Isadora feels like she is suffocating in her room, but she does not feel like it to go out and face the sun. Inside was a place too much have happened, the painful memories of the past months threaten to consume her conscious, but it was still more inviting than the daunting outside world.
She called the school in advance. For all they knew, she was horribly sick, down with a particularly virulent form of the common cold. You would not want an infectious teacher around your children, would you?
The thing was, what caused the young woman so much pain was not something you could catch. Most people did not even understand it.
Hell, even she had her share of trouble wrapping her head around it.
She thought she was used to what things were. She did not understand why she let herself yearn for more.
Perhaps that is the thing, it is not that she would had liked something more, but because Chris had taken away what she actually had.
That is it. What caused Isadora so much crippling pain. The good, old sour grapes. Breakup blues.
Not that she is actually entitled to it, she considers. If it were an actual disease, her insurance would not cover it. After all, Chris Winters was not her boyfriend, not her husband.
No, she was just the other woman.
Yesterday, nay, yesternight, Chris knocked at her door around midnight. It was not unlike him to come by so late, but instead of the joyful, thrilled and yet secretive tone he used to time his fist hitting the wood, it was more of a depressed note.
When she opened the door, his face fared no better. He had deep, dark circles around his bloodshot eyes, his stubble was unkempt and his breath smelled of alcohol. Fearing for the worse, something akin to a cocaine bender, she ushered him in and set him on the couch.
For a long moment, he said nothing, made no sound. Isadora was reasonably worried, but did not press. She could see he was mustering his nerve to speak of something grave, and it would be of no help her nagging on his ear.
Finally, he takes a deep breath and says, "Isa, I think we should break up."
"What?" She scoffed, taken aback. "Why?"
"Look, we gotta be realists here. We're not getting anywhere. I can't get a divorce, the press is on my case again and you deserve more than sneaking around with a dirtbag like me." He says, not once raising his eyes to face her. "I think we should just cut our losses on whatever this is and move on."
"Chris, you're being absurd." She responded, monotone, the way she lectures one of the kids on her care.
"Am I?" His voice flared with anger. "Can you tell me sincerely you don't want to have a proper date night? That's okay if some tabloid paparazzo ruins the quiet life I know you love so? That you're happybeing some Hollywood type's dirty little secret?"
She took his hand, and he did not try to move it. "Do I want a normal boyfriend, who does normal stuff with me? Yeah, I do want it. But the thing is, I love you, and you're not a normal person. I'd rather have whatever with you than a storybook romance with anybody else."
At that moment, Chris takes his hand away and hides his face on them. He breathed heavily and seemed like he would shout or cry. He does nothing of the sort.
Instead, he sighs and runs his hands though his greasy blond hair. "She's pregnant."
Isadora needs no further explaining. She knows who is pregnant, and why this is relevant. She feared this moment for months, now.
"When?" It was her follow-up question.
"Last month, on her birthday." He responds. "We drank too much. It happened."
She breathes out. "You said you slept on separate bedrooms. That you barely spoke to each other."
"We did. We do. It just… happened." That was his excuse.
"My wife is a shrew. I know that, I said that many times, now." He continues. "But now she's also the mother of my child, goddamnit. I owe it to them to at least try to make it work."
"What if it was the reverse, Chris? What if I was the one who have gotten pregnant?" The blonde woman asks, bitterly. "What would you do then?"
He narrows his eyes at her. "Don't go hypothetical on me, Isadora. This is serious."
"You already answered it." She barks. "Just… leave, Chris. I got your message loud and clear."
He rose to his feet and tried to walk towards her crowing figure on a corner of the living room. "Isadora, I…"
"No!" She cuts him off and points to the door. "Just go. I don't want your apologies."
Chris looks at her once more, his eyes twinkling with unshed tears, and then he left, saying nothing more.
That was three days ago. Isadora has not seen or heard of him ever since, despite having a TMZ alert on her cell phone. Perhaps out of pure masochism.
Her stomach rumbled, but there was no more food in the house. She had slowly consumed it all during her quarantine, but she felt no strength to order in. A foul stench came from the kitchen, no doubt the piling dishes and accumulated trash.
She groaned loudly, scratched her unwashed, messy hair, and decided she needed to stand up. At least to put the garbage out, the smell was indeed terrible.
Tying her hair on a careless knot, she dragged herself to the kitchen, gathered the smelly stuff on a couple of plastic bags and walked like a death row inmate to the front door of her apartment.
If Isadora was in full capacity of her mental faculties, she might have checked on the peephole if there was someone on the hallway, lest someone sees her on her mopey pyjamas and smeared, three-day-old make-up.
It was not the case.
Just as soon as she opens the door, Seth turns around and looks her dead in the eye and tries, with little success, to supress his surprise with the state of deterioration of her appearance.
As for Isadora herself, she liked Seth, she really did. The fact stands the man was a comedian, and he would likely to try and cheer her up, and she did not want to be cheered up. She wanted to mope to the end of time.
"For a moment there I was worried Rocket had assumed human form." The man comments, humoured.
Ah, yes. The jokes. She forgot about the jokes.
"Hey, Seth." She greets, not really into it.
"You look like shit, Iowa." He presses on. "What happened?"
She figured the best policy was the truth. She would not be able to make up anything realistic and believable which was also better than what she was actually going through.
"It's just a bad breakup, Seth. Nothing to worry about." She responded, her voice sounding awfully dead.
He looked ready to dispute her claim, but chose not to do it. Instead, he said, "So, mystery guy is off the cards now? Sorry for hear it."
Seth had acquired the habit of calling Chris her 'mystery guy', as he did not know who he was, nor she was willing to part to any details about his identity.
"I guess that's life." She shrugged it off.
He looked at her impassively. "Look, Iowa, I swear I'm not using your misery to haggle myself an audience, but I'm having a show tonight, if you want to show up. Some air might do you good."
She sighed. "Look, Seth, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I'm really not on the mood. Right now, all I want is just to lay in the dark."
"I get it, I get it, worth the shot." He raised his hands in mock-surrender. "I guess I'll see you around, then?"
"Yeah, sure." She tried to muster him a smile, it must have come out as a grimace.
He disappears down the stairs, as she walks slowly through the hallway until she reaches the dumpster outside.
Hours later, as Isadora nurses a bowl of cereal on her stomach, she hears the sound of paper hustling on the hallway. She walks to the door and finds the program for Seth's show that night.
She picks it up and her first instinct is to trash it, but then she reconsiders.
"What are you doing to yourself, Isadora?" She asks out loud, to herself. "You're slipping away!"
Isadora Andel was a strong woman in a long line of strong women. Her mother and grandmother were widows, and they ran the family estate with an iron fist, in spite of the crippling pain of losing their beloved husbands, and the taxating task of caring for small children alone.
They did not sulk around the corners. She, herself, did not either. She shed no tears over what happened at Tender Nothings, and the idea of crying over any other of her break-ups always seemed laughable.
She loved Chris, yes, and it hurt when he left her, but it was no excuse to become a depressed hermit. It was no excuse to forego her hygiene. It was no excuse to cry three days in a row.
"You're a self-respecting woman, for God's sakes!" She shouts. "Snap out of it this instant!"
Seth had a point, fresh air could only do her some good, and even if she laughed at none of the performers' jokes, at least she would force herself to take a shower and brush her teeth.
Besides, Seth was a good friend, he was a good person. At the very least, she owed it to him to go and cheer him on.
It felt like a terrible chore, but she dragged herself to the bathroom. She would attend the event.
Once dressed and opening the front door to leave, Isadora considers she may be a long way from okay, but she would be damned if she spent another minute feeling sorry for herself on a dark corner of her apartment.
Tears dry on their own, after all.