The spell broken, people start pestering him, thrusting pens and pieces of paper at him, but he can't move because he can't breathe.
The last words he'd spoken to her flash in his brain.
She'd stood there, sobbing, begging him to listen, begging him to believe her when she told him the affair was over and that she loved him, only him.
Please don't throw what we have away, Billy, please.
You need to leave. Don't call me. Don't e-mail me. I never want to see your face or hear your voice again.
She'd begged and she'd pleaded but he'd refused to listen, turning his back on her and telling her over his shoulder that she needed to clear her shit out and that she'd better not be there when he got back.
He'd headed straight to a bar and gulped down seven shots of whiskey in quick succession, forcing himself to inhale after each draught (the polar opposite of what Steve, his lanky, pimply-faced older cousin had instructed him to do at age 13 when he'd introduced him to hard liquor: "Breathe in – drink - breathe out. Come on, Willie, don't be such a pussy.")
Now, 35 years later, the harsh vapor from the glass filling his nostrils is a welcome distraction from his thoughts, which fill him with shame.
What did he do for her that I didn't? Did he make love to her better? Taste better? Make fewer sarcastic, ill-timed jokes?
Suddenly, everything he is feels wrong, every aspect of himself is something he wants to peel off and throw on the floor behind him, and the ignorant person he was before, the one blissfully unaware of everything happening behind his back is suddenly both pathetic and enviable. He cringes, imagining all of the things that were happening when he wasn't paying attention.
At the same time, he wishes he could return to a moment where not knowing was a possibility, to being the blissfully ignorant person who didn't know what was happening behind his back. But that person just wasn't good enough to have her love. Just like he'd never been good enough to have his father's love. How could he ever have thought it would be different with her? With anyone?
He sits there, awash in shame and self-loathing, winding and rewinding the movie reel of their life together, trying to see where he'd gone wrong.
Then, Why wasn't I good enough?
Suddenly, he's overcome by a wave of nausea so strong it chokes him. He pushes his stool back and heads for the back of the bar, stumbling as he rounds the corner into the hallway.
As he feels himself going down, he falls as he was taught to do in high school: knees, hips, shoulder.
Then he gets to his feet, shoves the door to the men's room open and shambles inside, where he expels the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl. Sweat is beading on his forehead and he grips the metal bars on either side of the stall so hard his fingers ache.
He shakily gets to his feet and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, a single thought crowding out all others:
She never loved me – it was all a lie.
He wants to weep.
Later, he walks the six blocks back to his apartment, trying to decide whether it would be worse to open the door and find her there or find her gone.
The streets are uncharacteristically empty for this time of night, and as he walks the last block home, shoulders slumped and hands dug deep in his pockets, he angrily wipes the tears from his eyes.
When she hears the key turn in the lock, she slowly gets to her feet and stands, heart pounding. The fact is, even though she's spent the last three hours trying to work out how the fuck she's going to convince him that of course, he can trust her – she's finished with all that pesky lying, honest! - there's really no plausible explanation for sleeping with Brian that would make forgiveness possible.
She wouldn't trust him if the roles were reversed. But she has to try, so she waits.
When he steps into the foyer and sees her standing there - eyes swollen and red with tears - he's overwhelmed with rage.
How could she have done it? How could she?
He would never, ever raise a hand to her but the urge to lash out at her - at anyone, to release the rage that's making his head pound and his eyes ache - is more powerful than he's felt in years.
Not since he was a kid staring John McAvoy down has he wanted to hit something as badly as he wants to hit something now.
He wants to break all the furniture into pieces, smash every bit of glass in the kitchen and sweep all the appliances onto the floor.
She never loved me. It was all a lie.
But one thing Will McAvoy learned at an early age was how to put a padlock on his feelings, so he does that now and forces the pain from his eyes, forces his features into something steely and inscrutable.
She doesn't know what he's thinking.
His lips are pressed into a thin line, his fingers clenched into fists and his breath carries the smell of whiskey to her six feet away.
He's a bomb ready to detonate.
She's never once been afraid of him and she isn't now, so slowly, tentatively, she takes a step toward him.
Her hands are outstretched, palms pressing against an invisible barrier as she moves toward him.
He doesn't move, only shakes his head in warning. It's only years of conditioning that keep him from screaming at her to stay the fuck away from him.
She stops three feet away, not daring to go any further. She's not afraid of him exactly, she doesn't think he'd ever hurt her, but in the space of three hours she's gone from enjoying her own personal real estate in Will McAvoy's arms to feeling like a complete stranger to him.
It kills her to see him in so much pain, doubly so knowing she was the cause, so she tries to tell him something of why she's still standing there, why she didn't do as he asked and leave.
"I can't let you give up on us, Will," she says quietly, but he only snorts in derision.
Where does she get off thinking she has a choice in the matter? She's the one who burned the whole fucking house down.
"Get out," he says sharply. His voice is colder than she's ever heard it and the tenor of it - filled with barely concealed rage – fills her veins with ice.
"I can't."
She's telling the truth. Although she knows the honorable thing to do is to go, to let him decide his own future, she can't take that chance: she knows as well as she's standing here that if she steps foot outside his apartment he'll close the door on her – on them – forever.
"You're a cheating, lying whore, MacKenzie, and I never knew you at all. Get out."
