Title: Fragmented Existence
Author: mystery
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit being made.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Everything up to present time.
*****
The anatomy of breaking up was much easier said than done.
The right track of morality, complete with the appropriate two feet of personal space between them, left something to be desired. They could barely look at one another, and as she limped through the office, every bit the humble, wounded heroine, he turned his back on her because idealism proposed it was the right thing to do. Strangely, that voice and his wife's were one and the same.
Therapy was a place where she said all the right things, but kept all the real things hidden behind a scar that was as much of a reminder of misfortune as it was a badge of honor. No one knew about the phantom pain that spread out from that scar at night, when the air was cool and she was lying in bed alone, how it reached up and chased all the oxygen out of her lungs. There were more nights than she wanted to count when she chased a Vicodin with a shot glass full of vodka. Pain pill addiction and alcoholism were lurking in the sunshine of early workday mornings and she had come too far to be beaten by either, so she made an appointment with her neurologist.
He was a balding man in his late-forties who seemed to enjoy, a little too much, surveying the scar on her leg. Samantha told him about the vice like grip of pain that had her bolting out of bed more nights than not, and he suggested it was a psychological pain connected to her ordeal, wrote a prescription for another, milder, less addictive pain killer and told her to seek therapy.
His obsession with her breasts ended around the same time he realized she might be a bit off her nut.
*****
The entire office found out about Jack's mother's suicide in one fell swoop, and Samantha wondered whether or not she should act surprised. She hadn't been present for the now infamous tape of Spaulding taunting Jack, but she knew the story. One late night, not long before their affair was declared officially over, he'd wept all over her in what wasn't sadness but was every ounce despair. The years weren't kind, and now, he was much older than she at the time of her death. In a haze of Jack Daniels and sheets that smelled of them, he realized that night.some things never make sense. There was just a black hole, where the inexplicable traveled to die, only sometimes it never made it, and forever lingered on the edge. Emotional pain was cruel that way; it could look over the abyss, to an end, and decide it wanted to stay on the edge of ending and continuing on, disappearing and reappearing at will. Jack couldn't let it go; Samantha had held his tear stained face against her smooth breast and had known he would cling to the memory of his mother until the day he died. It wasn't healthy and he had nightmares; he probably should be in therapy, and he definitely needed some perspective, but Samantha wasn't inclined to do anything but hold him as night descended and then backed away, giving way to morning.
That was the difference between Samantha and other people: she wasn't a fixer. She was content with Jack, flaws and all. If he held onto the memory of his dead mother then she was going to let him, because no matter what he did, nothing would heal what had happened. Sometimes, healing wasn't as much a necessity for the wounded as it was for those surrounding the wounded. He could say all the right things to a therapist and to his wife and children, perhaps satisfying them; but she knew some scars never faded, you just learned to wear long sleeves, even in the dead of summer, to cover them up.
She wasn't afraid of his scars, and he didn't feel the need to cover them up when he was in her presence.
The night after Spaulding took a nosedive off a windowsill, her phone rang. She knew the sound of Jack's crying anywhere, and she told him to come over, she would be waiting. A breathy silence drew out the minutes until Samantha heard a dial tone. By the window, she waited for hours, but he never came.
It was enough that he wanted to.
*****
Not long after the Spaulding case, Samantha received more voiceless phone calls. Sometimes he called from home, his and Maria's number inking its away across her caller ID screen. Other times, it was his cell phone. A few nights, it was a payphone from the café where they'd first dipped their toes in what would later be a full-blown affair. After the third call, as her voice grew softer with each unanswered plea of his name, she stopped talking, and just sat, listening.
Many nights, while holding the phone to her ear, she'd leaf through a magazine. As time wore on, she started a book and finished all 232 pages during their silent connection. A few times, she scribbled his name on a scrap piece of paper that found its way to the top of her nightstand. Once or twice, she'd written her name, as small as possible beside his.
In the office, Jack continued to give her a wide berth, and their eyes rarely met in any way that counted.
*****
"I'm well," she announced in a silky, sarcastic tone. A file containing this declaration made its way to his desk, signed by her therapist on the appropriate lines.
Later that night, her phone rang; it was a general directory number from their office. He said nothing, but she heard, "I know you're not well," in his silence. Across the space that separated them, his capable hand slid up her calf, passed over her knee, and rested over the fading scar on her thigh.
For the first time since he'd started calling, she took the initiative, and was the first to hang up the phone.
*****
It was not unusual for an FBI agent to use his or her weapon; at times, it was used as a warning and other times it was used for self-preservation. Samantha was certain she was being tested in some way. For the third time in under a year, her gun had come into play, and was at once both devastating and life saving. Martin's ears were undoubtedly ringing and Samantha could taste and smell gunpowder in the air. A dark, writhing mass of human being lay ten feet from them, a bullet lodged in each of his knees. There was a possibility he might never walk again. As her brain had fired off instinctive impulses, something else had come into play, and rerouted a shoot-at-the-center-of-mass mentality. Going for the knees was a little too Hollywood, but as Samantha approached her still living target, she decided going Hollywood wasn't so bad.
Martin approached her from behind, talking a little too loudly, a look of horror on his face. Samantha smiled.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Yeah," she answered flippantly.
"You're in shock," Martin said.
"No, no," she deflected.
"Your arm," he reiterated, reaching out for her.
It was only then she felt the burn.
Streaks of red had turned her khaki blazer a deep shade of wet brown. Apparently, their would be kidnapper had gotten off a shot. Samantha remembered now. It had happened in the brief interval of time when she'd decided to spare his life.
*****
Because it was on her arm, and more visible to the general population than the inside of her thigh, she requested a plastic surgeon sew her up. The bullet missed all major arteries and veins, but was lodged precariously in her bicep. Surgery was a must. Waiting for a plastic surgeon available on a Saturday night required an ample amount of patience and just the right dose of Demerol.
Martin's guilty face loomed over her, illuminated by the gray light of a silent television. "I'm sorry, Sam," he whispered more than once. From the hallway, a deep voice gave commands and requested information. Vaguely, Samantha heard the clash of metal meeting the tile of a hospital hallway. A female voice offered reassurances. She knew instinctively that Jack was bearing the blame for her most recent brush with death. More often than not as of late, Jack sent her out in the field with Martin, as a way to keep the needed distance between them. She knew he was thinking if he'd been with her, maybe things would have turned out differently. For once, she wasn't going to tell him he was wrong, because in truth, he might not be all that far off.
There was a commotion and then Jack was standing over her; the faces changed but the guilt was the same. "What am I going to do with you?" Jack asked.
There was no easy answer to his question.
*****
Los Angeles had been a great place to live in her late teens. There was never a shortage of great restaurants, great museums, or great looking men. Jobs that paid a decent wage were a little harder to come by for a small town girl just out of high school. With a shortage of money and an abundance of time, Samantha often got on the interstate and just drove, seeing where the road would take her.
On her excursions, she ran across detours, got held up at traffic lights, faced seemingly unending construction, yet she also learned no matter the delay, there were at minimum, fifteen different ways to get to the city. Awaiting her was a swanky, small, overpriced apartment, too much smog, an old cat named Dream, and a pantry full of Ramen Noodles. In short, her favorite place on earth. It became a challenge, to never take the same route home. The road to home wasn't nearly as important as getting there.
Life wasn't so different.
*****
The joys of desk duty and sessions with the bureau psychiatrist were hers once again.
From Van Doren on down, the question wasn't whether she was a capable agent; it was whether she could continue to effectively do her job given the extreme circumstances of the past year. Of course, Samantha said she was fine, the rest of the team shook their heads with a mixture of concern and sympathy, and Van Doren and Jack agreed she should be assigned to desk duty for the foreseeable future, with two counseling sessions a week capping off her exciting professional existence.
Samantha took a week of vacation and flipped everyone off from Cancun.
*****
As she was dropping her luggage all over the hardwood floor in her entryway, the phone rang, the answering machine picked up, there was a brief pause, and then the caller hung up.
Jack.
Samantha dragged her luggage to her bedroom, unpacked the necessities, shed her khaki shorts, white tank top, black thong, and sports bra, then stepped into the shower to wash off airport grime. After crawling into bed, she resumed reading the book she'd begun while sipping diet coke and intermittently staring at clear, aqua water taking a little more of the earth each time the tide slid over white sand. It was a guide to spiritual healing and the acceptance of traumatic events in one's life. Yawning, she blindly reached toward her nightstand for the bottle of aloe vera that was currently responsible for relieving one hell of a sunburn.
Just as she was about to turn over and begin the long descent into sleep, the phone rang. She reached over to her spare pillow and picked up the cordless.
She knew he would call back.
*****
Everyone traipsed around as if she would break, as if at any minute she might wrangle one of them for their gun and go postal.
Quietly, she organized her paper clips by size, separated pens by the color of ink, and weeded through mountains of paperwork that would help her colleagues bring the missing home.
As the weeks went on and she proved mental stability in spite of extreme emotional chaos, she ventured forth from her desk back out into the field.
In those first weeks back in the land of the fully functional FBI agent, Jack was always at her side. Their conversations in the car, in the office, and all the places in between consisted of data, leads, theories, and missing persons. He was every bit her married, professional superior, and she, his affable bullet riddled team member.
At night, when he was able, he dialed her number, and she would answer, and together they shared the silence.
*****
In the mirror, she surveyed her body.
The scar on her thigh was white and jagged around the edges; the scar on her bicep was a thin, pink line, not fully healed.
Blonde hair hung halfway down her back, the ends curling around the hourglass of her torso.
If anyone cared to look, they would notice a thin, white line that ran the length of her forearm, and a circular, rough scar just above her right hip.
Across her face, were freckles. "Cute," Jack had said, the first time he'd seen her without make-up. She was muscular and soft in all the right places.
Around her eyes, were reminders of a year gone by.
The phone rang, and she startled, turned around, and did not answer.
Finding herself in the mirror, 'This is me,' she thought.
*****
Amelia Earhart, Billy Jean King, Rosa Parks, Condoleezza Rice, Eleanor Roosevelt: she read their stories and tried to find some piece of her own. What she learned were that no two stories were the same.
She hadn't done anything extraordinary, and she wasn't a pillar of morality, she didn't change ideals, and had never picked up a tennis racket.
Lurking in the back of her mind, however, Samantha hoped she'd made a difference in even a small way.
*****
On a Sunday morning, she flushed three separate containers of pain pills, poured out a half-full bottle of wine, a fifth of vodka, and three domestic bottled beers.
She joined a gym and worked up to an hour every other day on the stair master. At night, she did 100 pushups before bedtime. Vitamins and herbal tea became her new best friends.
The pain was still there, but it was different, more manageable.
In her spare time, she went to an upscale bookstore and sat in a comfortable leather chair, perusing volumes of poetry.
One night after work, she asked Martin out for a drink, and let him know what a good friend he had been to her. Often he would check up on her, and more than once they'd shared dinner. He'd kissed her twice, and she'd let him. There was a certain naiveté she'd fostered about his affection for her, and the record needed to be set straight. Ever the gentleman, he took it all in stride, kissed her on the cheek, and gave her a ride home.
The phone rang, and she answered. It was agonizing, what Jack was doing to her, and she was almost certain he did not realize it.
*****
"I'm well," she announced, dropping a file onto his desk. Jack startled, waiting for a sarcastic quip, or a tone that told him how ridiculous she thought her mandatory therapy sessions were.
Their eyes met and Samantha held Jack's gaze. "I'm well," she said.
He nodded, and resumed his paperwork, but she heard the finality in her voice, and was sure he had as well.
*****
When the phone rang, she wasn't surprised. There were no expectations as she curled around her latest poetry find, and sipped a mug of orange spice.
And then his voice broke the silence, "I miss you," he said.
It was inevitable that this moment would come, and bring with it the familiarity of their shared past. "I know," she sighed. "I know."
Tears streamed down her face, and for a moment, she thought about staying silent. Glancing around her apartment, she mentally photographed the way the streetlight filtered in, the plush white fabric of her terrycloth robe, the silly, inconsequential details she might want to remember one day. "Can you let me go?" she asked with a quiet confidence.
A half an hour passed.
"No," he finally answered.
"Okay, I understand," she choked out, and then she placed the phone in its cradle.
*****
The next year brought Samantha a transfer out of Jack's unit, and into New York's Homeland Security Division.
A week after she started her new job, she received a call from her mother, letting her know her father had passed away.
Her father had always kept rosebushes on the small side yard beside their house, and so she sent the largest, most expensive spray of roses to the funeral home that would be conducting his service, but she did not attend.
A month later, she moved into a new apartment, and rescued a tiny orange furball she named Sunrise.
Sunny for short.
*****
After a year and a half of dating a stockbroker named David, Samantha met him for dinner and broke his heart. They'd never moved in together per se, but his fair share of belongings had taken up residence in her apartment. It was an amicable split, complete with a genuine hug as he carried a lone golf club out the front door.
Living a lie was worse than loneliness; she liked David a lot, but didn't love him, and he'd recently broached the subject of marriage.
*****
On a rare night off, she headed uptown in search of good food. As she sat down, she heard her name, and turned around.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey," she replied, rising to greet him.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
Gesturing to her table, she smiled, "Eating," she answered. "And you?"
"Running a lead," he offered distractedly. "Can you give me a minute?"
"Sure," she said, sitting down.
Halfway into her pecan chicken, Jack approached and tilted his head questioningly to the vacant seat at her table. Samantha nodded, Jack sat down, and a three-year gap was filled.
"You look amazing," he told her sincerely.
"You, too," she said.
There was a long moment of silence, that was not uncomfortable, but was filled with questions.
"I'm divorced now," Jack said, breaking the silence.
Sitting back in her chair, Samantha tried to process this information, surprised in some ways that Jack had not contacted her. "Well, it happens," she said, for lack of anything better.
"It's going on two years now," Jack began explaining. "Maria and I have joint custody of the girls; it's working out okay," he smiled.
"I'm glad, Jack."
"Me, too."
Duty called, and Jack rose to leave the table; they embraced for a long while, and he kissed her cheek quickly as he turned to leave.
After she left the restaurant, she began walking toward her apartment. There weren't many options, but she was determined to find a different route home, one she'd never considered before.
Two hours later, she stepped inside her front door, let Sunny weave in between her legs, and fell asleep watching the news.
*****
Monday morning, as she sat at her desk and checked her voicemail, she was a little surprised to find a message from Jack. It was brief and to the point, "Call me," he'd requested, and then proceeded to give her his new office number as well as his new home number.
Three years ago, she'd walked away in every sense, because it was best for everyone involved. There had been no regret or wondering what could have been, only the assurance of what was. She was not the sum of her scars or her mistakes, but she could be, if there wasn't a balance of learning from the past. Jack had not let her go without a fight, but in the end, there was only her empty desk to answer his questions.
Samantha couldn't hold onto the past, nor would she try to foresee the future, she existed as best she could in the only time promised to anyone, and that is from one second to the next.
Later that night, she tentatively picked up the phone, trying his work number first. He picked up on the third ring, "Malone," he stated.
"Hey, it's me," she said.
"Give me just a minute," he told her, and then she was listening to elevator music, and wondering if she'd made the right decision. "There was someone in my office, but it's all clear now. I suppose you got my message?" he asked.
"Yeah, I did," she answered.
"I'm glad you called, I've missed you, Sam," he said. "I came by your new apartment once, and saw David Whiting. You are entitled to live your life, that's why I didn't bother you, why I haven't called," he explained.
"David and I broke up three months ago," she said.
The minutes passed as they caught up, and then Samantha told Jack she was due for a meeting. Before she hung up the phone, she shared with him about living in Los Angeles, about driving hundreds if not thousands of miles in search of a single destination.
About how getting there was all that really mattered.
*****
-END-
*****
The anatomy of breaking up was much easier said than done.
The right track of morality, complete with the appropriate two feet of personal space between them, left something to be desired. They could barely look at one another, and as she limped through the office, every bit the humble, wounded heroine, he turned his back on her because idealism proposed it was the right thing to do. Strangely, that voice and his wife's were one and the same.
Therapy was a place where she said all the right things, but kept all the real things hidden behind a scar that was as much of a reminder of misfortune as it was a badge of honor. No one knew about the phantom pain that spread out from that scar at night, when the air was cool and she was lying in bed alone, how it reached up and chased all the oxygen out of her lungs. There were more nights than she wanted to count when she chased a Vicodin with a shot glass full of vodka. Pain pill addiction and alcoholism were lurking in the sunshine of early workday mornings and she had come too far to be beaten by either, so she made an appointment with her neurologist.
He was a balding man in his late-forties who seemed to enjoy, a little too much, surveying the scar on her leg. Samantha told him about the vice like grip of pain that had her bolting out of bed more nights than not, and he suggested it was a psychological pain connected to her ordeal, wrote a prescription for another, milder, less addictive pain killer and told her to seek therapy.
His obsession with her breasts ended around the same time he realized she might be a bit off her nut.
*****
The entire office found out about Jack's mother's suicide in one fell swoop, and Samantha wondered whether or not she should act surprised. She hadn't been present for the now infamous tape of Spaulding taunting Jack, but she knew the story. One late night, not long before their affair was declared officially over, he'd wept all over her in what wasn't sadness but was every ounce despair. The years weren't kind, and now, he was much older than she at the time of her death. In a haze of Jack Daniels and sheets that smelled of them, he realized that night.some things never make sense. There was just a black hole, where the inexplicable traveled to die, only sometimes it never made it, and forever lingered on the edge. Emotional pain was cruel that way; it could look over the abyss, to an end, and decide it wanted to stay on the edge of ending and continuing on, disappearing and reappearing at will. Jack couldn't let it go; Samantha had held his tear stained face against her smooth breast and had known he would cling to the memory of his mother until the day he died. It wasn't healthy and he had nightmares; he probably should be in therapy, and he definitely needed some perspective, but Samantha wasn't inclined to do anything but hold him as night descended and then backed away, giving way to morning.
That was the difference between Samantha and other people: she wasn't a fixer. She was content with Jack, flaws and all. If he held onto the memory of his dead mother then she was going to let him, because no matter what he did, nothing would heal what had happened. Sometimes, healing wasn't as much a necessity for the wounded as it was for those surrounding the wounded. He could say all the right things to a therapist and to his wife and children, perhaps satisfying them; but she knew some scars never faded, you just learned to wear long sleeves, even in the dead of summer, to cover them up.
She wasn't afraid of his scars, and he didn't feel the need to cover them up when he was in her presence.
The night after Spaulding took a nosedive off a windowsill, her phone rang. She knew the sound of Jack's crying anywhere, and she told him to come over, she would be waiting. A breathy silence drew out the minutes until Samantha heard a dial tone. By the window, she waited for hours, but he never came.
It was enough that he wanted to.
*****
Not long after the Spaulding case, Samantha received more voiceless phone calls. Sometimes he called from home, his and Maria's number inking its away across her caller ID screen. Other times, it was his cell phone. A few nights, it was a payphone from the café where they'd first dipped their toes in what would later be a full-blown affair. After the third call, as her voice grew softer with each unanswered plea of his name, she stopped talking, and just sat, listening.
Many nights, while holding the phone to her ear, she'd leaf through a magazine. As time wore on, she started a book and finished all 232 pages during their silent connection. A few times, she scribbled his name on a scrap piece of paper that found its way to the top of her nightstand. Once or twice, she'd written her name, as small as possible beside his.
In the office, Jack continued to give her a wide berth, and their eyes rarely met in any way that counted.
*****
"I'm well," she announced in a silky, sarcastic tone. A file containing this declaration made its way to his desk, signed by her therapist on the appropriate lines.
Later that night, her phone rang; it was a general directory number from their office. He said nothing, but she heard, "I know you're not well," in his silence. Across the space that separated them, his capable hand slid up her calf, passed over her knee, and rested over the fading scar on her thigh.
For the first time since he'd started calling, she took the initiative, and was the first to hang up the phone.
*****
It was not unusual for an FBI agent to use his or her weapon; at times, it was used as a warning and other times it was used for self-preservation. Samantha was certain she was being tested in some way. For the third time in under a year, her gun had come into play, and was at once both devastating and life saving. Martin's ears were undoubtedly ringing and Samantha could taste and smell gunpowder in the air. A dark, writhing mass of human being lay ten feet from them, a bullet lodged in each of his knees. There was a possibility he might never walk again. As her brain had fired off instinctive impulses, something else had come into play, and rerouted a shoot-at-the-center-of-mass mentality. Going for the knees was a little too Hollywood, but as Samantha approached her still living target, she decided going Hollywood wasn't so bad.
Martin approached her from behind, talking a little too loudly, a look of horror on his face. Samantha smiled.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Yeah," she answered flippantly.
"You're in shock," Martin said.
"No, no," she deflected.
"Your arm," he reiterated, reaching out for her.
It was only then she felt the burn.
Streaks of red had turned her khaki blazer a deep shade of wet brown. Apparently, their would be kidnapper had gotten off a shot. Samantha remembered now. It had happened in the brief interval of time when she'd decided to spare his life.
*****
Because it was on her arm, and more visible to the general population than the inside of her thigh, she requested a plastic surgeon sew her up. The bullet missed all major arteries and veins, but was lodged precariously in her bicep. Surgery was a must. Waiting for a plastic surgeon available on a Saturday night required an ample amount of patience and just the right dose of Demerol.
Martin's guilty face loomed over her, illuminated by the gray light of a silent television. "I'm sorry, Sam," he whispered more than once. From the hallway, a deep voice gave commands and requested information. Vaguely, Samantha heard the clash of metal meeting the tile of a hospital hallway. A female voice offered reassurances. She knew instinctively that Jack was bearing the blame for her most recent brush with death. More often than not as of late, Jack sent her out in the field with Martin, as a way to keep the needed distance between them. She knew he was thinking if he'd been with her, maybe things would have turned out differently. For once, she wasn't going to tell him he was wrong, because in truth, he might not be all that far off.
There was a commotion and then Jack was standing over her; the faces changed but the guilt was the same. "What am I going to do with you?" Jack asked.
There was no easy answer to his question.
*****
Los Angeles had been a great place to live in her late teens. There was never a shortage of great restaurants, great museums, or great looking men. Jobs that paid a decent wage were a little harder to come by for a small town girl just out of high school. With a shortage of money and an abundance of time, Samantha often got on the interstate and just drove, seeing where the road would take her.
On her excursions, she ran across detours, got held up at traffic lights, faced seemingly unending construction, yet she also learned no matter the delay, there were at minimum, fifteen different ways to get to the city. Awaiting her was a swanky, small, overpriced apartment, too much smog, an old cat named Dream, and a pantry full of Ramen Noodles. In short, her favorite place on earth. It became a challenge, to never take the same route home. The road to home wasn't nearly as important as getting there.
Life wasn't so different.
*****
The joys of desk duty and sessions with the bureau psychiatrist were hers once again.
From Van Doren on down, the question wasn't whether she was a capable agent; it was whether she could continue to effectively do her job given the extreme circumstances of the past year. Of course, Samantha said she was fine, the rest of the team shook their heads with a mixture of concern and sympathy, and Van Doren and Jack agreed she should be assigned to desk duty for the foreseeable future, with two counseling sessions a week capping off her exciting professional existence.
Samantha took a week of vacation and flipped everyone off from Cancun.
*****
As she was dropping her luggage all over the hardwood floor in her entryway, the phone rang, the answering machine picked up, there was a brief pause, and then the caller hung up.
Jack.
Samantha dragged her luggage to her bedroom, unpacked the necessities, shed her khaki shorts, white tank top, black thong, and sports bra, then stepped into the shower to wash off airport grime. After crawling into bed, she resumed reading the book she'd begun while sipping diet coke and intermittently staring at clear, aqua water taking a little more of the earth each time the tide slid over white sand. It was a guide to spiritual healing and the acceptance of traumatic events in one's life. Yawning, she blindly reached toward her nightstand for the bottle of aloe vera that was currently responsible for relieving one hell of a sunburn.
Just as she was about to turn over and begin the long descent into sleep, the phone rang. She reached over to her spare pillow and picked up the cordless.
She knew he would call back.
*****
Everyone traipsed around as if she would break, as if at any minute she might wrangle one of them for their gun and go postal.
Quietly, she organized her paper clips by size, separated pens by the color of ink, and weeded through mountains of paperwork that would help her colleagues bring the missing home.
As the weeks went on and she proved mental stability in spite of extreme emotional chaos, she ventured forth from her desk back out into the field.
In those first weeks back in the land of the fully functional FBI agent, Jack was always at her side. Their conversations in the car, in the office, and all the places in between consisted of data, leads, theories, and missing persons. He was every bit her married, professional superior, and she, his affable bullet riddled team member.
At night, when he was able, he dialed her number, and she would answer, and together they shared the silence.
*****
In the mirror, she surveyed her body.
The scar on her thigh was white and jagged around the edges; the scar on her bicep was a thin, pink line, not fully healed.
Blonde hair hung halfway down her back, the ends curling around the hourglass of her torso.
If anyone cared to look, they would notice a thin, white line that ran the length of her forearm, and a circular, rough scar just above her right hip.
Across her face, were freckles. "Cute," Jack had said, the first time he'd seen her without make-up. She was muscular and soft in all the right places.
Around her eyes, were reminders of a year gone by.
The phone rang, and she startled, turned around, and did not answer.
Finding herself in the mirror, 'This is me,' she thought.
*****
Amelia Earhart, Billy Jean King, Rosa Parks, Condoleezza Rice, Eleanor Roosevelt: she read their stories and tried to find some piece of her own. What she learned were that no two stories were the same.
She hadn't done anything extraordinary, and she wasn't a pillar of morality, she didn't change ideals, and had never picked up a tennis racket.
Lurking in the back of her mind, however, Samantha hoped she'd made a difference in even a small way.
*****
On a Sunday morning, she flushed three separate containers of pain pills, poured out a half-full bottle of wine, a fifth of vodka, and three domestic bottled beers.
She joined a gym and worked up to an hour every other day on the stair master. At night, she did 100 pushups before bedtime. Vitamins and herbal tea became her new best friends.
The pain was still there, but it was different, more manageable.
In her spare time, she went to an upscale bookstore and sat in a comfortable leather chair, perusing volumes of poetry.
One night after work, she asked Martin out for a drink, and let him know what a good friend he had been to her. Often he would check up on her, and more than once they'd shared dinner. He'd kissed her twice, and she'd let him. There was a certain naiveté she'd fostered about his affection for her, and the record needed to be set straight. Ever the gentleman, he took it all in stride, kissed her on the cheek, and gave her a ride home.
The phone rang, and she answered. It was agonizing, what Jack was doing to her, and she was almost certain he did not realize it.
*****
"I'm well," she announced, dropping a file onto his desk. Jack startled, waiting for a sarcastic quip, or a tone that told him how ridiculous she thought her mandatory therapy sessions were.
Their eyes met and Samantha held Jack's gaze. "I'm well," she said.
He nodded, and resumed his paperwork, but she heard the finality in her voice, and was sure he had as well.
*****
When the phone rang, she wasn't surprised. There were no expectations as she curled around her latest poetry find, and sipped a mug of orange spice.
And then his voice broke the silence, "I miss you," he said.
It was inevitable that this moment would come, and bring with it the familiarity of their shared past. "I know," she sighed. "I know."
Tears streamed down her face, and for a moment, she thought about staying silent. Glancing around her apartment, she mentally photographed the way the streetlight filtered in, the plush white fabric of her terrycloth robe, the silly, inconsequential details she might want to remember one day. "Can you let me go?" she asked with a quiet confidence.
A half an hour passed.
"No," he finally answered.
"Okay, I understand," she choked out, and then she placed the phone in its cradle.
*****
The next year brought Samantha a transfer out of Jack's unit, and into New York's Homeland Security Division.
A week after she started her new job, she received a call from her mother, letting her know her father had passed away.
Her father had always kept rosebushes on the small side yard beside their house, and so she sent the largest, most expensive spray of roses to the funeral home that would be conducting his service, but she did not attend.
A month later, she moved into a new apartment, and rescued a tiny orange furball she named Sunrise.
Sunny for short.
*****
After a year and a half of dating a stockbroker named David, Samantha met him for dinner and broke his heart. They'd never moved in together per se, but his fair share of belongings had taken up residence in her apartment. It was an amicable split, complete with a genuine hug as he carried a lone golf club out the front door.
Living a lie was worse than loneliness; she liked David a lot, but didn't love him, and he'd recently broached the subject of marriage.
*****
On a rare night off, she headed uptown in search of good food. As she sat down, she heard her name, and turned around.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey," she replied, rising to greet him.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
Gesturing to her table, she smiled, "Eating," she answered. "And you?"
"Running a lead," he offered distractedly. "Can you give me a minute?"
"Sure," she said, sitting down.
Halfway into her pecan chicken, Jack approached and tilted his head questioningly to the vacant seat at her table. Samantha nodded, Jack sat down, and a three-year gap was filled.
"You look amazing," he told her sincerely.
"You, too," she said.
There was a long moment of silence, that was not uncomfortable, but was filled with questions.
"I'm divorced now," Jack said, breaking the silence.
Sitting back in her chair, Samantha tried to process this information, surprised in some ways that Jack had not contacted her. "Well, it happens," she said, for lack of anything better.
"It's going on two years now," Jack began explaining. "Maria and I have joint custody of the girls; it's working out okay," he smiled.
"I'm glad, Jack."
"Me, too."
Duty called, and Jack rose to leave the table; they embraced for a long while, and he kissed her cheek quickly as he turned to leave.
After she left the restaurant, she began walking toward her apartment. There weren't many options, but she was determined to find a different route home, one she'd never considered before.
Two hours later, she stepped inside her front door, let Sunny weave in between her legs, and fell asleep watching the news.
*****
Monday morning, as she sat at her desk and checked her voicemail, she was a little surprised to find a message from Jack. It was brief and to the point, "Call me," he'd requested, and then proceeded to give her his new office number as well as his new home number.
Three years ago, she'd walked away in every sense, because it was best for everyone involved. There had been no regret or wondering what could have been, only the assurance of what was. She was not the sum of her scars or her mistakes, but she could be, if there wasn't a balance of learning from the past. Jack had not let her go without a fight, but in the end, there was only her empty desk to answer his questions.
Samantha couldn't hold onto the past, nor would she try to foresee the future, she existed as best she could in the only time promised to anyone, and that is from one second to the next.
Later that night, she tentatively picked up the phone, trying his work number first. He picked up on the third ring, "Malone," he stated.
"Hey, it's me," she said.
"Give me just a minute," he told her, and then she was listening to elevator music, and wondering if she'd made the right decision. "There was someone in my office, but it's all clear now. I suppose you got my message?" he asked.
"Yeah, I did," she answered.
"I'm glad you called, I've missed you, Sam," he said. "I came by your new apartment once, and saw David Whiting. You are entitled to live your life, that's why I didn't bother you, why I haven't called," he explained.
"David and I broke up three months ago," she said.
The minutes passed as they caught up, and then Samantha told Jack she was due for a meeting. Before she hung up the phone, she shared with him about living in Los Angeles, about driving hundreds if not thousands of miles in search of a single destination.
About how getting there was all that really mattered.
*****
-END-