A/N: So, this is the end. I am sure I'm gonna cry like I always do when I finish a multichapter. And this was a special one for me, so thanks to all those who followed me through this journey and those who encouraged me to go back to this story when I didn't know what to do with it anymore.
When her phone rang on her desk, she barely checked the caller id. Buried deep into work, she picked it up and answered with a rushed hallo before she could make mental connection of the name on the screen.
"I haven't yet had the occasion to show you my gratitude."
Will's voice on the other end pulled her out of her meticulous prep of her cross-examination for the next day. "You said thank you."
"I know, but words are so ephemeral," Will joked, shrill in his voice.
Someone had definitely got up on the right side of the bed. Alicia failed to hold back a soft laughter and acknowledged that the trial outcome had likely something to do with that. "Did you have coffee and Shakespeare for breakfast?" she played along.
"I feel inspired today," Will observed.
She was pleased, though a bit taken aback by his call. Yet, should she really be surprised? They had agreed to talk after Will's trial would end and it looked like the day of reckoning might have come. She played calm and kept up the show. "That worries me."
"Lunch?" Will's question halted her with its very concise bluntness.
"W-What?" she stumbled over those few simple letters.
Lunch.
"I mean," Will hastened to add, "lunch as in eating."
Alicia felt her cheeks flush and burn in embarrassment. How could that idea have possibly, even remotely, crossed her mind? She sighed, grateful for the distance, and tried like she could to disguise her inappropriate thoughts. "I know what you meant, I… I'm…"
"The navy Pier and a pizza in one hour, that's all."
The hint of plea in Will's voice made it hard for her to say no. She checked the clock, unsure whether she should accept or not. The file on her desk advised her that maybe it wasn't the best idea, that maybe she could decline, very politely, and postpone the invitation to a better moment. Will wouldn't mind for sure. Lunch. It wouldn't take much, would it? In the end she had the whole afternoon ahead of her. "Ok," she agreed in a low voice, before she had the time to ponder her options.
When she reached the pier, perfectly on time, she peeped around and realized with a veil of nostalgia that it had been years since she'd been here the last time. Both Zach and Grace were children, and though they lived only a half hour from the city, they would barely visit it. She remembered how Grace was afraid of the panoramic wheel and she never wanted to take a tour, unlike Zach who was a temerarious little boy. She smiled, a tad bitterly. She had no idea where her life was going. She had left Lockhart & Gardner for very specific reasons, not all professionally-driven, and somewhat it felt like universe kept trying to course-correct itself, pulling her back, over and over, where she was trying to run from. She was at a point in her life when she didn't even know if she wanted to fight it anymore. And in some way, being here now, was kind of giving up. But maybe behind Will's invitation there was really nothing more than a showed thank you and she was fantasizing fatuously.
She smiled nervously when she spotted him in front of the Italian pizza restaurant.
"Pizza and beer, I am in a generous mood," he said half-jokingly.
With a faux impressed wow she poked fun at him and followed him inside with an entertained grin.
Minutes later, they were sitting on a bench in front of the lake. The view from the pier was stunning. It would be a wonderful out-of-doors day if it weren't for the few solitary clouds which now and then hid the sun, making the breeze a bit too cold for her taste. But the weather un-pleasantry was definitely irrelevant, if not completely unperceived, with Will's presence next to her, spiced by a warm smile and the steaming pizza.
It was a weird sensation. Familiar, relaxing and pleasurable but at the same time awkward, confusing and burning in so many ways. She was no longer used to sit around him, She was not any longer acquainted to his flustering proximity. She swallowed the faint discomfort and concealed it behind a shy smile, it was easier to appear natural, mingled in the noon's crowd.
She accepted a slice and ate, absently, relying on the lake's waves to help her untangle her life.
She could feel Will's gaze fidget unsettled, shifting between her and the view, "So…" he started, tentatively.
She took a moment to answer. Her mind was already at work, projected into a hypothetical conversation, making up her own decision tree of answers to questions she still didn't know. "Yes?"
"We agreed we needed to talk," Will reminded her, his earlier glee suddenly gone.
She nodded, then let a soft laughter escape her throat. "So you tricked me," she sussed him.
Will smirked at her, looking satisfied and nodded. "Sort of."
If it was another moment, another place, she would probably be already standing up, preparing for the escape. Instead, the rhythmic ground swells hypnotized her, refusing to let her go. "I don't know," she admitted.
Will shrugged, confused, eyes locked on the panorama. "What?"
"Anything." She cast a discreet glance in his direction and exhaled. She was aware that this wasn't the answer Will wasn't expecting, if he was expecting some concrete answer at all.
"And there I thought my drunk phone call last weekend was my most awkward conversation ever," he downplayed.
"Maybe some conversations are better drunk," she joked. In vino veritas.
"I'd tend to agree," Will groaned, probably still remembering that conversation. "What has changed for you? I mean, since you left."
Straight questions scared her like nothing else. Especially when she didn't have an answer. What had changed? On a professional level, a lot. Responsibilities, a lot of them. Small sacrifices for high satisfactions. Or the opposite most of the times. But she knew that this wasn't Will's question behind the question. What had changed? "Nothing, something…" She shook her head, slightly frustrated at how words were unbelievably hard to find, even for an expert lawyer. "I thought I could just sever every tie still left and… things would eventually go back to normal. But I don't even know what normal is anymore."
What was normality? Throw herself into work so she didn't have time to muse? A husband who spent most of his days away and slowly ended up being a husband only on paper? She was in front of the umpteenth juncture but couldn't decide, she didn't want to decide. She kept waiting in the forlorn hope that this time, maybe, someone else would make a decision and spared her having to make one herself.
"We should try to get a chance Alicia. A real one." Will suggested, timidly, his gaze refusing to rest on her as he spoke those words.
"I know. I just don't know how to do it," she confessed.
Will finally stared at her and their eyes met for a brief, yet intense moment. She didn't know if he was pondering her admission or studying a solution to what he was requesting. Or if he was only looking for a way to beat a retreat. But the way he shrugged, almost with nonchalance, then offered her a half smile, reassured her that it wasn't the latter.
"I'm not asking anything of you. We take it slowly, we try to rebuild it, see what happens," he offered, quiet in appearance.
But Alicia had learned to recognize even the most imperceptible quiver in his voice. His calm tone was nothing more than a gentle façade. Inside he was probably a burning turmoil, exactly like her.
"You mean as in… dating?" she questioned him. She wasn't completely sure she got his intentions right and truth be told, it'd been a good twenty years since the last time she did something like dating.
Will shrugged. "Something like that."
Okay. Dating, taking it slowly, rebuilding what'd been destroyed. It sounded easy and incredibly compelling at the same time. It meant overcome more than just one issue. All the past hate, the misunderstandings, the regret, the resentment. The more she thought about it, the more it sounded demanding. "Okay," she agreed in a whisper.
"Okay," Will repeated with the same faint voice.
"We date," she added.
Her gaze down, she couldn't help but realize now how it all had been in vain, but worth and necessary at the same time. Leaving Lockhart & Gardner had given her the one certainty she needed; that she would never get over him. And the more she thought about it, the more it was all obvious in her mind that she had left him, yes, but for the wrong reasons. He wasn't her boss anymore. She had broken that thin connection, the ultimate cause of all sorts of professional complications which made everything between them wrong. With that gone; with a marriage looking less and less like a marriage but more like a press frontage, what obstacles were they left with? Just themselves. And her shy agreement was the confirmation that she didn't want to play an obstacle to herself, to themselves anymore. She was ready.
THE END
