She never cried so much in her life as the night Toby told her he was getting married. To her. The pretty redhead from Maryland who was CJ's polar opposite. She'd ran off before he had a chance to hear her whisper "no" frantically over and over.
Her stomach lurched as she came to an abrupt stop outside a 24 hour convenience store. A bottle of vodka to ease the pain. She would've chosen scotch but his drink, his taste upon her lips would probably send her into a suicidal oblivion. When she reached her apartment, she collapsed behind her door, raspy sobs overcoming her, her body shaking and trembling as she fell into a mess for everything she had lost.
She had always loved him: he was her Tobus, her Pokey. They'd met after a fiery duel over a New York senator's polling model and 5 years later, here she was. Crying for her boss who became her friend, her best friend, her lover, her boyfriend, her soulmate. She cursed the distance, the width and breadth of the "United" States and their cruel irony of keeping her so far from what she needed. Toby. He was all she ever had needed, but he didn't need her anymore and the Congresswoman-elect was soon to be his wife.
She didn't think she could ever recover from her colossal heartbreak. He tried to call but she couldn't handle his voice, much like the way she had avoided his eyes when he told her. She called him a couple, well maybe several, times to spit/choke out/sob "fuck you" into the receiver, hanging up before he had a chance to utter a syllable. She wanted him to feel guilty. He had built her up all these years, releasing life she didn't know she had and in those few seconds, she felt lower than she ever had.
Her mother's death was sad, wasn't a shock, but this had rocked her to her very core.
She and Toby had always talked - late nights in his apartment, drinking and making love – about how one day, they'd succumb to marriage because no-one else would be able to handle either of them. She couldn't be happy for him no matter how hard she tried and nothing she could do would numb the pain.
The vodka fuelled it, spurred it on, and only a sliver of her brain that couldn't let Toby win this emotional deadlock prevented her from doing something stupid. She shouldn't and wouldn't have to resort to anything that would make him come running back out of guilt and regret.
He had to run into the wind, to his new wife and life, while CJ remained behind. Falling further and further into the darkness as she lost touch with everything she had come to known. Her heart weighed her down, heavy and pressing.
Never in her life had she felt so small and never had she imagined Toby Ziegler to be the one who would make her feel like this.