A/N: I know, I know. I have WIPs I should be updating. ;) But sometimes these things just get into my head and won't leave me until I write them out.
And because sometimes I think I'm finally getting over Will, and then stuff like this pops into my brain and I realize neither I nor Alicia will ever truly be over it.
When Alicia sees the envelope atop the stack of mail, she's certain she can feel her heart sinking all the way into her stomach.
Ten seconds ago, right before she picked up the letters from the tiny metal box, everything had seemed normal.
She'd said hello to Ethan, the doorman, and he'd mentioned there was a package for her behind the desk. She was confused for a moment, but then remembered that six nights ago, sometime between two and three in the morning, she'd finally ordered that dress she'd been seeing (and wanting) in the Nordstrom's window on Michigan Avenue.
Just before that, she'd smiled at the young couple walking their dog outside, and had leaned down to pet him and ruffle his fur a bit. She'd learned that his name was Toby, which she thought was an impossibly cute name for a dog.
Minutes before that, she'd decided to walk home from dinner instead of taking the L or a cab; the pasta and wine felt heavy in her stomach, and she thought that perhaps a long walk in the early evening breeze would do the trick.
And before dinner, she'd finished a productive day at the firm, with the help of Cary, Robyn, and way too much coffee. She was looking forward to finishing witness prep and starting depositions the next day.
But in this moment, as she holds the envelope in her hands, she can neither see nor remember anything else.
It's slightly crinkled at the corners where the paper inside doesn't quite fill the envelope; a smudgy black cancellation that reads "Chicago, IL, 60613" covers the preprinted postage label, and a small blue and red circular seal sits in the left-hand corner.
She knows what's in this envelope.
She'd just forgotten about it entirely.
(But not about him.)
Ethan grabs the package from behind the desk, and she accepts it with semi-steady hands and offers him a smile, one she hopes he doesn't notice is completely insincere. He doesn't, and smiles back. "Have a good night, Mrs. Florrick," he tells her, and despite the kindness in his voice, those words make her want to vomit.
"You too," she says softly, so her voice doesn't crack, and she rushes into the elevator, desperately reaching to press the button that will take her upstairs.
The apartment is quiet and empty, and she feels indebted to Grace for the favor she didn't even know she was doing her mother by choosing to go out with friends tonight.
Alicia rummages in the fridge for a beer she knows is in there, but is likely hiding near the back. It's not often she strays from her usual glass of red wine, but this beer is something someone had recommended to her—a porter, brewed with coffee, and she likes coffee—and even though it isn't wine, it isn't bad.
And she knows that if he were here, this is what he'd want to drink right now.
She sets the stack of mail on the counter and pushes the other envelopes and magazines aside in favor of the one that still sits on top, staring at her, taunting her, as if it's saying things like "open it" and "don't open it," and she's certain that this is what going insane must feel like, something similar to your heart, your entire body, being pulled apart in two separate directions.
She takes the bottle opener from the drawer, flicks the beer cap haphazardly onto the counter, and takes a long drink of the dark liquid before she gathers the willingness to open the envelope.
The two tickets sit inside a neatly-folded receipt, the purchase date at the top from nearly four months ago. It was something they'd talked about months ago, perhaps even years before, when everything was okay, when both of them were still hopeful for the future and possibly too naive to consider that anything would or could derail their plans to share their lives together someday.
And it was something she'd wanted to surprise him with, something she'd wanted to do for him and with him, and the tickets were something she'd purchased that day they reconciled, words like "you're the better lawyer" running through her brain, the sound of his laugh still warming her heart hours later.
It was something she hadn't been sure would actually happen, before that day, because she'd been certain her best friend was never going to speak to her again, or she to him, and neither would have blamed the other for feeling that way after all the hurt and regret. It quite possibly would have been easier to never speak to each other than to try to apologize and make up for everything that had happened.
She folds the tickets back and forth until they fall apart at the perforation, and then she shuffles them back and forth, methodically, while she reads the words over, and over, and over.
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Chicago Cubs
vs.
St. Louis Cardinals
Wrigley Field
These seats are in the upper deck, behind home plate. They'd made plans to drink cheap beer and eat peanuts, and he'd buy her a hot dog and she'd buy him one of those tiny plastic helmets full of soft-serve (swirl, because that was his favorite, but no sprinkles) and even though it would technically be for him, he'd share it with her, because sharing ice cream with the girl you love on a hot summer night is the ultimate sign of affection.
And they'd hold hands, and he'd kiss her on the cheek when she wasn't paying attention, and she'd steal his cap to wear when he wasn't paying attention and she'd just marvel at the cuteness of his messy hat hair.
The date printed on the tickets is nearly a month away, and she knows she has plenty of time to find someone to go with, or plenty of time to give the tickets away to someone who will use them both.
But she can't bring herself to do either of those things, because these tickets were for them, not for anyone else, and so she knows what she has to do.
She has to go, and she has to go alone.
So three and a half weeks later, she does exactly that. She grabs his faded Cubs cap from a box on the top shelf of her closet. Somehow, this cardboard box has preserved him, because everything still smells like him, or feels like him, and this cap, in particular, will permanently smell like his shampoo, even after she wears it multiple times.
She dons jeans and a white t-shirt, finds her favorite sneakers under the bed, and takes the Red Line to Wrigleyville, where she's suddenly surrounded by something that feels an awful lot like him.
With one ticket in her hand, his ticket in her back pocket, she hands her purse to the security guard so he can poke through it with a wooden drumstick, and the girl scanning the tickets smiles at her. "Enjoy the game!" she says.
And she does everything they had planned to do; she buys a cheap beer, a bag of peanuts, and a hot dog. She sips the beer as she drops peanut shells onto the concrete beneath her, and she roots for the Cubs just as eagerly as she knows he would have, and just as eagerly as he would want her to. She tries to remember all of the facts and rules he'd taught her over the years, starting back at Georgetown when she'd watch him pitch for the club team. Even then, she'd worn his baseball caps.
After the sixth inning starts, she finds the vendor selling the tiny plastic helmets filled with soft serve, and she orders a swirl, with just a few sprinkles on one side, because even though this is mainly for him, it's also for her, just a little bit.
When she returns to her seat, she eats the sprinkles side first, and part of her wants to leave the cup half full of ice cream, in his honor, but all she can think about is how he would tease her mercilessly for wasting ice cream, so she eats every last bit before wiping it clean with a napkin so that this tiny plastic helmet can come home with her and sit somewhere she can see it regularly.
The Cubs lose, characteristically, just as she'd expected, just as he would have expected, and she smiles at this, because this is the kind of game he would have wanted to watch. He would have spent the entire walk back to the L lamenting about the hitting coach, or the relief pitching, or any number of things that contributed to the Cubs' lack of championships, and when they were back on the train and she'd had enough, she would have leaned over and kissed him, the only logical and surefire way to stop his sweet lips from talking.
And they would have stopped at their favorite bar on the way home for a postgame beer, and he would have ordered first, letting her take a small sip of his beer before she ordered so she knew if she liked it or not, because that was the kind of thing he would have done for her.
So she stops at that bar, and the bartender recognizes her, smiles, and brings her a small sample glass of a beer he thinks she'll like; not quite the same as drinking a sip from his glass, but she appreciates the gesture nonetheless. She smiles as it hits her lips, and nods in agreement, so the bartender brings her a full pour and sets a bowl of pretzels in front of her.
And while she chews on the pretzels, gazing at but not paying attention to the bright television screen above the bar, she thinks that this night was a better tribute to him than any funeral ever could have been, and she knows she'll make this a regular tradition.
Because these are the kinds of plans she and Will Gardner dreamt of together, and in his absence, the only thing she knows how to do is craft those dreams into reality.
For him.
For her.
For them.