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Chapter 22

STEFAN'S POV

Caroline tells me that she's leaving tomorrow.

Good. Good. Good. I keep repeating in my head. But there's a voice shouting back at me - not good! Not good.

I should go over there and say goodbye, farewell, so long, may the force be with you, or whatever bullshit people say to each other. I should bid one final goodbye, one last time. I should be a bigger person, a grown up, a mature grown ass man who has his whole life in order. I pay my own bills and cook my own food, goddammit. The scary truth is, I'm none of those things. When it comes to her I'm always going to be stubborn and immature and childish.

So I don't go. I'm afraid I won't know how to say goodbye to her. I'm afraid I won't know how to treat her as a finality, as a full stop at the end of the sentence, mocking all of my past mistakes. I'm going to do something stupid, pull her by the hair and kidnap her like a fucking caveman.

I don't go. Instead, I pour myself a glass of scotch and settle into my fathers armchair. Alcohol is not my enemy. Well, at least as not as big of an enemy as I am to myself. I've realized that I need to learn how to control my intakes, just like I need to control how many times I'm allowed to think about her per day. One thought, one memory, one less drink I'm allowed to have; battling poison with poison. Some days - most of the days - I'm not allowed to have any drinks at all. Maybe one day I'll find a balance, one thought about her, and one drink to wash the thought away. And maybe one day I won't need neither one of those things in my life anymore.

Doubtfully.

Caroline tells me that she left town. Half an hour ago.

My heart is heavy.

She will go on with her life. In less than a year she will marry. The next time I see her - if I ever see her again - she's going to be a married woman. Mrs. Something. Mrs. Doucheface. Mrs. I-work-in-my-fathers-law-firm. She will have a shadow on her ring finger. Two years from now she will get a promotion. She will become an editor, or an editor in chief, or whatever position you can acquire while working for a magazine. Two years later, she's going to give in and agree to have a child. Two, three, four. She's a wonderful mother, she won't be able to resist the urge, especially not when everyone around her, every woman her age she knows, start popping babies.

And what about me? Will I still be sitting here, drinking a brand new bottle of scotch, thinking about her? Am I going to become that guy? Or will I finally man up and continue with my life?

Maybe it's better this way. Maybe we've destroyed each other to the point of no return. Maybe she'll never be able to forget how I treated her after Will passed away. I know I won't.

Maybe we could never function normally ever again. Maybe I love her and she loves me, but maybe it's true what they say - sometimes, love is not enough to make it work. There's too much baggage, too much of something between us.

What's killing me is the word maybe. All I'm left with are riddles, empty questions, endless list of maybes.

At the end of the work day, when most of the town is already asleep, I climb up the hill to my sons grave. I look straight at his tombstone, at the tiny interval between the year of his birth and the year of his death, I look at all the seven letters than make his name.. and I tell him that she's gone.

She left town this morning.

XXXX

"You can't do this anymore?" he repeats my words over and over and over again. He's going around the apartment saying 'you can't do this anymore?' in different tones and colors of his voice, spinning in circles. I'm afraid of him. I'm afraid that he's losing his mind. I'm afraid that I've finally pushed him over the edge by saying this.