Disclaimer: They're not mine... :(
A/N: This one's short, but please review anyway! I've finished several more chapters, so I felt really excited to post more and move the story along...
Chapter 19: Survival
I disconnect the call and turn off my phone numbly, unable to process what I had just been told… how I felt about the entire thing. But no longer linked to her—no longer focused on calmly responding… gathering information… processing her words… it feels like my world is getting much too small, much too fast.
I swallow convulsively, closing wide eyes, my mind suddenly full of images of my beautiful, pure, immaculate Sara in carnal positions of sin and lust, with someone who could not possibly love her body as I did… love her whole self, as I did. I feel bile rising in my throat, and I have to stumble from my chair and rush into the airplane's bathroom—to the poorly hidden irritation of the flight attendant—as dry heaves overtake me.
When I finally feel like I'm in a bit more control of myself, I stumble up and to the sink, bracing myself against the counter, running cold water and splashing my face, and rinsing out my mouth, even though I hadn't actually vomited. A knock comes at the door, and I manage out a stalling word or two, and then stumble back to my seat in agony, unable to meet the flight attendant's now-concerned eyes.
I tried to be logical—clinical, even. What exactly did I know? Had it been an affair? A one-night stand? A relationship…?
And if it had been a relationship, had it fallen during the time we were having our "conversations" over instant messenger? …How did I feel, knowing I could have been the other man…? That she had no qualms with such activities while committed?
But no, that wasn't fair. I didn't know that she'd done any such thing… maybe she'd just slept with someone. It had sounded like she'd only slept with him.
My hands tremble.
How is that the most appealing option, right now? Hopefully the woman I'm in love with had only just fucked some other guy…?
And suddenly I didn't care if we'd been together or not… I didn't care if she'd loved him, used him, or had been too drunk to realize what she'd done until after the fact… because, in truth, it boiled down to the same thing.
I had loved her—thought of no one else but her… longed after her for months of solitude and grief, only hoping that she would eventually allow me to explain her misunderstanding—the mistake she had made. …She had invaded my privacy, betrayed my trust and refused to trust me… she had jumped to conclusions, assumed the worst, and never even given me a chance to explain…
…and I had simply waited, wishing for her to come down from her crazy insecurities long enough for me to explain… as if she were the only person in the world who didn't like to feel vulnerable… as if she were the only person allowed to have baggage. How much about her was I willing to accept that I might never know… and yet secrets which hadn't even been secrets—which I'd offered to explain—had driven her from me. Driven her to another man.
I just hoped he had been worth it for her… because loving Sara Sidle hurt too much. After losing two children, many women I cared about, and coming too damn close to losing my sanity in the process, more times than I cared to admit to, even to myself, I was really just… done.
I didn't cry when I lost Sara.
I got off the plane, I took a taxi home, I fed my insects… I turned on a baseball game, and made myself dinner. I dumped the terrarium in the bottom of a closet I rarely used, I cracked open a cold beer, and when sleep wouldn't come… I talked to my picture of Amber, letting my mind wander over the things she would tell me if she could call me today—this dance, that boy, this friend, that piece of math homework—and this soothed me in a way it had never done before.
Maybe it was just because losing Amber was no longer the freshest pain in my breast… or maybe because along with all that pain came the realization that I truly had endured worse, and come out on the other side, alive, if not unscathed. And I knew that I would work my way through it—one day at a time—letting pretending to function give way to functioning, until you almost felt normal again… you might even feel happy, every once and a while.
Sara had once said, in her cryptic way, that she was a survivor. …I was too.
