Sweet Love of Mine

All Out Of Love

Rosie put the pen down, folded the scrap of paper and looked over at the figure still comatose in bed.  She could barely see him for the tears now spilling down her cheeks.  His kiss still on her lips, his touch still on her skin, she now felt more hurt and betrayed than she had ever felt in her entire life.  Even more than when she had caught David.  Tom had been different she thought.  Tom had been her... Well, he could go to hell.  He could take his love and... no, no more.  She was done.  What was he had said?  To care you had to feel?  Well she didn't want to feel anything. Ever again.

As she passed down the hall, the answering machine light blinked at her accusingly.  She was tempted to delete the message out of spite but that wouldn't change anything. So she left it - and him - to it.

Closing the door softly, she  walked out of the house, down the steps and into the early morning air. Her taxi drew up just in time and she climbed in.  With a last long look at the house she drove off, her her mind replaying the message, her heart numb.  She vowed she would never love again.  It just wasn't worth it.

Tom woke sometime after 10 and the sun was peeking through the blinds enough that he knew it wasn't too early.  It was also enough to realise that Rosie was no longer in his arms.  He'd been aware of her snuggling in as dawn broke and in his sleepy state he remembered thinking he truly was the luckiest man alive.  He wanted to wake with her every day for the rest of his life.  Now she was missing.  Bathroom? Kitchen? No, no sound.  He rolled over and listened for a minute.  The house was silent - too silent.  Where was she?  He sat up, a deepening sense of foreboding settling in the pit of his stomach. 

That was when he saw it.  Lying folded on the dresser where she'd left it. The note.  He wanted to be sick.  

Throwing the covers back, he got out of bed and walked across the room, the floor like lava under his feet.  What had happened?  What dire emergency had ripped her from his bed without a word?  Was it Debbie? Had something happened to her?  He had the sickening feeling it was nothing of the sort.  The sickening feeling was that he had somehow messed up. His hand shook as he lifted the paper, torn from the pad he kept next to the phone in the hall.  Old fashioned as he was, he still had a landline and answering machine to make sure he never missed a call for potential work - or social life.  He liked his mobile, like most people it contained his life, but like most people he knew the signal could sometimes be patchy.  Hence the back up plan.

Standing next to the dresser he opened it.  What he saw as he read made him reach for the bed and sit down heavily, almost hyperventilating.

"Tom, I woke this morning feeling my life was complete.  I leave here feeling my life will never be complete again.  Did our "love" mean nothing to you?  Did I mean nothing to you after all?  Seems so.  I was nothing but a small part of your world.  But you must realise Tom, you were my whole world.  I don't know when you planned to ease me out of your life and let her in, but fate it seems has stepped in for you.  Perhaps it's better this way.  

I hope you and Nancy will be very happy together.  

We will not.  We will never see each other again. Do not try.

Goodbye Tom."

He read the note at least three times before it sank in.  Who the sodding hell was Nancy and what had she to do with all this?  His mind reeled, he jumped up and looked out the bedroom window into the street in a futile attempt to see if she was there.  Of course she wont be you idiot he thought. She'd been gone for hours probably.  But WHO was Nancy? 

He slipped on a bathrobe and went into the hall, his mind suddenly realising there must have been a reason she used the phone pad.  The red blinking light screamed at him and he knew.  This was the problem.  The phone must have rung while he was sleeping and a message had been recorded.  Because he was such a dinosaur, his machine was one of the ones where you could hear the message as it was being left.  Rosie must have overheard it.  Added two and two together and - he winced as he admitted it to himself - because he had been such an idiot before, she got 107.