A/N: I was watching one of my trusty DVDs and this little niggle of an idea appeared and wouldn't go away. Hope you enjoy! –Ana
Had she simply looked to the left instead of right, it might have all ended differently. But that wasn't the way it happened. She looked right, saw them before they saw her, and her heart broke in a way that she had not thought possible.
She walked away before they ever knew she was there. And not a person that passed her on the street would have known anything was wrong, that behind the calm, confident façade there was a very real pain. She'd learn long ago to never betray her emotions, even in the moments when they betrayed her.
Finding herself in front of her car, the sporty little thing that had been such a source of secret pride for her until today, she reached for her keys, surprised by the tremor in her hand as she fumbled with the latch. Holding herself together, she slid into the seat and closed the door, grateful for the faintly cool anonymity of the tinted windows. Only then did she lean her head back into the seat and allow the first tear of disappointment to fall.
After so many mistakes, so many failures, she thought this time was different. That this time she had finally gotten it right. She said the right things, acted the right way. Had chosen the right man to risk handing over heart.
But it had been wrong, all wrong. The fear had been there for weeks, months, growing as she felt him slipping away from her. The tense, silent meals. His eagerness to answer the phone. The way his voice changed when he said her name. She tried everything to ignore it, to deny it, even as the insecurity began to turn her into a woman that she no longer recognized.
She clenched her hands tightly, not feeling the bite of the keys she still held as she thought about her actions over the last few months of their relationship. The books she read, searching for information, for answers to replace the silence between them. The time spent wavering between territorial resentment and analyzing every behavior for clues to what was happening to them.
Today though, she had all the evidence she needed to finally accept the truth. She went to Wong Foos' to surprise him; it had been so long since they'd been there together. But when she entered through the arched entryway, she turned her head to the right and saw the two of them at the bar, their heads close together as they leaned into each other. Even in the dim room, he could see the way he looked at the woman next to him. The slow and easy smile on his face. He never smiled at her like that. Not anymore.
And in that moment, she finally understood that he was no longer hers to have. He wasn't cheating on her, wasn't sleeping with that woman, not while he was with her. That wasn't the type of man Seeley was. But she wasn't going to sit around waiting for the inevitable—the slow numbing spiral down to the end. She would end this on her terms, with what remained of her pride intact. She had done it before, more than once, and survived it.
She opened her hand, looking at the ring of keys in her palm, thinking of everything that each one represented to her. Then she selected one, sliding its familiar weight through the coil of metal unless it slipped free. She stared at it for a moment, a silent goodbye to what she thought she'd found, and then closed her hand around it.
Reaching for her phone, she dialed a number and took a deep breath as she waited for the end of the recording on the other side of the connection.
"Hey, Seeley. It's me. Um, listen, about Jamaica....well, something's come up at work and…"