I finish the whole bottle.
Sometime during my determination to remove Rosie from my mind, I received a text from Noah confirming the party this coming weekend that’s meant to celebrate their engagement. I didn’t respond to his text, or the few after that asking if I was okay.
At some point though I passed out into a blissful deep sleep, my phone once again tucked around my neck like I’d made some late-night call, when the soft throb of an oncoming headache started to make itself known.
I don’t know the time or the day, or really how long I had been asleep, but I know I can’t keep doing this. Reluctantly, I peel myself off the couch in a hungover haze for the second time. Stewing over the news article and the look of pain in her eyes. I force myself on a morning swim and then an afternoon hike. Staying out longer at the lookouts and breathing in the fresh mountain air as I try to piece myself together. Try, and completely fail, because every time I try to imagine what life is meant to be like, what being whole feels like, it starts and ends withher.
And though the throbbing pain and the hollowness of being alone don’t go away, the intensity starts to fade. Or perhaps I’m getting better at denial.
I’m in the middle of attempting an empanada recipe when there is a knock at the door. Confused, I don’t really give myself a moment to think, but I head for the door and freeze a little.
“Addison?”
“You’re a fucking moron, you know that?” She scowls, shoving at my chest as she pushes her way through the door and storms into the kitchen. “You own this place?” I toss my head back in an exaggerated sigh, closing the door and following behind her back to the stove. I busy myself while she wanders around.
“Look, I came to get away from all the drama. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be left alone,” I mumble the words, not able to look her in the eyes. Because I know that rage will burn me where I stand.
“No.” She sighs, and I hear her shuffle around.
I spin from the stove, turning it off and raising a brow at where she now sits at the counter. “No?”
“You heard me. I came to help you get your head out of your fucking ass and do something.” She emphasizes with a fist to the countertop.
“God, you’re scary for a little thing.”
“I can get scarier, don’t test me.” I swear she growls the words as she scowls at me. Suddenly grateful for the counter that separates us. Seeing Addy’s fiery side though? All it does is make me think of Rosie. I absently rub my chest as my eyes find the floor, willing that ache to just fuck off already. I hear Addy release a heavy breath and then she’s no longer at the counter but standing in front of me, her eyes are big green saucers as she crosses her arms.
“I’m sorry, Caleb. But you’re being a total d-bag.”
“Come again?” I sputter, letting my eyes find hers properly this time.
“You heard me. You can’t let her go through with this. Caleb, she’s fucking miserable.”
“I can’t make her do anything.” I try to spin in the direction of the stove, not wanting to look at Addison while she lectures me. But with a hand to my shoulder, she shoves me, forcing me to keep looking at her.
“No? But you sure as shit can show her how to make the right decision. You need to show up!” She throws her hands in the air and I feel my jaw set, not wanting to explode on the little spit fire. “You need to show her that a life with you is better than one without. And I know that’s so fucking cheesy, but she iscrying, Caleb. Crying! Rosie Garcia, who doesn’t show an ounce of emotion, has cried herself to sleep every night this week. And I know because I’m there every night to make sure she’s eating. I have never, in the twenty years I have known her, seen her like this.” Each word is like another laceration to my soul and I hate,fucking loathe,to hear them.
“How can I beat her family. She’d be picking me over them and I’m not idiot enough to ever think she would.”
“You know nothing!” Addison shouts at me, her hands shoving at my chest. “Blood is not everything. They treat her like a commodity and she believes there is no other way.” Addison closes her eyes on a deep breath before looking back at me. I swear there are flames that lick at the depths of her eyes. “She told me…she told Casey and I everything. About her father about that asshole Mickey. And she believes there is no other way. Show her that there is.” She finishes on a breath, looking a lot more exhausted than when she came in here.
“Honestly, Addy, I don’t know how. I thought…I thought how we were…I thought it was perfect, that it was right.” All I can picture is Rosie and her red-rimmed, wet eyes as she pokes around a plate of food, utterly miserable.
“You still love her?” she asks gently.
“You’d have to cut out my heart to make me stop,” I whisper the words, still unable to meet her eyes and feeling the reluctant sting behind my own. After a beat of silence, I force myself to look up at Addy and she has a bit of a curl to her lip as she blinks at me.
“That was graphic.” She half chuckles, her face softening into sympathy. “She loves you, too, you know.”
“She told you?” Because I’d been dying to hear her say the words to me. I’d told her. In the heat of everything, I’d told her that I loved her. I don’t regret it, and I would never take itback, but I hate that it happened in the moments when she was slipping through my fingers.
Addy pouts at my question, shaking her head.
“I don’t think she knows how to,” I say quietly.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Addy smiles softly at me as her eyes grow a little wet. “She knows how to love, fiercely too. I’ve felt it, so has Casey. She loves us with her entire being and we love her the same. She knows how to love, Caleb. But she only knows the kind of love that doesn’t need work. The kind of love she’d never lose. That is always in the background and grows over years of patience, full promises, and shared loneliness. She knows she has me and Casey for eternity, no matter what happens, nothing takes that away.” She smiles again, a little wider, despite the sadness growing in her eyes. “But the kind of love she’s found with you is scary. It’s the kind of love that can lift you so high, the fall breaks you. It’s the kind of love that changes your soul. It rearranges priorities and dreams. It forces you to grow, to adapt and change. Itallowsyou to be free without the fear of being lost.” She wipes somewhat angrily at a tear she drops as she grumbles to herself. “She always needs to be in control, Caleb. But that kind of love? It upends everything. It makes you so completely and utterly out of control, it can be hard to hold steady. When she was faced with the choice to keep herself in control when the rest of her life was spinning out of it, or to hand herself over to someone she knows she’d get lost in, with no idea how it ends? Surely you can find some grace inside you to forgive her for saving herself. To take her hand and love her back. Love her more than you hate her for making a mistake.”
“I could never hate her,” I breathe the angry words. The truth. It wouldn’t matter what happened, hate is something I’m incapable of when it comes to her.
