After All These Years

The Explosion

It took Elizabeth a full hour to pull herself and her emotions together before she showered and changed into another casual outfit before her curiosity go the best of her and she slowly opened the door to Jason's room.

She knew this was a huge invasion of privacy, going into his room without invite, but she had to know if he had already started packing.  To her relief nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first.   While his closet still seemed relatively full of options, she couldn't ignore the fact that there seemed to be more space between the clothes on the hangers, and more empty hangers than she'd seen before.  She wanted to blindly believe that perhaps he hadn't done laundry in a while, but she knew better.  

She closed the door to his bedroom before she slipped into her shoes and left the apartment, knowing she needed to be gone well before Jason returned home himself.  He would undoubted come to the apartment to shower after his game, and if he hadn't noticed by now she'd left the game early, he's certainly notice when the game ended. 

She had nowhere to go while she waited for Taylor's text so she went to the only place other than work where she could hide and distract herself, their local bookstore.   To her delight, she received Taylor's text and within the hour she had arrived at the local waterfront grill and he was seated at a table on the patio.   He stood immediately, happy to see her and he pulled her chair out for her and she thanked him as she took a seat.  

"Are you feeling better since I saw you last?" Taylor asked with concern.

"I wish I could say I was." She spoke truthfully.  "I promised you that I would be here and I assure you I will be as present as I can be regardless of how I'm feeling."

"I assume whatever you are feeling has to do with Jason, and if you don't want to talk about it, I will completely respect that.  I am concerned because you don't seem like the kind of woman that cries easily or over simple things."

"You are correct." She answered simply. "Without oversharing too much, my twin brother died in a tragic accident when I was 18.  Those tears turned into depression, which turned into medication, which turned into numbness, which after several years, turned back into living in this weird emotional limbo.  Not really happy, not depressed, just living.  Since losing Nicholas,  I could probably count on one hand the times I've actually felt the urge to cry.  Today was, unexpected, unpredicted, and I'm still kind of reeling with the aftermath at the moment."

"So you had no idea about Stacy, at all?"

"Oh those tears were not about Stacy.  Jason is free to do whatever he wants with whomever he wants." Elizabeth resurred.  "It was much more than that.  It's the fact he didn't even tell me that she existed in his life.  If she's that important to him that she's someone he brings around your department events, why wouldn't he tell me about her?  Then there's the whole feeling excluded from his life.  I'm the person he's lived with for years, and someone he supposedly calls his best friend, and I didn't even get an invitation."

"He told me it was because you aren't a huge fan of the sport in general and your schedule is pretty full with work."

"Yes, My schedule is crazy but I have always made time for him and I've always made the effort to be there for him for the important things. I would have moved things around if I needed to, I would have found a way, regardless of what it was.  I don't get to see him much as it is and while I don't really find baseball all that exciting, it's not about the sport.  It's about being in his orbit and being together on the rare opportunity we have to do so.  He merely said he was busy for this morning when I asked him what his plans were for today but he did offer this afternoon to spend time together."

"And yet, you're here, with me." He questioned intrigued.  

"I am."

"Because you don't want to see him?"