Page 13 of Fragile Kiss (Fragile 2)
Her heart stopped. Before she knew it, she opened the message to read it.
I made it to L.A. in one piece. Thought you might want to know :)
Lillian slammed her phone down on the seat like it was venomous, feeling suddenly hot and confined. Without waving back at Claire, she pulled into the street and rolled all four windows down a crack to let some chilly autumn air circulate. Small streams of water rolled inside the car, leaving clear streaks in the fogging windows.
Why would he do that? She fumed, angry and distraught all at once. After leaving in the middle of a very heated argument, why would he text me and make it sound like nothing had happened—like we were still together? Did he mean to send the message to someone else? She nodded and tried to breathe, her chest feeling tight. Yeah, that must be it. He must have meant to send that to someone else.
She knew it wasn’t true, but she still entertained the thought just to give her something to fume about. Cayden had said he wasn’t seeing anyone else. Well, she thought he had said that, at least. He had said that he and his client Janine weren’t seeing each other.
That would be the only thing that could possibly shock me in this situation, she couldn’t help but snicker. Cayden doesn’t seem like the older-woman type. For kicks, while she waited on a traffic light, she wondered what would happen if she started dating an older guy. She didn’t know what it would prove to Cayden, but it would make herself feel better. In theory, at least.
Maybe it’s not about the older man or woman. Her thoughts were getting deeper and deeper. Maybe I would just feel better if we saw other people. Unless he already is, judging from the tone of that text. Scowling at the turtle-like speed of the old red car in front of her, she quickly switched lanes. “Too hungry for this shit,” she muttered, glancing out the corner of her eye to see who the driver of the slow car was. Some skinny blonde teenager blaring hippie music, looking like she hadn’t a care in the world.
Lillian pressed the gas pedal down and sped ahead, finally feeling like she was able to take a huge, deep breath. The cold air rushed in, and seemed to direct itself straight to the bottom of her lungs. Going fast felt good. The adrenaline felt good. Hearing the gently falling raindrops slam against her windshield and slide roughly and horizontally past her windows satisfied the red-hot anger she felt.
To be honest, she couldn’t even figure out why she felt angry. Seven stages of grief or something like that, she assumed, but being the contemplative person she was, she wanted to get to the bottom of it and figure out why she was so irritated.
“Always ask why,” Amelia used to say. Somehow, all their deep conversations about existentialism and philosophy always happened in t
he hallway connecting their rooms. It would start with one of them leaning against the other’s doorway with that long, forlorn expression, confessing they needed to talk about something. And eventually they would sit on the floor of the hallway, pressing their feet against the other wall, helping each other process everything that was spinning madly out of control inside them.
“Ask why? Why?” The first time Amelia had given her that advice, Lillian was lost for any sign of logic in it.
“There you go!” Amelia had said, touching the tip of Lillian’s nose like a grandmother. “You’re doing it already. The more you ask ‘why,’ the deeper you’ll go within yourself. You’ll figure out why you’re feeling a certain way in no time.”
It had worked all these years, whenever she was done with harboring her negative emotions. Sometimes she thought it would feel good to stew in the negativity for a while, but of course it never worked in her favor, and instead only pulled her down into the pit again. As many times as she had been there, she was a bit disappointed in herself for not learning sooner that the stewing wasn’t as gratifying as she always hoped it would be.
Why do I feel angry with Cayden? The question felt so vague and giant, like an unidentifiable creature looming over her, so she simmered in that instead of the feeling itself for the last ten-minute stretch of her drive to the café. She took her lunch breaks there between appointments on busy days, so she knew the route well enough to let her conscious mind take a break. She didn’t mean to switch to robot mode while she was driving, especially during a thunderstorm, but it happened anyway. So much so that she didn’t notice her speed had gradually slowed to match that of the teenager she had passed before.
She returned to the present moment when she put the gearshift in park and switched off the engine. The rain had let up enough that it was no longer a furious pounding on every surface it touched. It looked like it was losing energy from its incessant storming the last few hours and slowing down for a nap.
Her mood matched the slowly-fading energy of the rain. She gathered her thoughts as she sat there, staring out at the parking lot before her. People were rushing to their cars, struggling to climb in and fold their umbrellas at just the right time so they stayed as dry as possible. It would have been funny to see a mother and her daughter scream giddily when both of their thin umbrellas were suddenly pushed inside out by a powerful burst of wind. She would have laughed at it and smiled, wishing she had fun and silly memories with her mother like that, but she didn’t even notice the two people. Her thoughts were still on her introspection.
I’m not mad at Cayden, she reluctantly admitted. I’m mad at myself.
Well, there were some things she was mad at him about. Mostly leaving her in the dust when he had to go catch his plane. Why, though? she wondered, realizing that maybe she had subconsciously tried to keep the argument going so she could have a little more time with him. Fighting or not, she didn’t want to see him go again. It hurt too much to be without him.
She was mad at herself for starting that argument. It could’ve ended well before he left, and they could have parted on a peaceful note. How could she accuse him of ever taking his anger out on her needlessly when she had done the same to him? And even worse, she was angry at herself for breaking up with him in the first place. For being so unconfident that her health was going to improve, that she would be able to one day enjoy all the things he enjoyed and people their ages enjoyed and have a thriving social life just like Cayden had. When she pressed send on that text message, she was so convinced that her poor health right now was going to be her reality forever. That her fragile body would always be this fragile. That she would never be able to give him the kind of relationship he deserved, simply because she couldn’t give it to him right now.
Getting lost in her hopelessness—she hadn’t even realized that was what it was, hopelessness—had driven her to break up with Cayden, the one who had inspired her to start learning the names of flowers and plants, and lighten up in moments she would have been stressed about a tiny thing that didn’t deserve that much stress. They hadn’t been together long, but she couldn’t deny that he had improved her wellbeing in all the areas where her physical health couldn’t match up.
She was mad at herself for not allowing herself to keep something amazing that had happened to her. Someone, rather. Someone who wanted her as much as she wanted him.
What upset her the most is that she hadn’t given it more thought. Big decisions like this are always best thought about until they can’t be thought about any more. She knew it. So why did she, on a whim, type that message about her not being good enough for him and blah, blah, blah? And why on earth had she dared to send it so quickly without rationalizing with herself?
The anger she had felt towards Cayden had shifted to anger with herself over the last few minutes, and now it shifted again to embarrassment. The whole thing was a mistake. Did she still believe that she was good for Cayden? Right now, her lifestyle—the busy work schedule, the trial-and-error health experiments, the days of being sick from running around the city until she was burned out, the lack of social life and the fear of joining his—wasn’t right for him. However, based on how much he had given her a glimpse of what her life could be, starting with learning the names of all the stupid plants he had in his dumb yard, she would have come out of her shell even more over time.
I don’t know how much time, though. She had to keep grasping for some reason not to apologize and try to make it up to Cayden for all the heartbreak she had caused them both. She regretted it, and wished it had never happened. Being away from him was hard, but she never expected it to take this much of a toll on her.
Her stomach grumbled loudly; she couldn’t tell if it was a flare-up waiting to happen or her body screaming “Feed me!” With a little sigh, she picked up her phone and opened his message again.
I made it to L.A. in one piece. Thought you might want to know :)
Yes, she had wanted to know. He knew her too well. Why he would send it as if nothing had happened between them she still didn’t know, and the idea that he meant to send it to someone else still tickled her mind. Maybe he had rebounded. Started something up with someone else when he realized that Lillian wasn’t going to take him back. That would have been really quick, though.
I need to handle this maturely, she told herself. No more rash decisions. I’m paying for it now. There’s no going back.
As she typed she kept reminding herself that he was very nice in his message, and she should be in hers. After their ugly words, he had the guts to let her know he was okay. She needed to be nice, too.
