They say that all good things must come to an end. Well, Florence wasn't sure if things were good or not, but something was definitely coming to a close.
She stood in her hotel room in Merano, facing off with the person who had been her companion for nearly a decade. For the past seven years, she had done nothing but help him on the road to success. She had been there when he had been an unknown player with big dreams. She had been there to celebrate his first title with him and she had been there console him when he lost the next year.
For the last seven years of her life, she had done nothing but stand by his side When no one believed in him, she had been there to reassure him that he had worth as a chess player, that he was competent even on the days he wavered and that he did have a future as a front runner on the chess circuit, despite whatever his critics said.
She had been there to laugh in the faces of those same people who said he would never make it. She had pushed him to go beyond his best and helped him to develop his exceptional observation skills. He could see things on the chess board that few others could and those skills had served him well. Had it not been for her encouragement, those skills might have been terribly wasted.
Most of all, she had been by his side in perhaps what was the most important of ways. Freddie had hardly been an easy man to love. He was stubborn, impulsive, and hot-headed. He wanted things his way and to hell with anyone else. And yet, he had loved her in the same way he did everything else in his life-Passionately and with his whole heart. She knew that it wouldn't last forever. She wasn't that naïve.
But she hadn't pictured that it would end this way, either.
At this moment, her world was turning on its side. She was putting on a fake persona to people that she wanted to hate, her skills as a second were being scrutinized by people who knew nothing of her or her situation, and her heart was pulled in two directions, torn by loyalty to the old and fascination for someone knew.
And now, as the man who had held it for long looked upon her with nothing more than contempt, hurling insult after insult, something inside her snapped. It no longer mattered what anyone else thought! As far as she was concerned, they could all go jump off a bridge. She had been dormant long enough. Somewhere, a star exploded, a bomb went off, and a window shattered.
And Florence walked out.