Deleted Scenes
i.
It felt like so much more than just the end in this company. She gathered the last of her personal belongings in a cardboard box and looked around the devastatingly empty office.
The whole day he had been watching her from afar and she couldn't quite imagine yet how she would press her keys in his hand and walk out the door for good.
Lost in thought, she didn't notice Torres at first.
"Sure you're doing the right thing?" she asked gently.
"I don't know, Ria," she replied with a shrug of her shoulders, looking for the last forgotten memories.
ii.
Her eyes seemed to bore into him until his already strained, worn-out nerves finally tore and he lost it. "Torres, what?" he snapped at her and with furious eyes.
"Why don't you fight for her?"
He took the papers from her and hurled them down on his desk where they remained disregarded. "I don't remember asking you for your opinion."
"Oh, well I can't remember giving it to you, you know," Torres countered with a snappy tone in her voice and she wasn't afraid to come even closer. "Otherwise I would have surely used the word idiot in some way."
iii.
"Emily," she said surprised when she opened the door late at night and expected an emergency of any kind.
"I have to talk to you," the girl explained somewhat breathless and pulled the cardigan a little tighter around her body in the cold air out here.
"Does your dad know you're here?" Her heart already hurt saying this simple word. Dad.
"He's not telling me what happened," Emily avoided her question and Gillian's heart broke for good when she recognized the pleading tone that was hidden behind her words.
"I'm so sorry, Emily."
"Please tell me there's a solution. Please."
iv.
"What's going on between Gillian and you?" she wanted to know and her accusing, sharp-edged tone was the straw that broke the camel's back.
He turned around and walked away until he hoped to have gotten rid of her. But she haunted him just like the painful memories did.
"You owe me an answer," Zoe yelled, her voice still piercing.
"Me running away didn't say 'I don't wanna fucking talk about it' clearly enough?"
She looked him in the eye before he slammed the door of his office in her face. "Do you really have to screw up everything, Cal?"
v.
For some weeks she had managed to simply ignore the picture of them on her bookshelf. But one day she summoned up all her courage.
Somehow it was easy exchanging the wedding picture of Alec and her with another one, but with him she didn't have the heart to do it.
For now she turned it around, like she sometimes did with the picture of Sophie when it hurt too much to be reminded. But just as the child growing up somewhere far away from her now, he would always remain a part of her. One she wanted to remember.
vi.
Emily came down the stairs, wrapped her arms around him from behind and he instantly felt bad again. He hadn't really been there for her the last few weeks—was occupied with himself and the never-ending thoughts swirling in his head.
"You're writing the book?" she asked and stared at the screen of his computer.
"Not the book the publisher wants me to write," he said smiling. "They'll throw it back at me for sure."
"You should write what you want to write."
He nodded and thought about how he would have really preferred to write a happy ending instead.
vii.
Somehow she had hoped just until the end that he might call; even when she wasn't even sure if she would have answered it. The wounds were still fresh and his voice might only make it worse.
Now it was shortly after midnight and she went over to the table with all the flowers she had gotten. There they were, nicely arranged in her best vases.
Right in the middle her favorite flowers—white hibiscus—and for a moment she wondered who could have been so attentive and thoughtful.
It was the only bouquet without any card, without any name.
viii.
He always made sure that he was the only one left in the building before he cautiously entered her office in the half-light. The door has been locked since she was gone; inside everything was right where she had left it.
He sat down behind her desk and imagined that the air he breathed here still smelled of her somehow. But in reality it didn't. Nothing here between empty shelves and useless commodities still reminded him of her. It was a dead space, nothing more.
Only the pictures in his head did. The pictures he held onto now so desperately.
ix.
It was already the third time a colleague had asked her out for dinner. And the third time she had declined.
"Am I getting on your nerves with that?" he asked and for the first time she realized that his smile could be breathtaking. It was briefly there and then again pushed aside by worry and self-doubts.
"No," she replied and shook her head while she gathered the things from her desk. "I'm just not looking right now."
"I see. There's somebody else?"
She smiled sadly and hoped that it wasn't too obvious. "Not really."
"Broken heart?"
"Something like that."
x.
It was her last evening in this house before she would board the plane to California. It felt like the last day where she was still his little girl.
He sat on the edge of her bed and thought about the future without her. Without the two of them.
"Why aren't you telling me what happened between you?"
"That's not a good bedtime story, love."
"Maybe it helps talking about it."
He shook his head. "Already too many words pointlessly lost about this."
"I don't want you to be alone," she said with big, sad eyes.
"I'll be alright, darling."
