7 days after
"Chris!" Holly called out. Lucky she saw a familiar face.
"Hey Holly what's up?" Chris left his desk and stood up to talk to the brunette as she approached him.
Chris had a worried expression.
"Holly, are you alright? You look… don't get me wrong, you're beautiful but gosh you look terrible today." Chris said. His face turned from a worried look to a more painful look as if realizing something.
"Have you seen Gail?" Holly ignored his comment.
"Uhm…"
"Please Chris I really need your help. I just want to talk to her." Holly is really trying her best not to tear up.
"Haven't you been speaking to each other?"
"She cut me off a week ago, every single way possible"
"No talk since then?"
"None"
"That explains it"
"That explains what Chris?" Holly's tone suddenly hard.
He exhaled.
"Gail, for the past week has suddenly come back to her shell, like the old Gail, the Gail who would hit you with a hammer for just saying 'Hi' to her. And the other day she has signed up for an undercover assignment. She left for it today." Chris was trying to hold his voice into a minimum volume.
"What?" Holly has started shaking. She did her best to brace herself and not fall from the dizziness. The information had her brain swirling into a cloud of mess.
"How long is that going to last?" she had finally constructed a sensible sentence.
"Two weeks minimum" Chris answered.
"Diaz! I need you in a case. Can I have you over here?" Sam Swarek called over his office.
"Holly, I would really love to talk to you more but I got to get back to work. Meet me at the Penny later. It's going to be fine" and Chris walked away.
Holly wanted to shout, she wanted to shout at Chris' face, shout in this very building that nothing is fine and it's not going to be fine.
She clasped her mouth instead and slowly walked out of the building.
7 days and 9 hours later
"That's it? And she left? Without saying a word to you again?" Chris was more like questioning a suspect than questioning someone who is not inside an interrogation room.
"Yes. That's all." Holly said obviously exhausted.
"I don't know what to do Chris" Holly sounded so vulnerable.
Chris took another huge gulp of his beer and shook his head.
"Welcome to the club of Gail Peck tortured victims." He said with a laugh.
For some reasons, Holly found that quiet funny, the first funny thing she had after days- even though it actually isn't.
Chris cleared his throat.
"Holly, as you may have already known, I'm one of her exes." He gazed at her and Holly just nodded.
"So yeah, I have experience the same kind of 'hot and cold Gail', you know there were really some days that seems like you know how to handle her and some days when she is like a total stranger, that you are in a new territory."
She didn't want to sound arrogant even to herself but she thought she got Gail, that she had taken her walls down, that she somehow know the way in this 'Gail labyrinth', it always felt that way until that night. The night when Gail had just shut her down altogether.
"How much do you want her?" He asked as she tried to focus her attention to him and to the question.
She breathed thick air.
"More than I have ever wanted anything or anyone. In a way that I would do anything, anything at all for her" she said as she swiftly recalls the everything that is Gail Peck.
"Okay, so hang in there Holly."
"Believe me that's what I'm doing"