SWNOVELS Pleasing Mr. Parker: Chapter 34
I leave New York, I barely eat.
The week after that, I survive on the sugar in my coffee and a few slices of toast forced upon me.
I can’t. I just can’t.
Everything has lost its flavor. Nothing will ever taste anything other than bland ever again. Not now that I’ve lost him.
I think about him.
All day.
All night.
I picture him going to prenatal appointments with Gwen. Decorating the nursery. Stroking her bump.
Maybe they’ve already had the baby. I wouldn’t know. I’ve kept away from the internet and haven’t switched my cell phone on since I boarded the flight at JFK.
I’ve shut myself off from the outside world and just… existed.
If I can even call it that.
It’s more like endurance.
Endurance of soul-crushing torture.
All those years learning not to let anyone in to stop me from getting hurt. And now? Now there’s a giant void where my heart used to be. He took it when he couldn’t trust me. When he left me to fight alone. But more than anything, it’s gone because I know he’s hurting, too. He knows now. He will know everything about Emily.
And that makes the empty hole in my chest where my heart once was bleed for him.
He will be hurting.
My Griffin.
No. Not my Griffin. Not anymore.
We were so close to being each other’s one. That one person who you can open up to and bare your soul.
So close.
If only he had had more faith. Hadn’t been scared to be vulnerable. We could have gotten through this. We could have been together. Where I thought we belonged.
But now Griffin Parker will just be a memory to me.
A memory that fades as the years pass.
And he has Gwen now, and a baby. It’s a new start for him. I hope he grabs it with both hands and holds on tight.
Because one thing I’ve learned about love. Even if they break your heart, you still want theirs to be full. If you truly love them, you still want them to love and be loved.
Just like I want Griffin to live a life full of everything I wish we could have had.
Together.
I stare out from my place on the window seat, my feet curled up underneath me, a book resting on my legs. There’s a young girl with her mother in the street outside. She has a bag of seed and is scattering it onto the ground, bouncing on her toes in delight as a flock of pigeons surround the two of them and peck greedily.
The sight brings warmth to my chest, but with it, a pang of pain. It’s a welcome change from the dull heaviness that’s like a lead weight around my neck.
Never gone, never easing.
Just there.
Always.
At least I can still feel. I’m still alive. Because most days, I would believe that I’m not. That I am stuck somewhere in the in-between. A kind of purgatory for the broken-hearted. And if that were true, would that make Griffin God or the Devil?
I lean my head back against the wall and exhale.
I need to move.
I need to get up and do something.
Anything.
I drag myself over to the mirror, wincing at what two weeks of heartbreak and lack of self-care has done to me. Then I scrape my unwashed hair up into a bun with my chipped fingernails and grab my purse, heading for the bookstore.