It wasn't supposed to be like this. Not this time. Not again. This time it was supposed to be different, this time they were finally going to take the leap, they were going to take chances.
The plan had been simple. Divorce announcement, campaign for re-election, win or lose the relationship becomes real. It was finally time. The moment that was supposed to have come a year and a half ago, then again ten months later, was finally coming. It was fate, it was meant to happen. Circumstances couldn't break them. They were supposed to be together and no matter what tore them apart the pieces were always put back.
But if fate was destined to bring them together, couldn't it just as easily be destined to keep them apart? Couldn't they just as easily never be forever? Couldn't their love be strong, deep, passionate, but only temporary? A moment in time through the course of two people's lives, a story to tell in the future, a memory of romances, but not an affair to become reality?
She didn't know the right answer to that anymore. She thought she did, she swore it. She'd once firmly believed that everything in her life, every event big or small, had happened to bring her to that one moment. The moment when she'd walked into that room, when they'd set eyes on each other, and the roller coaster began.
That's how it was supposed to be. And when she walked in on him trying to fire her, when she'd chosen that exact moment to walk into Cyrus's office, not a minute sooner or a minute later, and the sparks began to fly, that's what the world wanted. That's what was meant to happen.
Wasn't it?
She couldn't be sure.
She didn't know anymore.
Her heart sank and her head pounded, her jaw pained by the way it was clenched. She didn't know what to do. It was the same story over and over.
It was over. Once again it was over. She'd ended it. SHE'D ended it. She'd had to. It almost killed her, it took every ounce of her to not scream, to not cry, to not pound her fists against him and ask him to stop her. To shut her up. To try harder to make her change her mind. He'd tried and she desperately wanted to, but in the end she couldn't. She'd left, told him to go back to her, his wife. Told him to try to fix his life, that she needed to fix hers, that she had people who relied on her that were more important. That her job was more important, it was her identity, it was who she was, who she'd always been.
That he was not as important.
She'd fed him a line about how she was a gladiator, what she really meant, what she knew he'd heard, was that she couldn't be his First Lady. She couldn't be his wife. She couldn't change her life. Not yet, not now.
Maybe not ever.
She'd never been such a coward before, but in that moment the cowardice won her over and she'd relented.
The look he gave her when she'd said those words almost broke her. Her chest shook now thinking about it.
He'd looked at her as if she'd just torn his world apart, as if she'd stabbed him in the heart with his own knife. Over and over with each new word. The way his jaw tightened and his fists balled up, the way his shoulders fell as if they'd lost the spine holding them up and his eyes darkened losing all the light behind them.
He'd tried to stop her, tried to fight her, but she'd refused. She couldn't look at him. Couldn't see the way he was dying on the inside, couldn't let him see that it was killing her too.
So she'd walked away.
She took one last look at him, one last glance at his defeated demeanor, blocked out his desperate words and left.
She heard him calling out to her all the way to the front doors, heard the agents try to calm him down.
But she never looked back.
Now here she was. Middle of night, alone, wrecked, regretful. He'd called her. 2 times within the hour she left, 5 by the hour after that, and 8 by the time she'd finally turned her phone off.
She couldn't take it anymore. Each call was another voicemail, another desperate plea, another chance to hear his voice.
She could hear the disbelief in them at first, the idea that it was just a joke, a bad dream, that she would easily go back. Then the anger. He'd screamed, yelled into the phone. Told her how much she was hurting him, how much he hated her right then, how he was tired of playing the games. She'd heard it over and over, it was the one she heard the most. She needed it, she wanted him to be mad. She wanted him to hate her, it was easier that way. If he hated her then he wouldn't look for her, he'd move on. He'd do as she'd told him to, then she could move on too. Maybe even hate him as well, maybe the idea will have come reality and she'd have a real reason to. Then it wouldn't hurt so bad.
Then it wouldn't feel like a boulder was pressing against her chest every time she tried to breath, like a brick was living in the pit of her stomach. Then she could be free.
But the anger left him quick, and it left her just as well. The next few phone calls were him begging her. Promising her he'd change, he'd be better. How, she didn't know, she didn't understand, but she knew he was desperate to try anything. He apologized, for everything, for every little thing he'd ever done wrong while they were together. Big or small, menial or important he's apologized. His words bled through the speakers and she almost wanted to pick up and just tell him to shut up, to quit being sorry for things he didn't need to be sorry for. That that wasn't the problem, that that wouldn't change anything. Because...because she loved him regardless and she'd never stop, but it wasn't about that.
The last time he called his words were sluggish, lazy, almost incomprehensible. She could hear the tears roll down his cheeks, the cry in his tone. She'd heard it before, and she was hearing it again. And that's what did it. That's what made her turn her phone off, and take the battery out, and throw it against the wall. She couldn't take it anymore.
Now it was 3 hours later and she was sitting on the floor of her hotel room, with her back against the wall and her phone by her side. She wouldn't let it go far. Her knees were drawn up and her head bowed over them, she cried and her shoulders shook. Her eyes clenched and she could barely grasp enough air to breathe, yet every few moments she would open her eyes and through tear clogged vision she would look at her phone through her knees and her fingers would tingle with the desire to grab it and turn it on again. To hear his calls one more time.
But she didn't.
She turned away from it, turned her face in the other direction and placed her head against her arms as they wrapped around her knees. A mirror was on the other wall and she simply stared at it, stared at the reflection of herself on it. She saw herself crumbled, small, weak, everything she always strived to not be and more.
Is this what her life had come to? Is this what it would be? Was it really always just an affair? Something that could easily end? Something to leave in the past and move on from?
"Yes" she told herself out loud.
"It has to be. For him, for me, it has to be."
She looked herself closely in the mirror as she said the words and tried to make herself believe them. She repeated them, over and over again until they became real. Until they became true, her truth.
Finally she wiped the tears from her face with one hand and pushed herself up. She took a deep breath, she looked at the phone by her feet, and then quickly picked it up. It didn't need to bother her anymore, it didn't need to be a problem.
She walked to the bed in the middle of the room and put in on the nightstand. She didn't turn it on, but it was no longer an object that could torment her. It wouldn't be. She wouldn't let it.
She pulled the covers back and climbed in, she laid sideways against the pillow and stared at the table beside her. Her eyes were heavy, they burned, but she couldn't close them. They were alone, separate from her mind.
She stared for a long minute before she reached her hand out and grabbed the small object again, the one that held his voice, the one that showed her how he'd bared his soul. She wrapped her hand tightly around it then brought it to her chest. She held it to her heart, as if it was something more, something real. As if it was him she was clinging on to. Then her eyes finally did close, her breathing finally became steady.
That night she dreamt about them. The next morning she tried to forget him.
Fate had won, they weren't meant to be, at least that's what she now believed.
Then she walked into the morning sun and she realized she'd had fate all wrong after all.
The world wasn't ready for their story to end yet.