Page 111 of Life’s Too Short

It seemed very fitting.

At 6:00 Adrian still hadn’t texted. He didn’t answer my call either. I went to the inn’s cocktail hour without him.

When I got back to our room at 6:45, he hadn’t called me back. But dinner wasn’t until 9:00, and I knew he had a jury trial starting on Monday and he was probably trying to wrap things up so he could relax this weekend. I decided to take a bath while I waited for him.

A half hour passed.

Then a full hour. I added more hot water to the tub.

When he finally called, I could hear the wind in his car.

“Hey, you on your way?” I asked, putting my toe into the dripping faucet. “You missed the cocktail hour. There’s a golf pro staying here with this girl. They’re married, but I don’t think to each other—”

“Vanessa, something’s come up.”

I dropped my foot away from the faucet. “What do you mean?”

“I’m on my way to La Crosse.”

My stomach plummeted.

“Wisconsin? Why?”

“Garcia got arrested. I have to go down there.”

I sat up in the tub. “Wh—what?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not going to make it tonight.”

The disappointment lingered for only a moment before it turned into hot, boiling anger. Something inside me snapped.

“If you want to break up with me, then just fucking break up with me,” I said.

“What?”

I shook my head. “You can’t even stand to be in the same room with me, can you? You can’t even look at me.”

“It’s not— Vanessa, I don’t have a choice. I’m his attorney. I have to go down there.”

“The only reason you have to go down there is so you won’t have to face a night alone with me. He’s got a whole firm of attorneys. You said it yourself, anyone can go, it doesn’t have to be you.”

I could almost see him dragging his hand down his mouth, looking anywhere but at me.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Don’t pretend this isn’t exactly what we both know it is, Adrian. You’re running. Even when you’re with me, you’re not here. Stop ghosting me and calling it work. Please. Please. Turn around. Come back. And stop doing this to me.”

There was a long pause on the other end.

“And then what? I watch you let yourself die?”

And there it was.

So I was right.

My chin quivered. “I can’t give you what you’re asking, Adrian.”

“And I can’t give you what you’re asking either. I need this job. Right now it’s the only thing making me feel halfway sane.”

“So being away from me twenty hours a day is what’s making you sane?”