by Diana Nixon
Every morning I woke up at the break of dawn and started writing, writing, writing. I never stopped working, throwing myself into my imaginary worlds that for the first time ever were so much better than my fucked-up reality. My new book had a happy ending. It was a surprise for everyone, including me. I didn’t expect it to end with something happy. After the first draft was ready and I read it all over again, I realized that the book was anything like me at all. I never wrote stories like this one. I never let my characters be happy. I never turned a book into such a detailed retail of my life. But after Stella, everything changed, including my inability to create happy worlds, worlds where love rained, and not just sex and more sex. After I read the book, I knew I should release it as soon as possible. And I wanted Stella to read it. The book was all about her.
It was my way to make confessions, to reveal the things that I didn’t have enough courage to say aloud, to tell her how much she meant to me, to show her how different our lives could be if we were together. ‘For the beauty I once held in my arms’ – said the dedication to the book. I didn’t know if Stella was going to read this book, she read all of my books, but I wasn’t sure if she would want to read this particular one, especially after my unexpected disappearance. But whatever future there was for us, I still wanted to try and fix things, I wanted to make it right.
The next day started with a call that I was sure I would never make. I dialed Stella’s number and waited, waited, waited… But she didn’t respond to my call. How predictable.
I called to Steven’s office and asked if Miss Holt was going to be there today. Maybe she didn’t want to see me ever again, but there was no way I would leave things between us just the way they were now.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Collins,” the secretary said, “But Miss Holt is having a day off today. Would you like to leave a message?”
A day off? In the middle of the week?
“No, thank you. Wait… Can you give me her address please? I know you probably are not allowed to share private information, but I have an emergency that can’t wait.”
The lady on the other end of the line hesitated for a moment. “Just don’t tell her I gave it to you,” she said. And then, she gave me Stella’s address.
“Thank you so much. I will owe you forever.” I hung up the phone and made a mental note to send Stella’s secretary a bouquet of flowers after I deal with my ‘emergency.’
There was no doubt that Stella would shut the door even before I would get a chance to explain anything. But I still needed to try my luck.
An hour later, I stopped at the door of the house the directions to which I had written on a piece of paper and was just about to push the doorbell, when the door opened and a woman in her late fifties smiled at me, holding a small dog on a lead.
“Excuse me, do you know Miss Stella Holt, living in this building?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, I do. Stella lives on the fifth floor. Do you have her apartment number?”
“Yes, thank you.” I waited for the woman and the dog to go through the door and then I went in. The good news was that now I was just a few floors away from Stella.
I don’t think I remember the last time I was so nervous standing at the door of the apartment of the woman that I wanted to see. It was almost like being sixteen again, going on my first date. Back then, I was not as much of a jerk as I had been for the last couple of years.
Mentally wishing myself good luck, I pushed the doorbell button; my heart missed a beat.
“Coming!” Stella responded from behind the closed door. I heard some noise, as if she broke something on her way to the door.
“James?” She stood there, wearing the cutest Pj’s I had ever seen. It was anything but sexy, all in blue clouds and sun-shaped print. But for me, it still looked sexy as hell.
“Why didn’t I ever see you wearing this back at Dillon’s?”
“What in the world have brought you here?” She didn’t look pissed, rather a little puzzled.
“I hoped I would be able to catch you at work, but your secretary said you were having a day off today.”
“How did you get my address? Oh wait, I know the answer,” she laughed humorlessly. “You bribed Jodie, right? I know she’s a huge fan of yours, so I bet it was enough to tell her your name to make her do absolutely anything for you.”
“Well, I didn’t bribe her. But I think I will send her a copy of my new book when it’s out.” I smiled as innocently as freaking possible.
“Seriously, James… What are you doing here?”
“May I come in?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
I had a closer look at Stella. Her hair was gathered in a messy ponytail, she didn’t have any makeup on her face, and I would say her night wasn’t any better than mine.
“Give me five minutes, please.”
She sighed, still hesitating. “Fine, come in.” She opened the door wider and let me in.
There was a broken vase lying on the floor with the flowers that were obviously standing in it, all over the hall.
“What happened here?” I asked, stepping over the pieces of glass.
“Nothing. I accidentally broke the vase when rushing to the door.” She brought a broom and carefully swept the floor. Neither of us spoke. I waited for her to throw the broken glass away and only then did she said, “Your five minutes started three minutes ago, so you’d better make it quick.”
“Are you going somewhere today?”
“No, why?”
“Well, I thought since you took a day off, you probably had other plans for the day.”
“Yes, I was going to spend a day on the couch, watching TV and eating sweets.”
She put her hands on her hips, apparently thinking it was a good way to show me that I was no longer welcomed in her apartment.
“How about changing plans?”
“If you think I will spend a day with you, you are wrong. I think I made myself clear yesterday about spending time with you or seeing you ever again for the matter.”
“Yes, but there’s one thing that I desperately need your help with.”
She smirked. “Just don’t tell me you are going to teach me cooking again.”
The memory from our last joined cooking session made me smile. “Not exactly, but we can give it another try whenever you feel like … cooking again.”
“You are kidding me, right?” She took a deep breath, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Let me remind you something first. Three months ago, you left Braiwood, with no good-bye or ‘see you later, Stella.’ You didn’t call me, you didn’t e-mail me… Then you kissed me as if nothing of the above ever happened, and now you are here telling me you need my help and obviously hoping I will just go wherever you want me to go with you, right?”
“Well, that covers most of it.”
“For crying out loud, James! Do you really think you can just show up here, tell me what to do and expect me to follow your every order? Have you tripped over something and hit your head so badly you suddenly lost your freaking mind?”
“There’s a reason for everything I do, Stella… For everything I am. And I want you to understand it. But for that, I need you to see something first.”
“I think it’s too late, James…”
I crossed the room in three steps and stopped right in front of her. “Is it about Steven? You never answered my question about your feelings for him. Do you love him, Stella? Do you love him more than you love me?” I knew it was a risky thing to ask, but I didn’t have a choice. It was my only chance to fix everything I had ruined and I was not going to miss it.
Her face was unreadable, and for a second, I thought I lost the battle with her.
“What makes you think that I still love you?” She asked after what felt like forever.
“I know it. And I can prove it, even if you think that you don’t love me anymore.”
“You give yourself too much credit, Mr. Collins. Not all women lose their
heads falling in love with you.”
“You are not just any woman, Stella. You are the one…” I lifted her chin with my fingertips, leaning closer. “You are the one for me, Stella, and there is no way in hell I will lose you again. Once was more than enough for one life.”
Chapter 19
Stella
Seeing James first thing in the morning had been my dream for what felt like forever. I had been dying to see him again, but not today. Today I would rather die for real than feel him standing so close to me, touching me softly and saying the words that made my heart bleed again.
“Please, don’t make it even harder than it is, James. You are right – once was more than enough for one life. I don’t think I can live through losing you again.” I removed his hand from my face and took a step back. It was safer to proceed the conversation with some distance between us. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about you, because there’s nothing that I can do to make you stay…”
“Who told you I don’t want to stay?”
“You did, three months ago, remember?”
“Stella, many things have changed… I have changed too. Can you give me at least one last chance to prove it?”
There was so much pleading in his voice. I was so close to giving up, I wanted nothing more than to break the walls of defense around me and let him into my world again, but something was still holding me back.
“What did you want to show me?” I asked, trying to win some time to think about what to do next.
“There’s one place that scares the hell out me, but it’s also the only place where I can finally put a period to my past and start a new life. I have never been there myself, maybe that’s why I can’t let my past go. Please, Stella… I need you. Come with me, help me start all over again.”
I don’t know what made me nod and say, “Okay.” But I felt like there was a point in James words. And maybe we would never be together again, at least he and I would be able to clear the air and move on with no pain and offence. “Give me a few minutes to get dressed.”
He smiled slightly. “Sure, I’ll wait.”
Last night, after coming back home and crying the hell out of myself, I finally realized that the plan James and I agreed to follow three months ago was not working. I couldn’t stand living in the same city with him, work in the publishing business and hope that I would never see him again, and then seeing him with another woman and be okay with that. No freaking way… My love for James was still too strong to throw it away and pretend I never loved him. So I thought that giving him a chance to explain things would be a good start on the way to healing my heart.
I opened my wardrobe, took a pair of jeans and a hoodie – the only two things apart from PJ’s that I was capable of wearing today, got dressed, combed my hair and went back to the living room where James had been waiting for me.
“Do you mind if we stop by Starbucks first? I need some caffeine to keep going.” I took my phone and keys and put them into my pocket.
“I don’t mind. I need it too.”
We left the apartment and went down to James’ car parked at the entrance to the building.
“A Land Rover?” I asked, surprised. “I thought sexy writers drive sport cars or something of the sort.”
He laughed. “For me, security goes first.”
“You hate risks, right, I forgot.”
He rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you give me at least a little more credit, Stella? At least for once.”
“I will think about it,” I said, getting into the car.
We drove in silence, but then I thought talking wouldn’t hurt either.
“So how is your new book? When are you launching it?” Safe questions, just like James liked.
“Next Sunday. Will you come? I’d love to see you there…”
“I will think about it.”
He smiled, saying, “You think too much, Stella.”
“That makes two of us,” I said back.
“Uh, I missed playing these pin-pong word games with you. Why do you always use my words against me?”
“Probably because I’m the only person capable of arguing with you, without losing my head over you in the process.”
“Too bad I can’t say the same about you…” James sighed. “Because obviously, arguing with you only makes me lose everything for you even more.”
Ugh, the man just didn’t know how to give me and my attraction to him a break. I smiled unintentionally, but quickly remembered that I needed to keep calm and turned to the window so as not to give him even more reasons to believe that he could use and then leave me with no explanation.
About an hour later, we stopped at the iron gates, leading to… “The cemetery?” I asked, surprised.
James shut the engine down and nodded without looking at me. “Remember, you once asked me about the woman that I was obsessed with? Well, the answer is there...” He pointed to the gates.
We got out of the car and I flinched from the blast of wind that almost knocked me down. The fall was incredibly chilly this year.
“Here, take my jacket,” James said, wrapping it around my shoulders.
“What about you? I don’t want you to catch cold.”
“I’ll be fine.”
His joking mood changed so fast. He looked like a stranger now, so distant and so thoughtful. I wondered if it was a good idea to come here with him. We walked down the road, passing by the endless rows of graves and memorials, until we stopped at one of them.
“Melody Jane Bright,” I read the inscription. “Where love never dies…” I turned to look at James. His posture was frozen, eyebrows pulled together, making him look severe and harsh. I didn’t ask any questions. Obviously, he needed some time in silence.
“She was the woman I never told you about,” he said after what felt like forever.
“You loved her, didn’t you?”
“I did… With all my heart. I loved her so much, it killed her...”
“You said you never came here before, why?”
“I was scared. Scared to see her grave, scared to feel myself guilty again… For years, I had been waking up from nightmares that seemed to never stop torturing me. I tried to make myself believe that Melody’s death wasn’t my fault, but I failed. Over and over again, my memory brought me back to the day I found her dead. That day separated my life into two parts: before and after Melody. I still can’t believe she did that because of me…”
“Did what?”
James reached for the jacket now wrapped around me and took a piece of folded paper out of its inside pocket. Silently, he gave it to me.
I unfolded the paper that turned out to be a hand written letter and started reading it:
“My dear James,
I know you probably hate me now, but hope one day, you will forgive me for leaving you. I will never stop loving you, but you need to stop loving me. For a person like me, love has always been something surreal, sacred and too intimate to demonstrate it to anyone but the man I loved. But with you, everything was different. You were so open with me, so sincere in everything you were doing for me. And I… I couldn’t respond with the same openness. I’m not used to revealing my feelings and thoughts to anyone. I’d rather paint them on the canvas than let someone else hear about them. I don’t deserve you… I don’t deserve to be loved by you, but you refuse to let me go. I told you to leave, James, so many times… but you stayed, making everything so much more complicated. You never listened to me, you kept finding excuses to see me, when the only thing I wanted you to do was to let me go, to be free again, to fall in love with someone able to respond to your feelings, with no fears and stupid thoughts that no one but me can see running through my head. You deserve to be loved openly, unconditionally. You deserve so much more than me. Because for me, your love is too much… I can’t take it and I can’t forget about it. That’s why I’m leaving… Forgive me for my weakness, for my inability to be the woman you want to see by your side. I know
you will be okay, maybe not today, but one day… Don’t love me, James, let me be free, because right now, it is the only thing that I want but can’t have, it is the only thing that I want to find on the other side, where souls are free, where feelings don’t exist...
Good-bye my love,
Always yours
M.”
I read the last line of the letter, but couldn’t make myself look up at James. I just kept staring at the words that sounded so absurd to me. Why would she blame him for loving her? Why would anyone blame another person for the love that they can give you?
“She was special… An artist to the bone, and a person with incredible imagination,” James said, seeing my speechlessness. “Her paintings were something. There was so much meaning in each of them. I could never understand even a half of what she wanted to tell me with them.”
“I’m sorry for asking, but… Is there a chance that she was mentally unstable?” Because for me, it was the only logical explanation for the words I had just read in the letter.
James nodded. “I found out about that only after she was gone. No one told me she was sick. I never noticed anything that would give away her disease. Yes, she was an artist, but all artists are a little insane. I could have never imagined her committing a suicide and blaming me and my love for that.”
“But why no one warned you about her? Her family, her friends… Didn’t they know that she needed professional help?”
“They did, but they hoped that ignoring it was better than paying too much attention to it. They wanted her to be normal, to have a normal life, with no doctors watching her day and night, and with no drugs poisoning her body and mind. So they just let her live the life she wanted for herself. But obviously, she needed help, and I only made things worse for her.”
“I’m so sorry, James… I can’t imagine what you felt the day you found this letter.”
“No one can. No one has ever tried to understand me, to imagine them being in my shoes. Everyone just kept blaming me for not coming to the funeral and then missing all the masses in the church. There is only one person who knows the whole truth about melody and me – Rick. He has always been there for me. And though Olivia, the woman you met yesterday knows a lot too, she has no idea why it was so hard for me to start a new life after Melody was gone. She doesn’t know about the letter.”