Chapter 3

The send-off was nice enough. She was glad to be spending her last moments at the lab with her closest friends, her family. Micah dropped by but offered her no words of encouragement; no words of wisdom he had heard from a seminar, he merely hugged her real tight and offered her a gentle smile. Somehow she knew she would see him again. She was most saddened about leaving her interns. She had grown fond of them as people, as students and colleagues. She felt responsible and guilty for having to leave them in the middle of their internships, at the moment, as she remembered from her own experiences, when you are your most vulnerable. And Angela … Angela was distraught, and in loyalty to her not being able to drown her sorrows in alcohol like the others, she also refrained from drinking, and though she was feeling the pain and loss ten-fold without the alcohol to numb it, she put on the bravest, most stoic face she could in order to calm her friend. She found herself making arrangements to have lunch with Angela a few days from now, the same with Cam; made promises that she would not disappear or run to some far off land without discussing it with them first. She felt wanted. She felt missed; she felt alone and sad and a myriad of other emotions and so very tired of keeping up the façade that she was strong and resilient…More than anything, she wanted some release.

After she had convinced everyone to go home, since they still had to work in the morning, she took the last of her belongings to the car along with the bottle Jimmy had sent for her. She sighed in relief when she entered the safe haven of her apartment. She toed off her shoes, hung her coat by the door and dropped her bag on the floor – almost as if she was shedding the weight of the world off her shoulders. Not bothering to turn on the lights, knowing her apartment by memory, she walked over toward her stereo system and pressed play, the bluesy sounds of Big Maybelle's Pitiful wailing woefully throughout the darkness:

I'm pitiful

I'm pitiful

Feel so sorry for me

Pitiful

I'm pitiful

Feel so sorry for me

No, you don't love me

Still, you won't set me free…

She stood there and closed her eyes, though the room was already dark, and let the words wash over her … feeling irrevocably as pitiful as the protagonist in the song …

Wonder why

Wonder why

Wonder why you do me like you do

I wonder why, I wonder why

You do me like you do

When you know that I

I wouldn't do that to you…

She sighed heavily, wanting very much to not be thinking of Booth right now, but he infiltrated her every thought, and this frustrated her! She made her way to her kitchen, and searched out a wine glass and the bottle opener. She poured herself a glass and let the taste and the alcohol soothe her fraying nerves, wanting very much to do as Booth had done so easily: adjust. Was there something wrong with her that she couldn't adjust to the situation as quickly as he did? She slid down the side of the counter and sat there in the dark, listening to Big Maybelle, sipping her wine, trying very hard to find some peace:

Looks like it made you happy

When you seen me cryin'

Please have mercy on this

Aching heart of mine

Looks like you're trying to see

Just how mean you can be

I wouldn't do a dog the way you doin' me…

Until she noticed her answering machine, it's blinking light a beacon in the dark. She got up slowly and walked over. She pressed the button while taking another sip of her wine. She sipped slowly still, settling into her armchair, listening to messages from her father and Russ – she smiled slightly at the voices of her nieces in the background making a mental note to plan on seeing them one weekend in the near future - and from colleagues wishing her well. The last message made her sit up straighter. Director Cullen's voice caught her off guard and she nearly spilled the wine over herself. She rewound the message believing that she missed something, but only his ominous voice requesting that she meet him in the morning played back.

She really didn't want to go for fear of bumping into Booth at the Hoover, she was still raw emotionally … She had the fleeting thought that maybe she'd be lucky.