Life's Too Short (The Friend Zone #3)(82)

Annabel still wouldn’t take my calls at the rehab center. But at least she was at rehab.

It was New Year’s Eve and I’d booked a room for Adrian and me at a bed-and-breakfast in Stillwater for the weekend. When I’d surprised him with it two days ago, he’d seemed excited—well, as excited as he could be at 1:15 in the morning after a nineteen-hour day at the office.

I had high hopes for this weekend.

Maybe he needed the space over the last week to process what had happened. Maybe by now the initial shock had worn off and he’d be ready to move forward. This weekend we’d relax, get some sleep. Get some time without the baby, reconnect.

I’d made us dinner reservations at Ladeyra, my favorite wine bar. My plan was for us to ring in the New Year naked with a bottle of Dom Pérignon I’d brought, in the king-size bed in our room.

I dropped off Grace with Dad and checked in at 4:00.

Adrian said he’d leave the office around 5:00 to meet me here, but he hadn’t texted me yet for the address. I hadn’t told him where we were going because I didn’t want him to google it. I wanted him to be surprised when he saw this place.

I’d booked us into the Agatha Christie suite at the Rivertown Inn in Stillwater. I’d stayed at bed-and-breakfasts all over the world, and none paralleled this one. Our room was decked out like an old-fashioned first-class train car inspired by the novel Murder on the Orient Express. There was a King Tut sarcophagus in the bathroom next to a huge hot tub for two. It had a private steam room and a rainfall shower. It was opulent and gorgeous and totally the escape we needed.

There was a quote on the wall that I especially liked.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly, that just to be alive, is a grand thing.

Agatha Christie, 1890–1976



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?”

“I didn’t mean it like that—”

“Yeah, you did.” I forced down the tears. “I get it. You’re still whiplashed and trying to figure it out, and you’re doing what you do when you feel out of control—you work. But you’re wasting precious time.” I shook my head. “It’s just an illusion, Adrian. The control is an illusion. No one can promise you forever. People die unexpectedly every day. They have car accidents and heart attacks and strokes and if all you do is live your life fixated on how it ends, you’re just living the end twice. We still have time and all these things that you think will save me won’t. Stop chasing it and just be happy. Be happy with me while you can.”