Author's Notes: Still reeling from Sunday night, and thus this little angsty piece. Sorry if you wanted fluff…I'm just not ready to go there yet.
Somebody's gonna hurt someone
Before the night is through
Somebody's gonna come undone
There's nothing we can do
~Heartache Tonight, The Eagles
It turns out, being stabbed in the stomach by an angry protester, and being stabbed in the back by the man you loved, felt a lot alike.
There was that first moment of quiet static in your head. She assumed it was your brain trying to make sense of the irrational. Certainly, that couldn't be a knife protruding from her abdomen? And certainly Will couldn't be sitting at a bar, in midtown Manhattan, with Nina Howard leaning against his shoulder? Right?
The next feeling you had was numbly trying to walk away from the pain. Jim had once told her she stumbled nearly half a city block away from him, blood dripping down her torso, before he could convince her she was injured and needed to stop moving. She felt like that now. Would Jim grab her by the elbow soon, to shake her by the shoulders, and force her down onto the sidewalk until help arrived? And what kind of help would she need exactly? A trauma surgeon? A psychiatrist? She really couldn't decide which. She certainly felt like she had a gaping hole in her chest. Trauma surgeon it was then.
She hailed a cab, and somehow managed to remember her own address, and sat there numbly waiting for the streets of New York to open up and swallow her whole, because that was the only way this burning ache would subside. She was sure of it.
Vodka. Copious amounts of grain alcohol were going to be necessary tonight. It would be the only way to dull the pain. She knew that from experience. And it was all she had, aside from a half empty bottle of cabernet sauvignon. And a couple of glasses of red wine were not going to be anywhere near enough alcohol to drown her sorrows this time. She had spent far too many evenings, sipping wine and fortifying herself for another day of Will's push and pull, his alternating kindness and hatred. Red wine was for the lovelorn. She was now the walking wounded.
A year and a half. That's what she had left on her contract. But maybe if she pissed him off enough he would finally use that little employment clause and fire her. It would be easier. She was tired. She was so very tired. Maybe it was time to admit this had been a very bad idea from the start, and that the only way to survive life without Will was to be far, far away from him.
She curled up on her side with a glass of vodka and listened to the phone ring from the other side of the room. It was one in the morning. It could only be one person and she had to wonder, did he still call her on evenings when Nina shared his bed? Did they laugh at the fact that she obviously had no life since she was available to take his calls at all hours of the day and night? They must find her pitifully adorable. She was tired of being adorable.
She got up and trudged into the bathroom to splash some water on her face and all she could see were puffy eyes and runny mascara and lines and wrinkles that didn't used to be there. Will was right…she wasn't as cute as she thought she was. Not anymore.
Well, at least he wasn't dating some vapid twenty year old perfume counter spritzer girl. Nina was reasonably intelligent, and reasonably attractive, and suitably close in age, and a fixture on the New York social scene, and really, perfect in so many ways that she wasn't for Will. Nina would smooth over the rough edges that Mackenzie had always loved about him. She would probably make him quit smoking pot, and drinking too much, and she would encourage his middle of the road broadcasts that would surely endear him to a million new viewers. Reese would be thrilled. She could see it all now. A stunningly public courtship and wedding. Leona Lansing's cunning smile would light up The Rainbow Room as the media elite gathered to toast them.
Mackenzie slouched down in bed and slurped at her third vodka and pictured all of this in her head. She was twisting the knife a little deeper because it would be so much easier to deal with all of this in the quiet of her own apartment. If she faced all her worst thoughts about what could possibly be going on in his penthouse right now, and if she did it while drunk out of her mind, maybe she would be able to face him tomorrow. Maybe.
She could barely swallow the next morning. In fact, she was quite certain her tongue was now permanently affixed to the roof of her mouth. She cracked open one eyelid and shut it again as quickly as possible. Who the hell decided morning should come so damn early? And what was that God-awful blaring noise next to her head?
The phone. It was the phone. Her landline. Something no one ever called. She pulled herself upright and stared at the fuzzy red numbers on her alarm clock. Ten thirty? How the hell had that happened, she wondered? And then she spied the nearly empty bottle of vodka on the floor and remembered exactly how that had happened. And she wasn't sure if it was the alcohol, or the image of Will and Nina that flashed before her eyes, that made her rush for the bathroom.
"What?!" she finally screamed into the phone ten minutes later. She was trying to fix coffee with shaking hands and a splitting headache, and the damn phone wouldn't stop ringing, so finally she had to accept that the only way to make the continuous racket end was to answer the damn thing.
"It's nearly eleven o'clock. Where in the hell are you?" Will's voice asked, real concern coloring his tone. Did he actually give a damn? Oh right, she was his E.P. Had to keep the show afloat, didn't he?
"I'm sorry. I'm not feeling well. I overslept. I'll be there as soon as I can" she assured him. She hung up before he could murmur fake words of concern and she could pretend she didn't know about Nina. She just didn't know how they would do that in person…play some grown up version of make-believe where he tried to act as if nothing had changed and she tried to go along with it.
As she shed her clothes to enter the shower she stared at the scar across her belly and wondered…was there one on her back too? Because, as it turned out, imaginary knife wounds hurt just as much as the real ones did. Unfortunately, no one offered you morphine for those.