The Art of Starting Over

Chapter 68 - Self-Actualisation

JEREMY

Six months and three and a half weeks.

Two hundred and six days.

Four thousand, nine hundred and fifty hours.

That's how long it's been since she left. That's how long I've been driving myself crazy.

Oh, who am I kidding?

I was done for the moment I heard her cotton-candy laugh at that God-forsaken party.

Her orchid is right where she left it, at the centre of the dining table instead of the horrid green vase my mother had bought me as a house warming present. It's the most beautiful thing in the house now. Her sticky note is still on the pot hoping that one day I'll see the words on it as ones of wisdom rather than ones of mocking sarcasm.

Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure. E. Bennet.

E. Bennet.

Of course, Mr. Darcy got his heroine. I didn't. Like I had told her, I'm more of a Heathcliff.

I guess it doesn't matter now. She's gone and she's not coming back.

I wonder how she's doing. All the fucking time. I wonder how she is, if she's happy, or at least happier than she was with me. I wonder what book she's reading. I wonder if she has enough books. Maybe, I should send her a couple more at the address Mark gave me. Even though she never acknowledged the ones I sent her already. A dozen, I have sent her. Two every month. One new, one from my own collection.

I wonder if she's angry at me for not being here when she left. But surely, she knew it was impossible for me to say goodbye. I could never watch her leave. I would have handcuffed her to my wrist and swallowed the key.

And that would not have been fair because she made her choice. I have to respect it. I have to grit my teeth and tell myself that I should not go to London and bring her back at all costs, even if it means tying her hands and gagging her mouth.

I should have stayed away. I always knew she was too good for me. It was only a matter of time before she realised it. Still, a small part of me hoped I'd find her here when I got back from my run twenty-nine weeks ago.

She wasn't. She was gone and so were all her things.

And then the doorbell rang and I was sure it was her. I was sure she'd forgotten something, like a scarf, a book or the fact that she loved me. But she didn't. And when I opened the door, she wasn't the one standing behind it. It was Stephanie with the fucking paperwork for the store.

And then the phone rang and I hoped it was her saying she'd missed the plane and she was coming back to me but it wasn't. It was my father, calling in a rage to tell me once again that I made the biggest mistake of my life when I quit his company.

But the joke was on him. The biggest mistake of my life was driving Alison Lewis away from me.

And then the next day, while I was pacing up and down the living room, glaring at the unopened bottle of whiskey I'd just bought from the supermarket, I received an email that should have infuriated me. But it didn't. It was addressed to both of us, Ally and myself, by none other than that mastermind who decided it was high time to confess she was never really pregnant.

That's right.

A confession and apology for me, a confession and apology for her and a plea that maybe we can someday understand that what happened over the past years was not intended to hurt either of us.

What the fuck? Who gives a shit, Stephanie? It's too late. She's gone.

It's been two hundred and six days since I've heard her voice and on every single one of those days, I dialed her number and failed to press the call button. Every day I wrote a text or drafted an email but never pressed send.