14 - Fine, Fine Line

His phone was ringing as he pulled into the parking lot of the motel, which was just his luck. It had been a long day of travel and all he wanted to do was collapse face down on a bed, regardless of the quality of the mattress, and pretend the world didn't exist until he had to get up in the morning and do it all again. He hated that the delay in leaving Miami meant that it would take him an extra day to reach base, which meant one less day of total freedom before he had to report for duty on Monday, but it was a necessary gesture of goodwill. God knows he'd never hear the end of it if he'd left without saying goodbye.

Sighing, he parked outside the office, turned off the engine and grabbed the phone off his belt and grimaced at the name on the display. Celia; one of the people most likely to give him an earful for making a terrible decision. She'd done it before and she would do it again.

"Hey Cee." His greeting was weary, which he knew wouldn't go unnoticed, but with Celia, at least, he didn't care. She'd seen him at his worst.

"You're not still driving are you? You know it's not safe to use the phone while driving."

He suppressed his sigh this time, aware that his older sister wasn't above giving him a stern talking to if she thought he was disrespecting her. "I just got to the motel," he assured her. "Haven't checked in yet, but I've parked. What's up?"

She made a humming sound of approval in the back of her throat. "I just wanted to check in and see how you're doing."

"Fine."

"Freaked, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional?" she joked, reciting the acronym for the word 'fine' they'd discovered as kids. "'Mano, that doesn't sound like you."

She paused, obviously waiting for Carlos to say something, but he wasn't particularly in the mood for conversation. The day had taken much more out of him than he had anticipated even before he'd made it onto the highway. He had an ache in the pit of his soul, a pressure in his gut and a headache budding behind his eyes. Not to mention a weary tiredness seeping into his bones.

And all of it was at stark odds with the persistent, reassuring voice in the back of his mind that he was doing the right thing. He lowered his forehead to the steering wheel, closing his eyes against the dim lighting of the parking lot.

Eventually, his sister - impatient as ever - took matters into her own, lawyerly hands to start an interrogation that was, Carlos believed, the sole purpose for her call. "I thought you were planning on driving straight through. Why are you stopped at a motel?"

Carlos grimaced and let the silence drag out as long as he dared before replying. "You were right."

Celia's pleased tone was unmistakable, even as her prompt to get him to keep talking was reserved. "Please explain your answer."

"I thought about what you said, and I took the time to say goodbye to Julie before I left."

Of all the difficult things he'd done in his life, including all the borderline heinous acts he'd been forced to perform so far in his military career, he never thought that saying goodbye to an infant would be the hardest. He barely knew her, had managed to spend all of a few weeks with her while he was on leave after returning from his last deployment, but she'd already burrowed her way into his heart. There was something about those big brown eyes and chubby cheeks he recognised from his own baby photos that tugged at his protective instincts.

Leaving his daughter vulnerable was the last thing he ever wanted to do, and yet here he was, two states away with nothing but a couple of photos and a folder full of divorce paperwork to show for his attempts to be the man his daughter needed him to be, his attempts to uphold the honour his family expected of him.

The divorce papers were a blow, but not a surprising one. Carlos knew she wasn't happy to be married to him. She agreed to do it for the baby's sake when she'd first sought him out to tell him the news that their one night stand in the spare bedroom of a mutual acquaintance's house after a party had resulted in more than just a couple of orgasms. But the realities of their lives were too disparate to slot together. And they weren't exactly compatible personality wise.

Or perhaps it was their circumstances that soured any chance they might have had at getting along.

While Carlos preferred quiet and routine, time to centre himself and to carefully examine all sides of any situation that arose before making decisions of leaping into action, Rachel was very reactive. Impulsive. She made rash decisions with little regard for the consequences, and rarely considered Carlos's thoughts, feelings, ideas.

She blamed him for cutting short her freedom, and Carlos's solemn agreement had only angered her further.

With Carlos's new assignment, and Rachel's flat refusal to even contemplate moving to be near him, they would be too far apart for him to be of any practicable use to them both. He understood her refusal. Staying in Miami meant that she would be close to her family who could give her the support he couldn't. And she was right. Staying together for the sake of the baby would only ensure that their daughter would never know what a calm household was like. The fact that Carlos had been on deployment for much of the pregnancy, including the birth, was probably a blessing in disguise for Rachel and Julie's overall health. They didn't have to deal with the ill effects brought on by the added stress of a strained relationship.

But even knowing all this didn't make leaving Julie any easier. He loved that little girl with all of his heart, an occurrence that had taken him entirely by surprise. It was his confession of this to his older sister the night before when he'd called for advice regarding the divorce he was now facing that had spurred his Celia into urging him to take the time to say goodbye to his daughter before he left. Even if she wouldn't remember him ever being there in the first place.

"I just wanna get back to base, Cee," he'd protested, staring blankly at the ceiling as he collapsed back on the bed of the hotel he'd been staying in while on leave. "If I leave at dawn and keep my rest stops brief I should make it back at a reasonable time in the evening. If I wait for Rachel and Julie to be up so I can say goodbye before leaving it adds hours to the day. I wouldn't make it back until well after midnight. Those kinds of hours are dangerous. And splitting the drive across multiple days is wasting even more time."

"There's a fine, fine line between love and a waste of your time, Carlos," Celia had replied sagely before launching into a more concerted effort to convince him of the benefits of her suggestion.

"You did the right thing, Carlos," she said now. Her voice was full of compassion for her brother and the difficult life events he was experiencing. "You won't regret taking the time, I promise you."

Carlos grunted something that might have been an agreement, but also might have been the exact opposite, and finally lifted his head from the steering wheel. "I gotta go check in before the office closes," he told his sister. "I'll text you when I arrive at base so you know I didn't die on the way." And without waiting for a reply, he hung up and got out of the car.

*o*

The apartment was quiet but for the murmur of some late-night talk show as Steph sat curled on the couch, a cosmo article lay open and abandoned on the cushion beside her, and a mug of hot chocolate was cupped in her hand as she listened to Mary Lou complain quietly on the phone. Her best girl friend was sleep deprived and emotional in the wake of the birth of her first child, now four weeks old, and Steph had assured her that she could call any time of the day or night if she needed help or someone to talk to, especially once Lenny went back to work last week.

As much as Steph didn't view herself as motherly in the least - she was pretty sure she had the maternal instincts of a rock, that is to say that they were non-existent - she prided herself on being a good friend. Mary Lou had always been there for her, through thick and thin, and she was determined to make sure she returned the favour in her hour of need. Even if that hour of need was almost indecently late for those who needed to be up at six the next morning for work.

The grimace that scrunched Steph's features when she heard the telltale quaver of tears in Mary Lou's voice for the third time this phone call quickly turned into a yawn. The late phone calls every night this week were catching up with her, and she hoped the barista at the coffee shop she frequented near E.E. Martin knew how to brew an industrial strength latte the next morning, or she would never make it through the day.

"Thank you for letting me call," Mary Lou sniffled into the phone. "I'm sorry."

Steph shook her head despite the fact that her friend couldn't see her. "There's no need to be sorry, Mare." Steph had certainly committed her own fair share of far to late-night sobbing phone calls over the years, and not once had Mary Lou batted an eye. "I'm here for you. It's what friends do. You know that." She paused for another yawn as she considered some way to help her in a more concrete way than just being an empathetic ear. "How about I come over on Saturday? I'll bring donuts and we can tackle that mountain of laundry together while we watch one of those silly rom-coms you like."

Mary Lou sniffed wetly again. "Thanks, Steph."

"Just put a note on the pile that says, 'For Auntie Steph - unless Lenny is gonna pull his weight', and shove it into the corner. Put a sheet over it if you have to to keep from staring at it."

As Mary Lou launched into another round of sincere thank yous, the locks on the front door to the apartment tumbled and she lifted her head to stare at the doorway that led to the hall, listening to the familiar jingle of keys as they were dropped into the dish in the entryway, the thump of boots hitting the floor as they were kicked off. She was off the couch a moment later, padding into the short hall to stare at her boyfriend as he scrubbed both hands down his face.

With a deep breath, Will dropped his hands, his shoulders sagging as the air whooshed out of him. He looked tired, but as his eyes popped open, an affectionate smile wiped away all the fatigue lining his face and he quickly closed the distance between them in three strides, pulling her in for a hug. Steph, the phone still pressed to her ear, inhaled deeply at Will's shoulder, savouring the decadent food smells that always clung to him after a shift at the restaurant.

"What are you still doing up?" he whispered, concern in the set of his brow as he leaned back to see her face.

"Mary Lou." Steph's reply was silently mouthed so as not to alert the woman on the other end of the phone who had already descended swiftly from thanking Steph for her friendship and support to bemoaning her frustration with the lack of sleep and the fact that her infant son appeared to once again be filling his diaper.

He nodded sympathetically and pressed a chaste kiss to Steph's lips. "I'm gonna grab a shower."

By the time Will emerged from the bathroom, shirtless and with pyjama pants sitting low on his hips, Mary Lou had thanked Steph once more for her time, and hung up to deal with the poop situation her son had developed for her. Steph was sitting on the edge of the bed, softly smiling as she waited, looking forward to snuggling up in Will's arms for sleep for a change, instead of just finding herself trapped in his embrace by morning when she had to extricate herself for work. But the look on his face as he tossed his dirty uniform into the hamper in the corner and turned back to face her gave her caution.

"What?" she asked, eyes darting over the furrowed brow and the set of his mouth.

"It's nothing," he assured her, crossing back to the bed. "Just a busy night." He stopped in front of her and she could almost see a queue of words lined up on the tip of his tongue, ready to spill over his lips, but instead of letting them loose, he just shook his head and leaned down to give her a proper kiss this time. "Time for bed," he murmured against her lips when they broke apart long moments later.

Steph obliged, standing only long enough to draw back the covers before she crawled under them, Will following close behind. He wasted no time in pulling her back to his front, his arms wrapped securely around her waist as he nuzzled the nape of her neck. She tried to relax into it, to calm her mind and beckon sleep to her, but she couldn't get Will's expression out of her head.

"You're sure everything is alright?" she asked, her whisper seeming impossibly loud in the silent bedroom. "You looked worried when you came out of the shower."

"It's nothing," Will assured her again.

But it was not nothing.

The next evening, Will had the night off from the restaurant, and when Steph arrived home from work, he had dinner laid out on the table waiting for her. The obvious care he'd gone to to set up the scene sent an immediate lump to her throat, wedding bells echoing in her head that quickly turned to warning bells as she took in the solemn expression on his face as he beckoned her to sit down.

He served out the dish he'd prepared, a creamy, decadent masterpiece that had her moaning wantonly through the first several bites, the brief worry from when she first arrived forgotten in the face of good food. There were definite perks to having a chef for a boyfriend.

The meal turned heavy in her stomach, though, when Will returned to the table after clearing their plates and refreshing their wine, with his face once again looking sombre. "We need to talk."

She lowered her glass slowly, her heart rate spiking as anxiety coursed through her veins. Nothing good ever came after 'we need to talk'. And the fact that things had been going so well after almost two years together did little to calm her. Her gut twisted painfully.

"What's wrong?"

Will took a deep breath, reached for Steph's hands across the table, and only once she'd allowed him to encase them both firmly in his own, ensuring she couldn't run from him before he'd explained fully, did he let the air slowly escape his lungs.

"You know I love you."

Of all the ways to start the conversation off, Steph thought to herself, her head filling with scenarios that would make the supposed reassuring statement necessary. Had he cheated on her?

Unbidden the anguish she'd felt upon discovering Dickie Orr balls deep in another woman back in college sliced through her chest and she could barely breathe. This was worse. This was much worse. She'd thought Will was different. He'd worked so hard to convince her to let him stay, to convince her that he loved her and wouldn't leave her. He'd explicitly promised not to cheat on her when she'd laid out some of her more deeply rooted insecurities. And she thought she might love him.

And now?

"Let me go," she insisted, trying to reef her hands out of his grasp. "I can't do this. Not again. You promised you weren't like them. You promised you'd never-"

"Steph," Will said, his tone just sharp enough to cut through her rising panic while still remaining gentle enough not to spook her further. "Please just listen. I haven't broken my promise. I would never cheat on you. And I would never leave without telling you. Which is why we need to talk."

Steph swallowed back the lump in her throat, but still found it difficult to draw a full breath as her eyes darted all over Will's face, his posture, and the room at large. She wished she was anywhere but her own kitchen right then. Anywhere but staring into the warmly concerned gaze of her boyfriend.

When she finally relaxed her shoulders and nodded for him to go on, Will launched into a recount of his shift the previous night. The owner of the restaurant had shown up, down the rounds to check on things and disappeared into the manager's office. Will had passed the office on his way to the walk-in freezer and caught a glimpse of the serious expressions on their faces as they conversed tersely. The fact that he was called into that very same office at the end of his shift had him immediately fearing for the state of his employment.

But he needn't have worried.

"The owner was there," Will explained quietly. "To offer me a promotion to head chef."

"Will, that's amazing!" Steph exclaimed, throwing herself across the table to wrap him in a celebratory hug. "God, why did you have to do the whole bad-news expression when it's really good news! I thought you were going to break up with me!"

"Steph." Will did not return the hug, instead gently guiding her back to her seat, an apology shining in his eyes. "I'm not done. The promotion he offered me… the position is at the new restaurant he's opening in Italy. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity."

The lump was back in Steph's throat. "What did you tell him?"

"I said yes."

Silence followed his simple statement as Steph's brain tried to reconcile this information, to fit the puzzle pieces into the rest of her life. She would have to quit her job. And get a passport. A visa. And for all her Italian heritage she couldn't speak a word of the language. What were the prospects of her getting a job overseas if she couldn't speak the language? It would be a lot of massive changes in a short time, but…

She jerked her head up to look at him again, unsure of when she'd engaged in the staring contest with the tabletop. There was pain in his eyes and the downward turn of his lips, coupled with the apology she'd noted before. Tears pricked at her eyes and she reefed her hands out of his grasp. "You are breaking up with me."

It wasn't a question, because she didn't need him to answer. She could see it written all over his face. He didn't intend for her to accompany him on the next leg of his life's journey.

"It's not fair for you to have to uproot your life to follow me for a job," Will explained, his voice hoarse with emotion. "You're finally making headway at your own job. I don't want to set your career back just to accelerate my own."

Steph shook her head, adamantly denying the fact that her world was once again falling apart around her. "That doesn't mean we have to break up," she pleaded, her voice thick as tears cascaded down her cheeks. "We can do the long distance thing."

Will sighed. "We both know that long distance relationships are doomed to fail."

Recognising the wisdom of that statement, Steph took a moment to drag in a breath and let the news and subsequent situation settle in her mind. It wasn't the end of the world. She didn't need to catastrophize or spiral. She could be calm and rational and talk about her feelings and consider Will's as well. She'd come a long way in the last couple of years on those fronts with Will's patience, Deb's continued support, and the help of her therapist.

She closed her eyes for several seconds, breathing deeply, and counting backwards from ten. When she thought she could continue with a constructive conversation, she took one last breath and opened her eyes, meeting Will's concerned gaze.

"Sorry."

"You don't need to be sorry," Will assured her, his expression as earnest as ever. "This all is a lot to take in. I have to admit, I'm still reeling from it, and I've had all day to let it sink in. I can only imagine how you're feeling right now."

Steph, her inner resolve strengthening by the second, reached back across the table to grab up his hands, squeezing tightly even though her own hands were trembling. "This is an amazing opportunity for you, and I don't want to stand in your way." Her breath hitched and she swallowed hard. "But I can't say I'm happy to see you go. It's selfish of me to want you to stay, to keep you to myself. I know I need to let you go, but…" She shook her head, blinking back tears.

"It's hard," Will agreed. "We've both put in a lot of effort to get to where we are. I love you, and I know you love me in your own way. That's what makes separating like this so hard. Usually breakups come when someone fucks up, so it's easier. You can just remind yourself of the other person's mistakes and cling to that reminder."

"But this? Parting ways on a good note?" Steph asked. "What's the point of having a relationship at all if even the good ones end?"

Will smiled. "You never know until you reach the top If it was worth the uphill climb."

"Was it worth it?"

"To see you grow so much and learn to trust again? To share my life with you? To love you?" Will's smile was soft, but the pride in his eyes was fierce. "Absolutely."

Somehow, she found it in her to return his smile. "Okay," she breathed. "Okay. I'm staying here. The wobble was gone from her voice now, but she was far from alright. Her heart was breaking in slow motion, each crack an agony, but she had to be supportive. This was everything Will had ever dreamed of. And she really was happy that he'd been given the opportunity. There was just a fine, fine line between reality and pretend, and she was toeing it. Hard. "What happens now? How long until you leave?"

"I have a few weeks to get things in order here. Giacomo is making arrangements, so I only have to worry about tying up loose ends and getting over there." He paused, eyeing Steph. "I can get a hotel room for that time if staying here is going to be too awkward for you…?"

"I… don't know…"

He nodded like he suspected that might be the case. "I also pre-warned Deb and Bear that you may be in need of a Deb Deluxe," he offered. "I didn't give any details, just that I had to give you some bad news."

Steph's face was the picture of shock. "And they just accepted that?"

Will's laugh had a slight edge to it. "God no. He threatened to shatter my spine if I hurt you."

That made more sense. Deb remained fiercely protective of her. She suspected he and Will had had several illuminating conversations when Will and Steph had first started dating. Will understood the dynamic and respected that Deb had been the one to pick up the pieces and put her back together several times over the years.

Will squeezed her hands where they were still joined on the table. "Why don't you call him?"

Nodding, she slowly extracted her hands. Standing on legs that were less than stable, she took two steps toward the bedroom before turning back to Will. "Thank you."

Will shrugged, looking apologetic. "I'm sorry."

She nodded again and continued out of the room, her thoughts whirling.

Deb answered on the second ring, sounding on the verge of outrage. "I don't know what he's done, but the Deb Deluxe Is prepped and ready whenever you need it."

Steph sat on the edge of the bed, a wave of exhaustion washing over her. "Any chance we could work in an at home version tomorrow and include Mary Lou?" she asked. "I promised to help her out with the baby."

"Anything you need, Honey," Deb assured her. "You know that. Now start talking, or I'm gonna go dig out the Cardio-Whip 3000 and put it to use."