A/N: This little one shot maybe should be titled What John Could Have Done or Could Have Said.
John shifted on the hard metal seat, waiting his turn to at the podium. He'd delivered so many lectures in his time he knew that this was no big deal and was just one more. But as he tried to gather his thoughts, his mind wandered. He still couldn't wrap his head around the events that lead him to this point. He considered himself a learned man who was above all the mundane trials and tribulations that define the masses. As he waited his turn, he thought back over the events of his life lately trying to figure out where to begin to explain it all.
It seemed like only yesterday he asked Caroline to reconcile for the first time. He thought he was in with a chance, but then Judith showed up at the house and William came home earlier than expected and spotted her in the back garden while she waited for her cab. If only he had taken her out for a drink instead of opening some wine at home he might have gotten away with seeing her again. Although nothing sexual had happened between them that day, no one believed him. He knew he shouldn't have been drinking in the middle of the day but it was a lazy pattern he had developed when he was with Judith. God, if only William hadn't spilled the beans to Caroline at the engagement party up at the farm, he might have managed to find his way back into her bed. Damn William, he thought.
While he was lost in thought, the crowd disbursed for a break to refill their coffee cups. He went over to the table and fixed himself a fresh cup. A little caffeine was always a good idea before doing public speaking he thought. Returning to his seat, he reflected a little more on his current status and his thoughts turned to Gillian.
Had she not blown him off after they slept together that first time, he wouldn't have rung Judith that day and then Caroline wouldn't have come back early from the farm to find her in her bathrobe. If he couldn't have Caroline, he thought Gillian was a good consolation prize as he hated to be alone. Had Gillian said 'yes' to his half-hearted proposal, he could have moved in at the farm and worked on his novels all day while she tended the sheep. At night they could have stowed away in her tattered bedroom and let go with reckless abandon like they did the first time they were together. How could she settle for that twat of a copper? Didn't she see he'd be more of help with Calamity than that big hairy ox of a man? Damn Gillian, he thought.
He looked up and realized there were a few stragglers from the break entering and taking their seats so he decided to wait for them to settle before moving to the podium. John's thoughts drifted to Celia and he realized it wasn't fair putting all the blame on William or Gillian. He figured Celia must have given Caroline quite an earful about him on the way back to Harrogate after their first visit to the farm. He rubbed his cheek as he remembered the old bat having the nerve to slap him across the face like that in front of his kids. He never liked her anyway. He smiled at the thought that at least if it were really over with Caroline, he wouldn't have to listen to her endlessly recanting tawdry stories from the Daily Mail anymore. Damn Celia, he thought.
His thoughts instantly flashed to Caroline just as they always did when he thought of how he put up with Celia all those years for her benefit. Of course the real reason they were apart had to be because she was a lesbian. But he wondered why that knowledge had suddenly made him want her all the more.
The day Caroline came home from being at the farm after Celia and Alan went missing and confessed she was dating someone shocked him. It actually rocked him to his core. The cheek of her not being willing to tell him who she was seeing hurt him almost as much as the knowledge that he'd blown it, but part of him didn't really believe her. At least he hoped she was bluffing as a way of hurting him for hurting her.
Since she wouldn't tell him who might have taken her affections away from him, he waited for her to go out and then snooped around her office to see what he could learn about the alleged mystery man. He tried to be stealthy so the boys wouldn't see him skulking around. After looking in all the nooks and crannies, he emerged from the office empty-handed. His anger at the possibility that Caroline was seeing someone started to shift to fear that he might have well and truly lost her. In desperation, he took the stairs leading up to the bedroom two at a time as his emotions turned back again to fury the more he thought about the possibility of her being physical with someone else. He'd been angry she relegated him to the guestroom when he returned and wondered what she'd been hiding as he could tell there was something a bit different about her. But he never would have guessed she was seeing another man, not his repressed wife.
John desperately wanted to find anything to help him make sense of it all. He looked in the nightstand, nothing. He looked in her dresser drawers, nothing. He looked around her makeup area, nothing. Then he spied her favorite heels on the floor in front her closet and he knew where he needed to look next. There it was, tucked inside the empty shoe box for that pair of beige suede Jimmy Choos. At first he thought it was a receipt but when he opened it and saw Caroline's immaculate script, he knew he'd found his smoking gun. John quickly folded it back up and slipped it into his pocket, deciding he would read it over a whiskey as he could tell from the opening salutation he was going to need something to steady his nerves.
John blindly made his way to the kitchen, grabbed a glass and an opened bottle of brown liquor, and headed up to the guest room where he wouldn't have to worry about the boys seeing him with it. He slammed back a healthy slug of it before stretching out on the bed and unfolding the letter. Her words instantly flowed over him. He had to read it a few times to let the full import of it sink in, throwing back whiskey with reckless abandon in the process. He had to admit she'd never been that demonstrative with him; that might have been the part that stung the most. Given the location where he found it, he was sure it wasn't a love letter left over from her school days. It had to be written recently. Before he knew it, the bottle was all but empty and neither his eyes nor his mind could focus on anything.
He came to a few hours later when Lawrence knocked on his door to ask about his tea. He told him to order in and threw his wallet to him in an effort to keep him from crossing the threshold and entering the bedroom. He didn't want him to see the empty bottle or the letter, both of which had fallen to the floor on the other side of the bed at some point.
By the time Caroline came home that night, the boys were preoccupied playing videos games in the lounge and he had sobered up enough to have his wits about him. He was lying in wait for Caroline to nag her about the bloke she was seeing but before he got the chance, she fessed up that it was a woman. Lost for words, he legged it to the safety of Judith's place for a little compassion and space to contemplate his next move. As he climbed into his old BMW that was a battered looking as he felt at the moment, he touched the breast pocket of his sports jacket to make sure he had the letter with him, thinking it might prove to be useful in their divorce if she tried to screw him out of his share of the house. DAMN CAROLINE, he thought.
John finally rose and stood at the podium, looking out at the nondescript faces scattered about the room in front of him. His bloodshot eyes and crumpled clothes made him look like anything but the brilliant college lecturer he believed himself to be. He steadied his hands on either side of the podium and looked down to where his lecture notes would normally rest but there were none. He knew it didn't matter as he would not need notes for this crowd. He squared his shoulders and ran a hand over his several-day-old stubble before thrusting both hands in his pants pockets, trying to woo the crowd with what he perceived to be his boyish charm, and tried to gather his thoughts one final time before beginning.
That damn letter, he thought. He hadn't banked on Judith finding it a couple of days later. She was actually a bit faster on the uptick than she appeared some days. As soon as she saw it she realized Caroline must have intended it for Kate. Caroline had been so kind to her at the hospital and she wanted to repay her in some way so she hid the letter from John as she assumed he was keeping it for nefarious reasons.
As luck would have it, John didn't realize it was missing. He flitted in and out of Judith's company, only calling upon her when he was randy and had no one else to stroke his ego. Despite all his ups and downs, she wanted him as he had good income and could be a good time when he was charming. She became concerned when Caroline and Kate broke up after their weekend away that John might try to reconcile again with Caroline. In an effort to get Kate and Caroline back together and insure she'd never take John back, she tracked down and posted the letter to Kate without John's knowledge.
John looked at his cell phone and decided to turn the ringer off before speaking. As he did so, he saw the screen saver, which was still a picture of his boys. Lawrence was really gutted when he heard about Caroline and Kate. It seemed like he was just getting back to himself when Kate returned to the wedding reception and reconciled with Caroline in a spectacularly public display that Lawrence still hadn't gotten over seeing.
Damn Kate, he thought. But then he quickly thought that wasn't fair. It really wasn't any of her fault in the end. Although he was jealous that she was ending up with Caroline, he found it hard to dislike her. He just didn't understand why she came back after the way Caroline had treated her. One day he screwed up enough nerve to ask her. She responded that it was a lot of reasons but the final piece was that she had received the sweetest love letter from Caroline and it helped her find her way back to her. It was then that he remembered the letter he took from Caroline's shoe box all those months ago and he wondered whatever had happened to it.
He scratched his head in contemplation about whether it had been that letter but he didn't see how it could have been and didn't mention it so no one would know he had ever seen it. He could still remember its contents:
Dearest K:
I didn't mean it when I said I needed to end our relationship because it just wasn't me. That was just me being a coward and I'm deeply ashamed. Truth is that you are the person I've been looking for all my life. It's not just the gentleness of your soul or the tenderness you show me at all times that has drawn me to you. It's something more nebulous than that but I'll admit that my pulse quickens when I'm with you. It even quickens at the thought of you when we're not together. I've never wanted a person physically or emotionally before the way I do you. I spend hours everyday imagining what it would be like to have you here with me, properly. I know that with you beside me I'll find the courage and the strength to handle anything my family and our colleagues throw at us. Please give me another chance and let me spend the rest of my days proving myself to you. I love you now and forever, which to quote Prince, is a mighty long time.
Yours,
C.
Kate had been very kind to him in the days following Judith losing the baby. He sobered up while living there but in the first few days of living in his own, he couldn't stand the solitude and started hitting the bottle again like he had been when he was living with Judith. Judith. He knew it all began with her coming on to him in the first place. And then she had the audacity to turn up at the farm and blow any chance he had of wooing Gillian. Damn Judith, he thought.
He took a long sip of his coffee and tried to still his hand as he put it back down on the table under the podium, grateful that his audience probably didn't see his hand shaking thanks to the wooden front of the podium blocking their view. He meant it when he said told Caroline in her office that he didn't recognize himself. Some days he was almost too hung over to lecture to his students, but not today. Today he was just a little shakier than usual. He looked at his watch one last time, and thought, damn John, it's time to get on with it. He took a deep breath and finally began.
"Hello. My name is John and I'm an alcoholic. It's been one day since my last drink."