iv. Taste

He could remember so many days that felt like hell—the devastating emptiness after the death of his mum, Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, guns pointed at him, fears of death, drunken stupor after his divorce, and endless worries about Emily—but this day defined agony for him anew.

His hand clenched the telephone for a long time after she had hung up. He knew there wasn't any point in calling her back and getting lost in hasty excuses. And so his mind wandered off while he sat motionless behind his desk until the cases were brought to him and he rejected them with harsh words.

The taste of loss lingered on his tongue and was more bitter than ever before.

It went like this until evening came—him unable to move, thinking thoughts without an outcome, and his eyes fixated on the framed picture in front of him. Her and him, laughing effortlessly, their first day in this very office. It seemed far, far away.

Only when the sun set on the horizon and the darkness veiled the city in the depressing darkness he felt inside of him as well, he was ready to go. And his destination was more than clear.

He had contemplated beforehand what should be done if she wouldn't open the door, but his thoughts were interrupted when she stood in front of him after the second knock, only a doorstep between them. And even this protective barrier crumpled fast after she let him in wordlessly.

"You want a drink?" she asked and made her way to the kitchen without turning around and without looking back.

He nodded, even though she couldn't see it and a hoarse affirmation left his dry throat. While she went into the kitchen he remained in her living room and took a lost look around. His eyes stopped at her bookshelf. Not because of the sappy romance novels he would probably find there as well, but because something else attracted his attention: photos.

There she was, proud and full of gleaming anticipation, with her mother on the day of her graduation. He wondered whether it was her dad behind the camera or whether the vaguely red-rimmed eyes of hers told the story of so many missed milestones.

Then there was her with a couple of friends from school; the picture only a few years old, but ways now mostly separated by hundreds and thousands of miles.

She on the happiest day of her life, as she never got tired of telling. He remembered the glow in her eyes whenever she talked about it. The same glow he noticed in the picture. By now she didn't tell this story anymore and by now it was only her in her breathtaking wedding gown that smiled at him from the picture. He wondered what had happened to the picture of her and Alec that he had sometimes examined on their mantelpiece in the past.

Right in the middle was a frame that was facing down. He didn't need to pick it up in order to know what it showed. He knew the frame well enough and was painfully aware of the fact that she couldn't always bear her probably biggest loss.

And lastly, a picture of the two of them. He knew it, he knew it had been there for some time and yet it somehow took him by surprise. It was so similar to the picture he had spent his day studying—them laughing happily, his arm around her shoulders—and yet it was so vastly different.

It didn't have anything to do with their work. Instead it was taken by Emily on some trip that he couldn't really remember that clearly. This fact made the realization he had at the same moment even more overwhelming.

Of all the people pictured or not pictured here, he was the only one left that she relied on.

Only after a few seconds of his heart stumbling he noticed that she already stood behind him, a glass of water in her hand.

"I'm sorry," he muttered agitated and looked at her fingers that held the glass so tightly as if she never wanted to let go.

She shook her head. "You can look at them," she replied and pointed to the pictures.

But that wasn't what he had apologized for and so he shook his head as well. "No, I mean, I'm sorry—about everything."

He couldn't explain what was going on inside of him, what the parade of ever so innocent photos had triggered in him, and he saw that she didn't understand. Bewildered and sad and confronted with too many feelings she stood in front of him. The glass gave the impression of a new protective barrier between them.

"I'm sorry that I often treat you like you're not important to me." I'm sorry that I often treat you like crap, was what he really wanted to say, but the words didn't leave his cowardly lips.

She remained almost motionless in front of him and only stared back, seemingly at a loss. "I don't understand you."

Her facial features spelled it out for him painfully and he let his eyes roam through the house when it started to hurt too much. Coward, coward, coward, it echoed through his head.

"I don't understand how one second you can be this, and something entirely different in the next. How I can be this for you now, and something entirely different then. I don't understand it," she declared broken-hearted and held onto the glass as if her life depended on it.

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and took them out again immediately, because it didn't seem like the right sign he wanted to send. He was aware of the fact that she tried to read him and maybe it was this pressuring feeling that led him to see nothing else but endless sadness on her face in return.

"One moment I'm your equal business partner and in the next I'm just an ordinary employee that you think you can push around. I'm the one who is supposed to take care of the annoying little things that come with the business, because it's too boring, too inadequate for your, or whatever it is. But when that means that I have to take responsibility for our finances and take measures, then it's not right either."

The naughty schoolboy incapable of anything was back now. Sheepishly he tried to hold her gaze, but it even got harder now that her sad eyes were paired with those honest words that hit him painfully.

"Accomplice or mother superior, friend of foe? You say I smother you with my caring, but every now and then when you turn up on my doorstep like the world has crushed down on you, you give me the feeling that you're glad that I do care."

She took a deep breath and shortly closed her eyes before she went on. "And always when I start believing that maybe there could be more between us, then you put everything we have at stake again. You entangle yourself in reckless situations without any consideration, or you rub my nose in your liaisons that you know I don't approve of. You run away, you push me aside, you do everything you need to make me believe that the two of us together just don't make any sense."

She sighed quietly and looked at him. "What am I supposed to think, Cal?"

"That I'm a bloody idiot," he offered defenselessly. He wished nothing more than being able to see whether this really was the end or if something like an honest restart was possible, but his skills abandoned him. It had never been easy for him to read her and not get lost in his own feelings at the same time, but it had never been this impossible.

"I made a decision," she proclaimed as if she hadn't even heard him. As if she hadn't even seen the probably all too obvious panic on his face.

Her knuckles turned white. The glass would burst at one point, he was sure. And then join all the broken pieces they already waded through anyway.

Her words replayed in his head again and only then he seemed to realize what she had really said. He walked up to her until there indeed was just the glass of water between them. "I have conflicting feelings for you", he tried with the truth. "My heart screams that I want you, but my head steps in claiming that this will go wrong, that you deserve someone better than me."

He took a deep breath, but the oxygen needed didn't enter his body. The room was void of air and without any hope. "When I push you away, it's only because it hurts too much to have you right by my side and know that there can never be more."

She took another deep breath as well, shaky and yet as if she knew what would come next. She had arranged the words carefully. "I want to leave the company."

Finally she pressed the glass into his hand and pulled away before he had even comprehended her words. Again, it was as if she hadn't even heard him, but at the same time he also understood that she was doing exactly what he usually did. She tried to protect her feelings by pushing him away and running. Literally.

He followed her to the kitchen, passing the pictures from which he soon would maybe vanish as well. "You can't do that," he said and it sounded much more accusing than he had meant it. In reality he was simply desperate and saw his life falling apart. "It's only been a day. Please think about it again."

"I did," she replied quietly and occupied herself with things that couldn't have been of less importance right now. "I think it's best for you to leave now."

He saw how she wiped away a covert tear and how she waited for him to do as told.

"Please," she pleaded a little later when he still hadn't moved. "Don't make it even harder than it already is."

His eyes took in the glass in his hand, the tiny, sputtering bubbles that made their way up to the surface so determined, only to burst there like a sweet dream. He finally put the glass down and thought that he would need something much stronger than water to ever disguise the taste of loss again.

On his way out he wondered whether he would reach the next bar before breaking down, angry at himself and the world. What would come after that, he didn't know anyway.