fairy wings off on a daily basis to make sure you can’t fly away.” The frustrated words hitched in his throat, slowing his rant. “I love you. I want you to stay here and be miserable forever so I never have to face life without you. Is that too much to ask?”
He grinned then, extinguishing the cruelty of his words in an instant. “You’re a sloppy drunk, Adam Décarie,” I admonished, smiling back at him.
The deep dimple in his cheek vanished as quickly as his smile. “Please wish for things to be different,” he urged. The alcohol was talking. He was practically begging me to do something that his normally logical brain had trouble believing in. “Cash in your biggest wish and find a way to fix this.”
“You can’t fix hopeless, Adam.”
His head lolled back and he growled in exasperation. “The universe sucks, Charlotte,” he said roughly.
“Tonight, she does,” I agreed, laughing at his uncharacteristic choice of words.
Fate is a cruel mistress. She let us find each other and fall desperately in love, years before we were supposed to, at a time when neither of us could completely surrender to it. I was beginning to suspect that my father and fate were old friends. Alex had warned me of this outcome long ago, and only now could I concede that he’d been right all along.
“I know that you’re going to hate living in New York,” he’d told me. “Adam will win out for a while, but eventually you’re going to have to decide when to call it quits.”
Now was the time. Somewhere along the line, love and happiness had become mutually exclusive. Our five minutes were definitely up.
***
After an unsettled few hours of sleep, I spent the next morning packing, somehow managing to squash my New York life into the one suitcase I’d arrived with a year earlier. The thing I most wanted to pack was sleeping a few feet away from me. Adam was much stiller than usual, but groaned occasionally, leading me to think that a whacking great headache would add to his troubles when he woke up. He finally appeared just before noon, staggering into the lounge half-dressed, sleepy and sexy as hell. If there was supposed to be a moment that I reconsidered leaving, that was it. Staying would require no courage at all. Finding the strength to leave was going to take all that I had.
“You’re awake,” I mumbled, stating the obvious. “How are you feeling?”
He smiled sheepishly. “Horrible. Close to death.”
“Hangovers suck,” I said sympathetically. “I’ll get you some water.”
“I don’t need water, Charli.” He caught my hand as I passed him, stopping me dead. “The way I’m feeling has nothing to do with a hangover.”
“Do you remember much of last night?”
It occurred to me that my recollection was probably a lot stronger than his. The last thing I wanted was to have to fill in blanks for him. I worried that the mutual decision to go our separate ways might not be so mutual in the cold light of day.
“I remember everything,” he replied. “I just want to make sure I that I said everything I needed to.”
“We talked about everything,” I assured, pulling my hand away. “I’m good to go.”
I walked into the kitchen on the guise of getting him some water. I held the glass under the running tap, giving myself the distraction I needed so I wouldn’t have to look at him. At that moment, nothing about leaving seemed right. Looking at him just confirmed it.
“So I told you about the billet-doux I wrote you?” he finally hinted.
I turned back to face him, ignoring the fact that I’d left the tap running.
“No. You never mentioned it. Can I have it now?”
He shook his head, smiling only slightly. “No, not now. You’ll find it when you most need it, but I want you to promise me something.”
“Okay.”
“When you read it, I want you to look at the deeper meaning. If you take it at face value, you’re reading it wrong.” He frowned as if he was having trouble deciphering his own words.
“I will look for the deeper meaning,” I promised. “It’s what I do.”
He looked relieved. “I know.”
“Is it a drunken billet-doux Adam?” I asked, trying to lighten the conversation. “If you wrote it last night, I’ll give you a chance to rewrite it. Drunk billet-douxing is a big no-no.”
He turned off the tap, pinning me against the counter in the process. “I’m pretty sure billet-douxing isn’t a word, Charlotte,” he murmured. “But for the record, no. I wrote it a long time ago.”
As curious as I was, I wasn’t going to press him for more information. Instead, I imagined how good it was going to feel to find a love letter from him after I’d gone. I put my hands on his chest and
sighed pensively. “Saying goodbye is going to suck.”
His hands rested on my hips as he pressed himself against me. “We’re not going to say goodbye. Never say goodbye, because goodbye means going away, and –”
I cut in, finishing the very familiar quote myself. “Going away means forgetting. That line wasn’t actually in Peter Pan, Adam. It was in the movie.”
He looked guiltily at me. “I haven’t had time to read the book. I took a shortcut and managed to catch some of the movie on TV.”
The smile I forced was edged with sadness. Our time together in Pipers Cove had been slow and easy, leaving plenty of time for Adam to concentrate on the small details. Our New York life was the complete opposite. It was fast, fuelled by drama and full of far too many shortcuts.
I crushed my lips to his. “I will never forget,” I promised, breaking free for only a second.
***
I knew that letting Adam go wasn’t going to be a one-time thing. I was going to have to live through it every day, over and over again. For that reason, I was determined to make it as painless as possible. I didn’t want him to come with me to the airport. In my mind, that fell into the dragging-out-a-long-goodbye category.
Adam didn’t share my misgivings. “We spent the afternoon in bed, Charlotte.” He smiled, though it had a rueful tinge to it. “The get-out-of-Dodge-quickly ship sailed hours ago.”
He had a point. I relented immediately, and within the hour we were in a cab on our way to JFK airport.
I put absolutely no thought into where I was going until Adam asked me where I was headed. Only then did I begin weighing up my options. One was returning home to Pipers Cove. I had some serious bridges to mend with my father. Over time, my relationship with Alex had buckled. I couldn’t pinpoint the moment it became irreparable; all I knew was that the phone calls between us had become few and far between. There was a time that being out of contact would have sent him into a blind panic, but Alex had stopped chasing me, just as I’d begged him to.
He had always considered my marriage to be a mistake of epic proportions, so going home alone was an ordeal I was happy to delay for a while. I decided to go with option two – Mitchell.
I didn’t think Adam would want to be privy to that plan, so I purposely kept my answer vague. “I think I’ll try and get a flight to Dubai and figure it out from there.”
I could see the tension in his jaw as he nodded. My plans from here were on a need-to-know basis. And he no longer needed to know.
By the time we’d reached the airport, booked my ticket and checked my luggage, the pressure of what we were about to do was starting to hit. The end was close and we were both feeling it. I couldn’t bear dragging out the agony any longer.
“Well, this is it,” I said shakily, lifting my bag off the floor and slinging it over my shoulder. Adam reached for my hands. He stared at me with the intensity that always made me feel as if he was looking beyond my eyes.
I had nothing to lose by questioning him about it. “What do you see when you look at me that way?”
He looked away and I tilted my head, chasing his eyes.
“The same thing I always see.”
I feared what that meant. A million possibilities ran through my mind. “Which is?” My voice was tiny.
He leaned down so close that his words hummed against my mouth. “Our happy ending.”
I arched my back, buying some distance between us as I tried to make sense of his answer. “It didn’t happen, Adam. I was wrong.”
His head moved infinitesimally but he spoke with strength. “You weren’t wrong about us. Don’t leave here thinking I’m not the one for you, Charli. I am. I just haven’t proven it yet.”
The burning feeling of wanting to kiss him to death pulsed through me. Perhaps noticing the danger he was in, he put me out of my misery by leaning forward and pressing his lips to mine.
It wasn’t just a kiss. There was an underlying promise to it – one day he’d find me again, and things would be different.
We weren’t giving up. We were just letting go for a while.
***
The three hours I spent in the airport at Dubai while waiting for my connecting flight to Cape Town weren’t good. It gave me time alone to think. Grief was inevitable, but I was never going to get through it if I couldn’t get over it. I’d been there before and it wasn’t something I could endure indefinitely. It was a feeling of heaviness, as if my chest had been encased in concrete and my heart was trying to smash its way back in. Now seemed like the perfect time to find the billet-doux Adam had promised me. Ignoring the stares of passers-by, I upended the contents of my bag onto the floor of the departure lounge, hoping he’d hidden it there. I checked every pocket, and when the last one came up empty, I spiralled to the point of tears.
Out of sight, out of mind was the motto I quickly adopted, starting with the biggest reminder of all. I roughly twisted my wedding ring off my finger, preparing to hide it away in my bag with the other fragments of my New York life. It was the first time I’d taken it off since the day he’d given it to me, and I was struck by how bare my finger felt without it. I rolled the band between my thumb and forefinger, contemplating putting it back on my finger on the grounds that I’d given up enough for one day. Then I noticed something I’d never seen before. The inside of the ring was engraved.
I squinted to read the tiny script: I will love you always, wherever you are.
I’d found my billet-doux.
A normal girl would’ve been devastated at the realisation that Adam had written that message less than a week after marrying me, and would’ve been cut to the quick by his prediction of failure. But I wasn’t normal. I instantly found the deeper meaning, just as he’d made me promise to do.
It didn’t matter that he knew I would eventually leave. His resolve to stay in New York made that inevitable, whether we lasted a week, a year or a decade. What mattered was that just as he knew we’d end, no matter how ugly or hurtful it might’ve been, he was certain he’d still love me long after I was gone.
The End….for now.
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G. J. Walker-Smith, Second Hearts
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