Without a price
Without a price
Chapter 17
Early the next morning, Emily woke up to find Lucky gone. Assuming he went to check with his boss on his plan of catching Baldwin in the act, Emily made herself some coffee, poured it in a cup, and sat at the dining room table drinking it slowly. In between sips, she heard the door knock and considered just letting the person get the message and go away. However, Lucky out of the goodness of his heart allowed her to stay here as a guest and doing so would probably be disrespectful to him and the favor he granted her, so she stood up.
She walked to the door and opened it, not really shocked to see Elizabeth at the door. For a second she thought why she wouldn't just open the door, as she still held an apartment key but then realized that Lucky must have changed the locks after she left, making it an impossible task with a wrong key.
Elizabeth was obviously surprised to see Emily there, this early on a Saturday, at her and Lucky's apartment. "Emily," She said somewhat breathless as if she had been running recently, which was possible as a number of stairs had to be climbed to get to the fourth floor apartment.
"Elizabeth," Emily greeted, turned around, and left the door open as an invitation for her to enter the apartment. Lucky might not appreciate it but that was probably the reason Elizabeth was here. She would find Lucky absent, however, so she would also probably leave before he came back.
Elizabeth entered, closing the door behind her and glanced around, seeing only Emily present in the apartment, assuming the bedrooms or bathrooms weren't in use. Everything was the same as she left it. Lucky must have not cared to change anything, or must be too busy working on that murder case. "Lucky's not here?" She supposed.
"Nope," Emily replied, going back to her coffee and taking a long sip. Silence fell, making Elizabeth uncomfortable while Emily enjoyed it, practically ignoring Elizabeth. Then again, her and Emily had been at a stalemate for a while. All they had in common kind of just disappeared between the years of high school and the present and she hadn't a clue of how to get it back.
"I, uh, left some stuff here before I left. Do you know where it is?" Elizabeth asked, suspecting that it wouldn't be here, but at her grandmother's but the silence was stifling her.
"Not here," Emily answered absently. It was probably at Audrey's though, at least that was what she would have done if she was in Lucky's shoes. It would also mean that Elizabeth wouldn't have a reason to stick around. Like Lucky, she had stopped caring for Elizabeth's well being; the only difference was that she stopped caring all together.
"Do you know when Lucky will be back?" Elizabeth asked, answering Emily's nagging thought that there was another reason for her coming here. She would try the getting back together thing again. How predictable. You would think she would learn after two cycles in more than five years how predictable she was becoming and how it was ruining her and Cameron's life. Guess that was hoping too much for Elizabeth's static personality.
Emily returned to her one word answers. "No," she said and took another slow sip of her coffee, wishing that Elizabeth would just leave but then she continued on with her questions, trying to understand the scene she found herself in.
"And you're staying here as a guest then?" Elizabeth guessed. She highly doubted Emily had moved in. She was always an independent soul and liked living by herself and she worked in New York City, so having an apartment there was practical. And there was no way that Lucky and Emily were dating. They didn't like each other like that, although others would have said the same thing about her and Nikolas too. Maybe that wasn't as set in stone as she assumed.
"Yep," Emily agreed after nodding as well.
"I suppose Lucky is pretty angry, huh?" Elizabeth asked, not sure that Emily would answer that, understanding but getting annoyed at her simple, vague, one or two word answers.
"Was," Emily responded continuing her careless answers to Elizabeth's questions. Lucky was angry at a lot of things still but on other issues, he just let it go and moved on but technically Elizabeth's question was in the general sense.
"Was?" Elizabeth repeated, smiling at that. Maybe she could win him back yet. She had done it before and she could do it again.
Behind her, the door lock was being played with. She turned as Lucky opened the door and entered. Lucky saw her, looked away and walked past he, much to Elizabeth's chagrin. Elizabeth fumed inwardly at his rudeness as he ignored her and went straight to Emily.
"What'd he say?" Emily asked as Lucky sat down after he poured himself a cup of coffee.
"Well, he pointed out all the flaws as you did last night but he agreed. To say the least, he found the plan kind of unusual." Lucky explained to her, barely registering his past that stood there in his apartment. She'd get the message soon enough that she was no longer welcome in his life or his apartment as when she left; it pretty much told the landlady that her lease rights were voided.
She still owed the money for the last two months of rent, with interest though but he wasn't going to tell her that. She would find out on her own soon enough, the bill had probably been sent to her grandmother along with her credit card ones. She was heavily in debt and he wasn't expected to care a darn as the ex-husband.
"You're using a corpse Lucky, if he didn't think it was unusual I would wonder why. If anything, a weird reaction is to be expected." Emily pointed out as she finished her cup, pointing out the…uniqueness of the plan. In the back of her mind, she wondered how Elizabeth took that sentence context in but really didn't care enough to find the answer or even make an educated guess.
"True," Lucky said, agreeing with Emily's point, inwardly laughing at the face of disgust that was on Elizabeth's face. She had seen death so many times as a nurse and yet she was terrified of it, although there was a rumor that she had become careless with her patients and was on her way to loosing her nurse's license, if she hadn't already. "I'm going to need your help though."
Emily feared she would hear that from Lucky but knew in the back of her mind that she had to face her problems sometime but that didn't mean she wanted to. "Fine," Emily agreed hesitantly.
Lucky sensed the reluctance and stretched his hand out to put his on Emily's. "Hey, I'll be right there. Whatever happens, we have each other." He told her in order to comfort her. Elizabeth started to feel noticeably left out. She knew they were ignoring her but now, they were acting as if she really wasn't there and here was her husband, trying to console Emily, right in front of her.
Emily looked at him warily but ended up nodding to his assessment. "Then we might as well leave now before I lose any motivation to do so." She stood up and walked to the kitchen to place her coffee cup in the sink, and to give Lucky and Elizabeth some time alone. Things needed to be said.
"What about me?" Elizabeth asked him directly, facing him and finally having his attention.
"What about you?" Lucky asked her, not sure what she was talking about.
"I'm your wife; shouldn't I know what you are doing?" Elizabeth told him, putting her hands on her hips in annoyance, realizing that she wasn't being specific enough in her questions.
"Ex-wife. I filed for divorce while you were having fun with Nikolas in Greece." Lucky replied, searching his desk for the papers. He found them, and threw them in front of her. "You'll find all the information in there." And there were plenty of more copies around town if she threw a tantrum and burned them.
Elizabeth looked down at the thick pile of papers. She should have expected that after she found their joint credit card not working. If there wasn't a marriage, why should the card still be active? She had to use the last of her savings in order to get here. Still….surely Lucky couldn't be serious so she fought his accusation. "You have no proof that I was having an affair with Nikolas."
"On the contrary, it seems that Nikolas has a conscience and is guilt-ridden, unlike you. He called last night in order to confess." Lucky responded, walking away into the bedroom.
"I…you can't do this to me, to us. What we had…" Elizabeth stuttered and Lucky laughed, mocking her. So she was trying that cliché answer. Here he thought she was original in her pleading. Everyone's wrong sometime in their life, he supposed as he glanced around the room. A click of heels announced that Elizabeth stood in the doorway of the bedroom.
"Was never there to begin with. You said a lot of things and the sad thing was I actually believed you. You said you loved me but the contradictory thing is you don't have a heart. I make one mistake and try to make up for it but then you aren't interested in putting the time or work in needed in order to fix the relationship. Therefore, your response is to go and start an affair with my brother of all people, promptly leaving the relationship for an extended absence. And now, in the present time, you are begging to be taken back, after all you've done." Lucky pointed out all the right things, as Elizabeth realized that she had really screwed up this time around.
Elizabeth didn't know what to say to that, settling on "Emily said you weren't angry anymore."
"Did Emily say in what context what I'm not angry at?" Lucky asked her, looking at her in the face as he was ready to give her the cold, hard truth and not care one bit how she would take it.
"Well, no." Elizabeth admitted.
"Exactly, so unless you want me to point out everything that is wrong with you, this situation, and your little pattern of feigning love then cheating, then leaving and start the whole thing over again with another pair of guys and conveniently forgetting to use protection so you end up 'surprisingly' pregnant every time, I suggest you leave now." Lucky explained, going off on a rant that hit every nerve. He really did know where to point his criticism, Elizabeth thought, and remembering that the truth was one thing she could never handle, leading to an ignorance of issue which resulted in her present issues, she scrambled for her few last remaining rights.
"Well, technically I still live here so I need the new key." Elizabeth argued.
"No, you don't. In the fine print on the lease, by leaving all your rights to this apartment have been lost and if you don't believe me ask the landlady. You owe her two months rent anyways." Lucky told her, turning away and starting to grab everything he thought he might need for his set up, placing them on the bed as he found them.
"So that's it? You're through with me, all ties lost?" Elizabeth supposed, watching as he grabbed a bag from the closet. He opened it and tossed the chosen items in.
"I kind of thought that went without saying" Lucky commented.
"This is a small town Lucky. We're going to run into each other sometime." Elizabeth yelled, at her rage of being thrown aside, like she had done to Lucky.
"Then I'll just ignore you as if you don't exist because, as far as you are concerned, you don't. Now excuse me, I have a job to do." Lucky said as he passed by her, the bag hanging off his right shoulder.
"And what about Emily," Elizabeth asked.
"What about Emily?" Lucky murmured, rolling his eyes at her antics.
"You're dating her, aren't you?" Elizabeth answered, seeing something Lucky certainly didn't.
"I'm not dating Emily. I'm helping her through a hard time, which is what friends do. She's not the happy, out-going, optimistic girl that we used to know in high school if you haven't noticed."
Elizabeth took a long glance as Emily left the guest bedroom, shutting the door, recalling the earlier treatment. "What happened?"
"Well, if you stuck around and started to see what was happening in other people's lives, you would know, wouldn't you?" Lucky told her. "What did you honestly expect? That the whole town would just stop because you aren't here to pick up on the town happenings?" Lucky shook his head. "I don't even know who you are anymore." Lucky murmured as he left the room.