Almost Broken (30 page)

“Can you believe them?” she asks finally looking at me.

“How could they sit there all solemn and holier than though, how could she say that she was my friend after all she’s done? It’s insulting!” she fumes.

“You didn’t have to hit her,” I interject

“What?” she asks in disbelief.

“You didn’t have to hit her. I’m angry too, she was my doctor, and she kept the truth from me. Dexter isn’t innocent in this but I did haul off and knock him out?”

“I can’t believe this,” she huffs.

“I can’t believe you Lauren. Is that how you handle things, by just flying completely off the handle?” I ask her honestly. I glance in the mirror and she’s shifted her body towards me looking at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language.

“You’re taking their side?”

“I’m not taking their side but you didn’t have to do that back there. You could have gotten arrested for assault,” I say. I don’t understand her. How can she not see that she was wrong?

“You are taking their side,” she says angrily.

“No, I’m not. But, look where that got us? Nowhere, we left without knowing anything more than we did when we got there. And, now you just pissed off the two people that could give us a little guidance,”

“I wouldn’t trust anything either of them said if there statements came notarized,” she says defensively. I shake my head. She doesn’t get it. I’ve never seen this side of her before, well I have but I didn’t think it was one that shows up often. There’s an awkward silence in the car. She’s mad and I’m kind of annoyed.

“You know what Chris, sometimes people don’t think, they just act. They feel and don’t think about the consequences. I’m sorry that I’m human and not a perfect stoic saint. You should try it sometimes,” she says bitterly.

Now she’s mad at me! That’s great.

“You remember what you said earlier about me always having a choice,” I glance over at her. She’s not looking at me anymore.

“You’re right. You always have choices but when you grow up you learn that your choices have consequences, and not all of them are good. I make the choices that are responsible, that make sense. I try to think rationally because I’m an adult, I have responsibilities, and I’m not a self-absorbed asshole.” I’m trying to make a point, but who am I kidding. She probably likes that sort of quality, she married Cal – a selfish asshole – if ever I knew one. She looks at me a long time before turning away, I see surprise, anger, and disappointment all rolled in one in her expression. This trip definitely did not go the way I imagined it would be.

HHH

The next day is a long one. I had planned to take the day off, but after yesterday’s fiasco I jumped at the chance to teach when they called. Anything to keep busy to keep me from brooding over everything is worth more than money. The tension in the house between everyone is high. My dad’s not thrilled about Lauren possibly moving to town, and after last night I don’t know if she’s even still contemplating it. My mom is sad that there’s only three days left that Caylen will be staying at her house.

I don’t know what to make of Lauren mad, and she’s beyond mad she’s pissed. At breakfast she barely said a word to me other than a short good morning and I don’t think she would’ve said that if my mom wasn’t at the table. It’s different from when she stopped talking to me the week before, this time it’s
like daggers shoot at me whenever her eyes find me. I feel like I should apologize to her for what I said, but I’m really not sorry. I told her what I felt which is exactly what she told me to do. I guess she probably had something different in mind, and that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

Cal’s annoying commentaries have been silent, it’s the one time I wish he would share how to get back into her good graces. I’m almost home when I get a text from Jenna telling me she wants to see me. I haven’t talked to her since the dinner debacle. When I arrive at her house it’s almost six o’clock since I had to fill in for one of the coaches today for practice. I stopped at Olive Garden and grabbed some dinner hoping to share a quiet, peaceful evening the way we used to. I ring the bell and hear her call that it’s open. When I see her on the couch my heart starts to beat faster. Her hair is piled up messily on her head and there’s tears running down her cheeks. I set the food down on the table next to the door and go over to her.

“Jenna, what’s wrong?” I ask squatting down in front of her. She continues to cry and hands me her tablet. When I look at it my stomach drops. I see pictures of me but I quickly know it’s not. It’s Cal and Lauren on their wedding day. There’s loads of them.

“Where did you find these?” I ask her carefully.

“On the internet. Turns out their wedding was a big event apparently,” says wiping her eyes.

“Keep going there’s more,” she says, taking the tablet from me and going through dozens of photos of Cal and Lauren. They look normal, they look happy and worst of all they look in love. I take the tablet from her and she lets it go without a fight before covering her face with a pillow. I try to think of something to say to comfort her, but I’ve never been good with words. I rub her back. I feel sick. I’m the reason she feels like this, that she’s crying that she’s hurt.

“I didn’t want it to be real,” she whales.

“I didn’t want what they had to be real. It’s one thing for them to have a kid. People have kids all the time and aren’t in love but this… This makes it real,” she splutters.

“Tell me,” she squeaks out sitting up.

“Tell you what? I’ll tell you anything just stop crying,” I say putting my arm around her.

“Tell me you don’t love her,” she says looking me directly in the eyes and I think my heart almost stops.

“Those pictures aren’t of me Jenna. I don’t remember any of that,” I tell her taking her hands.

“That’s not what I asked you. I’m not talking about Cal. Tell me
you
don’t love her. You Christopher. Tell me that you don’t have any feelings for this woman,” I look into her watery blue eyes and I want to tell her what she needs to hear, I want to tell her whatever I can to make the pain she’s feeling go away. I want to tell her the feelings I have are Cal’s not mine. But if I did it would be a white lie. There are a lot of reasons I have feelings for the woman in those pictures

And Cal isn’t one of them.

“I—I can’t.”

I
want to be mad at Chris. I really do but it’s hard to stay mad at someone when you replay the words they said to you in your head and they make absolute sense. That and the fact that when you scowl at them their eyes smile back at you as if they were never mad at you in the first place. I know he was mad. The first time I had ever seen Chris mad and he was mad at me for what I did.

He was right of course. I probably shouldn’t have gone at Helen how I did but that was the Lauren I kept neatly tied up, breaking free in all her infamy. I hadn’t been that person in so long, I wasn’t sure she still existed. I don’t think Chris liked what he saw. He looked at me with such disappointment. It’s the only way I could describe it, but the next day it was gone, like it never happened. Cal could hold a grudge as long as I could. And, our fights didn’t end easily, most of time they culminated in angry sex.

I think that’s out of the question for me and Chris.

I feel badly now. I really messed up a shot for Chris to be able to talk to Helen and Dexter.
I
don’t want to hear from either of them. I don’t trust them, and it’ll be a long time before I can forgive them. But Chris, I know, wants any and all information he can get. I can’t imagine only seeing pieces of a puzzle that is your life. That’s what caused me to suck it up and apologize to Helen.

She quickly accepted, I guess being a psychiatrist she understands why I did it. Dexter on the other hand looked like he wanted to have me thrown out on the sidewalk.

She’s agreed to meet with me, at
my
house. I don’t think I’ll be welcome in theirs for quite a while, but I don’t plan on making any social calls anytime soon. I apologized but I’m not sorry in the least, not for what I did to her. I’m just sorry it interfered with what Chris wanted to accomplish. I’m heading back to Chicago, she’s going to meet with me tomorrow afternoon. She says she thinks it will be good for us to talk. That she has a lot that I need to hear. I don’t want to hear anything from her, I’ll just sit there until she agrees to tell Chris everything he needs to know and gets Dexter to do the same.

Mrs. Scott is glad to have some extra time with Caylen
since we’ll be heading back to Chicago soon. Chris and I haven’t had a chance to talk about my getting a house here. Everything was just moving too fast on my part, and going back home made me realize how much I love the city and missed it. I adjust my bag on my shoulder as I walk towards my car. I look up and see Chris parking his truck. I let out a deep breath at his approach.

“Hey,” he greets me with a small smile.

“What’s the bag for?”

“I’m going back to Chicago, there’s a few things I need to take care of and I didn’t think it’d be a bad idea to take some things back with me. I’ll back tomorrow night,” I respond.

“By yourself at almost seven in the evening?” He seems upset.

“In the Audi I’ll get there before the clock strikes midnight. I’ve made drives like this by myself a thousand times to my aunt’s house,” I assure him. There’s a steady wind blowing around us, when I smell expensive perfume I know he’s been with Jenna, and I suddenly feel like this conversation is a waste of my time.

“See you, Chris,” I say getting into my car leaving him standing outside. I put my key in the ignition and he knocks on the window.

“I’ll come with you,” he says. It’s funny that he doesn’t ask, he just sort of says it.

“Why?” I ask him curiously.

“Because you shouldn’t drive that far this late, alone,” he says as if it’s obvious.

“I’m a big girl Chris,” I laugh and his eyes find mine and he smiles at me with them.

“I know,” he says.

“Let me go tell my mom and say bye to Caylen. I’ll be back,” and with that he heads into the house. I feel myself getting a little excited then I think of how he smelled of Jenna’s perfume and my excitement evaporates into thinly veiled disappointment.

HHH

“Where did this storm come from?” I ask. It’s raining so hard I can barely see where I’m going. We’ve only been on the road about an hour and a half and then the rain came accompanied by loud thunder and lightning.

“We need to get off the road,” Chris says.

“We’re not going to make it to Chicago.” I pull out my phone and ask my search engine to find the nearest hotel. It lists several of them. The Detroit Marriott sounds like a winner. I change the route option to lead us there.

“The Marriott’s a little expensive for two rooms,” he says.

“Of course we need two rooms,” I mutter under my breath. I see him glance at me and sigh. The 20 minute drive takes us about forty minutes. When we finally pull up to the hotel Valet parking is in full affects with big rain coats and carrying huge umbrellas.

“Thank you so much,” I say loudly over the rain.

“No problem,” the valet says walking Chris and I over to the entrance of the hotel where we pay him and he gives us a ticket. We’re virtually dry as we walk into the large upscale hotel. I haven’t been to one of these since Cal. We walk in and it looks relatively empty,” aside from a few businessmen scattered about the lobby, it’s beautiful, but unfortunately for Chris it’s a high rise.

“I’ll go get the rooms,” Chris says. I stop him and hand him my credit card.

“I’m not going to take your money Lauren,” he chuckles and I can’t help but laugh at him.

“My money is kind of your money,” I chuckle. He frowns still not taking the card from me. I guess he thinks of it as Cal’s money and he doesn’t want anything of Cal’s of course which leave me little hope in all of this. This is going to be a long trip.

HHH

Chris made sure to get us two rooms. We go into mine first. It’s a nice size with the standard queen sized bed with a down comforter and flat screen TV. Hopefully we won’t be here for more than a couple of hours, which is why I don’t understand why we couldn’t share a room. Though, I guess that would be disrespectful to
Jenna,
and we wouldn’t want that.

Ugh. I can’t get the smell of her perfume out of my head and I feel annoyance and agitation seeping through my pores. I try not to think about them together but smelling her on him meant she had to be close enough to... Ugh. I won’t think about it.

I won’t.

“This is pretty nice huh?” he says cheerfully. I can feel my expression set in a scowl.

“What’s wrong?” he asks noticing it.

“Nothing,” I say flashing my fake smile as I sit on the bed and turn on the television. I flip until I find a new station. The news caster’s talking about severe thunderstorm warnings in the area.

A little late for that.

I see Chris pull out his phone charger and plug it in.

“I must have not been getting phone calls earlier. All these messages just came through at once,” he says aloud sitting at the little desk. He puts the phone to his ear and frowns.

“My volumes really low. Do you mind if I listen to these on speaker?” he asks and wonder if they have any good stuff in that mini bar. I nod giving him the okay.

“Hi Christopher, it’s Mom. I’m worried about you and Lauren out there. There’s a storm warning. Please call me and let me know you’re safe your father and I are worried,” Chris smiles and so do I.

His mom’s such a sweetheart. I can’t believe I thought for a second she’d hide the fact that he had a child from him.

“Chris it’s me. I really need to talk to you. It’s important so, uh, when you get a chance can you let me know a good time we can get together. Soon ok, and at my house,” I glance over at him. That’s Lisa’s voice and she sounds distressed and just a little bit tipsy maybe.

“You think everything’s okay?” I ask him and he smiles and rolls his eyes.