Under the circumstances, it was a reasonable plan.
And the circumstances were fucked.
Flick was leaving, and she was always going to. He was staying because this was where he needed to be. Wanted to be. She was meant to be a temporary backup financial plan, not a life lesson. They’d be friends. They’d be lovers again. It was hard to fathom why it hurt as much as it did to spend those last coupons with her, have her to himself for his birthday and serve her fried chicken and pie and fall asleep with her one last time.
After the mess of Friday night, the mad emotional wrench of it, they’d had the weekend to get used to saying goodbye, but last night he’d had trouble sleeping, lain awake, running over the plans for the morning in his head needlessly; they weren’t complicated. At least Flick stayed in bed and he got to hear her purr. It wasn’t erotic so much as dear to him.
She wasn’t in bed when he woke with the alarm. The space beside him was cool and there was no audio of water running in the bathroom. She didn’t answer when he called out. She wasn’t in the kitchen, but her watch was on the floor by the sectional. Her door key pass was on the hall table. He backtracked to check her room, a bad feeling swirling in his stomach when he knocked, got no response and pushed the door open.
No Flick, and her suitcases were gone.
She was gone.
He sat on her unmade bed and tried to take it in. She’d skipped out without waking him. That had to have taken considerable effort. There wasn’t much Flick did quietly. She’d told him being quiet her first week here had nearly killed her.
The T-shirt she’d worn to hike in was on the floor. He bent to scoop it up and saw the edge of something under the bed, a pair of heeled shoes. In her lit
tle bathroom, she’d left a hair fork and a wet toothbrush, and she’d written on the mirror in neutral-tone lipstick: We’ll always have coupons.
The words smudged when he put his finger to them; they’d be a pain to clean off. The shirt smelled like Flick. He brought it to his face and breathed her scent in. Why didn’t she wake him? She’d slunk around deliberately, taking off hours too early, and now he had to box these things up to send on to her. He was irrationally annoyed by that, given how she’d done him a favor. He had a busy morning and this took some pressure off.
He went to the kitchen, eyes scanning surfaces; there was a chance she’d left a note and covered it in glitter and he’d missed it. He came up blank and it was so damn quiet, he didn’t like how that made him feel, a kind of nauseous ache that started in his gut and invaded his chest, that lasted through his shower and made him not want to eat.
It wasn’t like he wouldn’t see her again. Get to hold her live-wire body, chase his lips across her skin and worry about what she’d get up to next. But this morning he didn’t get to watch her dress, zip her up, make her breakfast, or wish her a safe trip. Her days would go on without him now, a new city, a new job, new challenges he wasn’t any part of, sadness he wouldn’t be there to help her through.
And his would go on without her.
Fuck.
But that was the plan. She’d tried to shake him from it, and it was dishonest to say he hadn’t thought about following her. He’d had the conversation about other cities with Denise Revero. But it was idle curiosity, not a real proposition. This was where he’d put down roots. This was where his best prospects were, his strongest associations and attachments. This was where he lived and worked, and Flick was just passing through.
The problem was she was a mountain he wanted to climb, a splinter under his skin, buried so deep he’d never dig her out. Never wanted to.
The thought made his hand shake and he slopped coffee all over the counter. He had to sit because he’d aged a hundred years since he’d woken to find her gone and his bones didn’t want to cooperate and hold him upright. Lord. He’d let her go. Let her think she wasn’t worth more than everything else in his life, than a job, than a condo with a city view and furniture he’d paid too much for.
She wouldn’t make a specific plan to meet up again, kept it vague. Now he knew for sure she had no intention of it.
The sun slanting into the room highlighted the smudges they’d left on the glass Friday night. They’d torn each other up; his resistance, her defiance. Her essential truth and his convenient reticence. His handprint from when he braced himself over her. Flick’s shoulders, from where she’d balanced as he’d lifted her legs off the floor. He could see where she’d spread her fingers when he’d spun her to face the glass, and the mark of his forearm where he’d needed leverage. The whole window was filthy with their heat and the slick of their skin, the juice of their lovemaking.
He’d known it was there and hadn’t wanted to clean it off.
He wanted to frame it now. It was the ghost of them. All he had left but for a scattering of glitter in the rug and random left-behind items that Flick could live without.
Lift, hold and drop.
Jesus Christ. What had he done?
There were words in his head from the song that was playing, when he’d come home Friday night and seen Flick’s anger, the lashing-out that covered her despair. Sia. A song about a man who lived by rigid rules and a woman who insisted she had his back and they could make it together. It’d brought out his own wretchedness when all he should’ve felt was triumph.
He’d just made the biggest mistake of his life.
Instead of living the life he wanted, he’d planned to make do.
He’d treated Felicity Dalgetty like a work problem, a difficult client. Told her there was no upside, that he had no confidence in their future. He let her think his decision was final, that the disappointment was their timing. And she’d warned him she couldn’t do half measures. He was a fool a million times over. Made it all about him when it was all about her and how she’d made it crazy-good to stray outside the lines and fit so well inside the ones he needed drawn. Made him want to cook duck and binge-watch and bubble-bath. Fuck in a lingerie love hotel and get humiliated at the bowling alley. Hold her hand on a hike, and his breath at the sensation of being inside her.
She was his comfort food and his starry night and his afternoon delight. She was his ambition and he had to make her understand that.
There was still time. He made two no-nonsense calls. Got dressed. Packed a bag. Called a cab and went to find her and fix this, working his phone the whole way, the Shawn Mendes song from Flick’s gift playlist in his head the whole way to O’Hare, because there was nothing, least of all his own curmudgeonly ways, holding him back.