Messy.
Of course she said messy.
“So hearts were broken and lives were disrupted again so you could have your second chance?”
Twisting her lips for a second, she nodded. “Pretty much. But look at this little princess. I have no regrets.”
Before I could say any more, ask a single one of my twenty questions, Holly came into the room.
But Abbie’s story haunted me for days.
Saturday morning, I woke to voices in the other room. After throwing on my robe, I opened the door a crack.
Angie.
WWJD?
WWJD?
Really, what would he do?
I wasn’t okay. It had been two weeks since the Costa Rica trip. And I hadn’t talked to Fisher since our morning at Starbucks, and neither had Rory or Rose to my knowledge.
Was Angie there to gloat? Should it have mattered?
Jesus needed to tell me what to do because I wanted to tell her everything. Woman to woman. If she was going to marry the man I loved, she needed to go into it with her eyes wide open. Jesus would’ve told her the truth, right?
As I opened the door a little farther, I could hear their conversation.
“Did he say who?” Rory asked.
“Nope.”
“Did he say how long it’s been going on?” Rose probed.
“He said it didn’t matter. I asked him a ton of questions, but he said the answers didn’t matter.” She sounded so defeated, her voice weak and even a little shaky.
“Does his family know?”
“No. I asked him not to tell them until I leave.” She sniffled. Yeah, she was crying.
“Leave?” Rory sounded surprised.
“I’m going back to California. And after I have time to make sense of this, to figure out what I did wrong, I’ll either come back and face his family or I’ll at least call them. They are my family too, but they’re his real family. And I don’t want there to be sides to take. That’s not fair.”
“It was unexpected. A tragedy in so many ways. He could have died. He could have been crippled for life,” Rose said. “But he lived. And sometimes when we love people, we have to give them what they need even if it’s not us. Life takes so many unexpected paths. Forever is rarely realistic.”
“I miss him already,” Angie said.
And dang it anyway, I teared up. I teared up because she had no idea that anything she had done was hurting me. I teared up because she was just a woman who fell in love with Fisher Mann. And it was nearly impossible to not fall in love with him.
“H-he lived … but I still l-lost him.”
I wiped my eyes as I leaned against the doorframe and listened to the mess I helped create.
“I’m so sorry for your pain,” Rory said, and I imagined her hugging Angie. Someone needed to hug her.
I gently closed my door and sat on the edge of my bed. When did he break things off with her? Did that change things between us? Did he sleep with her in Costa Rica? A goodbye of sorts? How did I feel about him?
So many confusing and unanswered questions.
Did I feel her words? Did they ring true for me too? Did I lose Fisher, but he didn’t die? Did I lose Fisher, but he didn’t end up with Angie?
Was that the right choice all along? Did he need to start fresh? Walk away from the past he couldn’t remember and find someone completely new?
I didn’t know. And by that point the pain was rather numbing.
A while later, there was a knock at my door.
“Yeah?”
Rory opened the door. “Morning.”
I smiled. “Morning.”
“Were you listening?” She gave me a sad smile while taking a seat next to me on the bed.
“For a little while.”
“He ended it.”
I nodded. “When?”
“The night they got home from Costa Rica. Angie had to go out of town for work the following week, probably for the best, and so this has been her first chance to tell us. She’ll be okay.”
I glanced over at Rory, eyes narrowed. “I heard enough of the conversation to know that she’s not going to be okay anytime soon. Why would you say that?”
Her nose wrinkled. “I’m Team Reese and I don’t want you to feel responsible because you really are not responsible. Had he not fallen in love with you, I don’t think he was going to fall back in love with her.”
“So two weeks …” He’d broken up with her when we went to Starbucks, but he said nothing.
“Give him time, sweetie. I think he’s dealing with his own loss. He’s lost hope of getting his memory back, and that has to be hard to accept.”
He lost faith too. Faith in me. Faith in us.
I knew from experience that losing faith sucked. And it was lonely. And you did reckless things. You made poor decisions.
Maybe we needed another five years apart like Abbie and Drew. Or maybe it was really never going to be our time.