I got this feeling on a summer day when you were gone
I crashed my car into the bridge, I watched, I let it burn
I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs
I crashed my car into the bridge
I don't care
-"I Love It" by Icona Pop
The first thing Sybil saw when she woke up that morning was the invitation.
It sat on her bedside table as it always did, taking precedence over her reading lamp and her alarm clock and the manuscript she was currently struggling through, propped up against a bottle of hand lotion and the sleeping pills that she only used in when absolutely necessary. Of course, situations where they were considered absolutely necessary had been coming more and more frequently as the date on the invitation had approached, and as a result the bottle of pills was nearly empty. Funny, she thought as her bleary eyes focused on the creamy white paper in front of her, how something as small as an invitation could seem to take up the entire room. The single piece of paper had been read and handled so many times that the edges were now soft and frayed, and there were creases here and there that had not been present when she'd opened the envelope all those months ago. The once-pristine invitation was now stained here and there, the ink running in places where tears or splatters of red wine had hit it, making the words in some places almost unrecognizable. It didn't matter. Sybil knew its contents by heart.
You are cordially invited to celebrate the wedding of
Mary Josephine Crawley,
Daughter of Robert and Cora Crawley, the Earl and Countess of Grantham,
And
Matthew Reginald Crawley,
Son of Reginald and Isobel Crawley
On Saturday afternoon
June the 22nd
At two o'clock
At their estate of Downton Abbey, Yorkshire
With reception to follow
Even more ingrained onto her memory were the words written so carefully on the envelope, words she had read a thousand times over and with a thousand questions in her heart each and every time. It was simply an address in London, nothing more, but what Sybil truly cared about was the names written above it. It was this that she had lost so many nights sleep over, wondering what she could have ever done wrong. Two names, seeming so innocent and right at the time when the invitation had been mailed out, but now made Sybil sick to her stomach each and every time she read them. Ms. Sybil Crawley and Mr. Larry Grey.
Back when Mary—or more likely Anna, or the wedding planner—had sent out the invitations, putting these names together had seemed the natural thing to do. Now, though, six months later, they felt like a cruel joke, and as Sybil sat up in bed the first thing she did was reach for the envelope and tear it into as many pieces as she could.
"I should've done that months ago," she muttered, the bitterness in her voice audible even through the grogginess. Last night had been another wasted night spent tossing and turning and wondering what she had done wrong, even as a voice in her head told her to stop feeling sorry for herself, that it wasn't anything she had done. It couldn't have been, or so her family and friends had been trying to reassure her for six months. Sybil wasn't sure whether her inability to let go was because she truly did not believe them, or because she was still too angry after all this time to even think about letting it go.
Looking back on it now, Sybil still did not know how she couldn't have seen it coming. She had been dating Larry Grey for almost two years when he had broken it off without warning, giving her no reason for the split whatsoever. There had been an explosive fight, during which she had thrown the majority of his possessions out of the window of their flat, but even through all the tears and the shouts that had no doubt woken more than a few of the neighbors at the three in the morning, he had refused to give any sort of explanation beyond the fact that the two of them had changed and wanted different things. As Sybil sat there, sunlight streaming in through the curtains and the sounds of London's morning commute speeding by her flat, she was suddenly transported to six months earlier. There she was standing in front of Larry watching her life fall apart, listening to him as he told her that they had simply changed too much for this relationship to work. There was Sybil screaming obscenities at him, demanding to know how she had changed when to her, everything seemed exactly the same. She was the same woman she always had been, Sybil Patricia Crawley, book editor and activist, the very same little girl Larry had grown up with all those years ago in Yorkshire. Now she was demanding that he tell her the truth, and he was grabbing her tiny wrists and shouting at her as she went back and forth between the window and his closet, throwing all of those expensive suits that he seemed to care about far more than he did about her to the soaking wet pavement below…
Sybil's phone buzzed, alerting her that she had a text and startling her out of her reverie. She glanced down at it, knowing before she even read it that it was bound to be from her sister. Sure enough, Mary's name blinked up at her from the screen. Four days to go! Excited and terrified! Call me when you get the chance, darling. xoxo.
Sybil set the phone aside without answering as she stood up. She loved her sister, truly, but facing a conversation with Mary about the wedding before she had even had her coffee yet was just asking for disaster. Mary was not the typical Bridezilla, or so their mother had tried to assure Sybil whenever they spoke on the phone, but as the date of the wedding neared her usual perfectionist tendencies were leaning more and more towards hysteria. Sybil wasn't sure if she could take one more conversation about flower arrangements and seating charts, caterers and guest lists and wedding gift registries…not to mention the never-ending question of who exactly was going to be Sybil's plus-one.
The moment they had gotten the news of the breakup, Sybil's family had responded just as she had known they would. Her mother had taken the train down from Yorkshire to surprise her, spoiling her with special dinners and shopping trips and, most importantly, being the shoulder to cry on that Sybil had so desperately needed. The fact that her mother had known that her baby needed her without Sybil even having to ask had touched her to her core, and Cora had stayed nearly a week helping her try to get her bearings again. It was odd how Sybil had never considered herself truly, 100% happy when she was with Larry, but now that this man who had been a constant in her life not just for the past two years of their relationship but from their entire childhood had walked out of her life without a single word, she felt as if the floor had been pulled out from underneath her. She had literally known Larry Grey all of her life—his father was Mary's godfather, for God's sake—and no one had been surprised when they had finally started dating after their Christmas get-together two years ago. The breakup, though, shocked them all. Sybil's grandmother had paid several angry visits to the Grey family home, demanding explanations that his bewildered parents were unable to give her, and had spent the next six months speculating and scowling every time Sybil's failed relationship was even hinted at. Edith and her boyfriend Anthony had immediately severed all ties to Larry, even going so far as to return the birthday gift he had sent Edith a few months later, unopened, to his new address in London. Her father had been equal parts sympathetic and furious, and Matthew, who had been planning to make Larry his best man (more for lack of a better candidate than for any real friendship they shared) had threatened to relieve him of his position until Mary had put a stop to it. Mary, of course, was sympathetic to her sister's plight, but anything that threatened to throw off the perfect wedding she had been planning in her head since Matthew's proposal nearly made her sick. It wasn't out of cruelty or insensitivity towards her sister—or so Sybil told herself time and time again when it was brought up—but simply because Mary had been dreaming of this day for so long and wanted it to be perfect. And in Mary's world, that meant not changing plans once they were set in stone. That meant that, for better or worse, Larry Grey would be staying on as in the wedding party…and, of course, Sybil still needed a plus-one of her own.
It made sense, if she truly thought about it. It was Mary's day, hers and Matthew's, and not Sybil's. She could be a big girl and put her sister's happiness before her own for this one day. She could handle seeing Larry after so long. The only problem with this picture-perfect plan was that the wedding was now only four days away, and Sybil Crawley was still hopelessly dateless.
It wasn't for lack of trying. Gwen had pushed her to get back out into the dating world about two months after the breakup, tired of seeing Sybil sulk and blame herself for something that she had not started. They had tried blind dates, mutual friends, even a disastrous night of speed-dating that had ended with the consumption of two and a half bottles of tequila between the two of them as they rehashed the horrors of the evening. Maybe, on some level, it was her fault, that the fact that she was still beating herself up over the past was preventing her from moving into the future. Maybe there were simply no datable men to be found in all of London. Either way, she was a failure in some way, and calling Mary to tell her that she still had no date would only cement that fact. It would make it real, and Sybil wasn't ready to face the fact that time had run out just yet.
"Damn it," Sybil whispered harshly.
Her phone rang then, thankfully, before the tears could begin to fall again. Sybil almost jumped at the sound, wondering how Mary had known that she was avoiding her. When she glanced at the caller ID, though, she found not her sister's name but the name of her assistant instead. She answered it quickly, running her fingers through her long brown hair as she held the phone to her ear. "Hey, Daisy, what is it?"
Daisy was another girl she and her sisters had grown up with, although she was several years younger and about ten times more naïve than each of them. This was her first job, which Sybil had been only too happy to give to her until she realized that having Daisy work for her could sometimes serve to create more problems than it solved. As she listened to her launch into some horror story about misplaced manuscripts and angry authors, Sybil felt another headache coming on. "Daisy, Daisy, slow down. I'd love to help you, really, but I'm off until Monday, remember? Because of the wedding? I made sure Mary sent you an invitation."
"Oh, she did! I'm coming up Friday. But please, Sybil, can you just get down here and help me get this sorted out? It won't take but an hour and I'll never ask you for anything again as long as I live, I promise…"
"Okay," Sybil said quickly, not wanting to give Daisy the chance to beg some more. Knowing her, it would take twice as long for her to finish asking as it would to solve this crisis in the first place. It would be easier on everyone involved just to go down there. "Just give me a chance to get dressed and I'll be right there."
"Oh, thank you, Sybil, thank you!"
Twenty minutes later, having quickly showered and changed, Sybil found herself stuck in traffic. Her hands drummed agitatedly against the steering wheel as she sat growing more annoyed by the minute. Next to her in the cupholder her phone buzzed cheerfully again, showing another text from Mary. Sybil tossed it into the backseat without looking at it. "Come on, come on…" she all but growled, glaring daggers at the car in front of her. She could already hear Mary's voice, asking her if she couldn't have tried just a little harder to find someone, anyone, to be her date. She could see the looks on the faces of relatives she only saw a few times a year, comparing Mary and Edith's happy relationships to Sybil's failed one, judging her even as they claimed sympathy. Poor little Sybil, so successful in her career but a failure in everything else, poor Sybil, blindsided by the man she had thought she loved…
Up ahead, the light turned green. Sybil blindly stepped on the gas, pulling out into the intersection and preparing to turn.
She didn't see the other car until it was too late.
Author's Note: What a way to end the first chapter, huh? Don't worry too much about our Sybil, I would never hurt her like that! I just wanted to quickly thank YankeeCountess and darlingsybil for encouraging me to write this—you guys rock! Hope everyone enjoyed this first chapter!
