by Joy Argento
“What?”
“I saw you, Madison. I saw you kissing him. I knew you were going to tell me it was over between us and I couldn’t bear to hear you say the words.”
“Ali, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
So, they were going to play this game? Madison was going to deny everything. What good would that do now? The damage had already been done, a long time ago. Okay, she could play along—but once the truth was said out loud Madison would have no choice but to admit what she did and the effect it had on Ali.
“I came over to your house when I got your note. You said you had something important to tell me. I saw you and Howard in the backyard—kissing. I knew in that moment exactly what you wanted to tell me. I left before you had the chance, saving you the trouble and saving me the heartache from actually hearing you say it. That is why I disappeared from your life. That is why I couldn’t bear to face you. The pain was just too great.”
Madison seemed to think for a minute. Ali knew she had her. There was no denying it now. Ali watched as several different emotions scattered across Madison’s face. She was quiet for several long beats with her hand over her mouth.
“Oh, is it all coming back to you now? Are you going to tell me that you had no idea how much that was going to hurt me?”
“Ali, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“How could I have it wrong if I saw it with my own eyes? Huh? Tell me that.” She realized she was raising her voice to match the level of frustration and anger that had crept in.
“How long did you watch us?”
“Watch you? Kissing? Why would I want to stay around and witness that? I saw you and I left.”
“Ali, if you had stayed two seconds longer you would have seen me push Howard away. He kissed me without my consent, and I didn’t want it. I wanted you. But you never showed up. At least I thought you didn’t.”
“What are you saying?” Confusion was edging out the feeling of anger.
“I’m saying Howard kissed me after I told him I’m gay. He came over and was getting way too—”
“You told him what?” Ali wasn’t sure she had heard Madison correctly. Why would she tell Howard she was gay when she had refused to tell her parents?
“He asked me to go out with him and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I told him I was gay, hoping the truth would make him back off. But he grabbed me and kissed me instead. I guess he thought he could change me. I don’t know.” She hesitated, seeming to gather her thoughts. “I never asked him his motives. I just pushed him away and told him to get the hell away from me. You must have seen him kiss me and got the wrong impression.”
Wait. What? Madison wasn’t willingly kissing him? She wasn’t cheating? She wasn’t going to choose him? Ali’s stomach lurched. She left Madison because she had gotten the wrong impression. How was that even possible? This wasn’t computing. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“Oh my God, Ali. You thought I was leaving you and you decided to leave me first. You never even gave me a chance to explain. How could you do that?”
Ali was at a loss for words. How could that have happened? She was so sure Madison was kissing Howard. True it was only for a second or two, but she couldn’t stand the sight of them together. “But you said you had something to tell me. I thought you were going to tell me we were breaking up.”
“I wanted to tell you in person that I had told my parents that I was gay. Ali, I thought you would be so happy. I wanted to see your face when I told you,” Madison said, her voice shaking.
“I’m…” But Ali couldn’t finish the sentence. The gravity of what she had done hit her in the chest causing a rush of tears. She lost Madison so long ago, not because of something Madison had done, but because of something she had done. How could she have been so stupid?
Just when she thought her tears were under control, they started all over again. Madison pulled a few napkins from the holder on the table and handed them to her. She didn’t deserve even the smallest gesture of kindness from Madison. She deserved to have her tears stream down her face and ruin her shirt, seep into her heart, and drown her. She had made the biggest mistake of her life and had been paying for it ever since. Not only that but she had hurt the woman she loved and lost her as a result of her own stupidity.
She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “Thanks,” she managed to squeak out. “Madison, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know because you never gave me a chance to explain. You didn’t trust me.” Madison’s voice went up by a few decibels. “You are the one who broke my heart. Not the other way around. You have no one to blame for your suffering but yourself.”
“I know that now.”
“I think you should leave. I listened to what you had to say. We’re done here.” Madison stood up.
“No. Wait. Can’t we talk about this? Figure out what to do now?” Ali’s feelings rushed to the surface. She realized, much to her surprise, that she had never stopped loving Madison. She had to make this right. She had to make up for all the time they had lost out on because of her.
“Figure what out? You made your decision twenty years ago. There is nothing more to figure out. I’ve moved on with my life.”
“You can’t mean that. Is there someone else? I mean are you with someone?”
Madison didn’t want to answer that. It was really none of Ali’s business what she did with her life. “Let me tell you something I’ve learned, Ali. Life is made up of a series of decisions. Some of the choices we face are clear-cut right or wrong, while others have fuzzy lines and gray areas. There are times in our lives when we believe we are making the right decision but later second-guess ourselves. We have to ask ourselves if our intentions are pure. Or did we react too impulsively? Are there answers to these questions or is it all just a gray area? Your decisions brought us where we are today. Yours. You chose the gray areas. You made up your own answers.”
“I don’t understand,” Ali said
“The goal of life is survival—followed by happiness. At what point does the need for happiness outweigh the commitments that have been made? Is the payout in the end worth the struggles of the journey? The payment for me has been a life without you. It took me years to recover my happiness. Do you hear me, Ali? Years. I am not willing to give up my happiness for a commitment we made to each other when we were eighteen. That commitment, by the way, was the one you threw away, not me. My happiness was gone and all I had left was survival mode.” Madison paused to let her words sink in.
More tears escaped Ali’s eyes. Madison refused to feel sorry for her. “I survived, although there were times I was sure I wouldn’t. My life now is what I made it—without you. I don’t need you in my life fucking it up. Go home, Ali.” With that, Madison marched out of room and into her office, flipping off most of the lights on the way. She barely got the door closed when she burst into tears, so thankful she had been able to hold it together until she was away from Ali.
Well, now she knew why Ali had deserted her without a word. It didn’t make her feel any better. In fact, she was even angrier now. Angry as hell. How could Ali have done that? She never even gave Madison a chance to explain. She just jumped to a conclusion and that was that. Obviously, their relationship had meant more to Madison than it had to Ali. Otherwise she wouldn’t have thrown it all away so easily.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and attempted to pull up her contacts. Her vision was too blurry from tears to see clearly. Getting her emotions under control before she called Jenny was probably a better idea anyway. Her mother used to say We get what we need, whether we like it or not. “I guess I needed Ali out of my life, if this is the kind of person she is,” she said to herself.
She had tried to hide the fact that Ali was her girlfriend, even after she told her parents she was gay. But her pain had been too great, and Ali’s disap
pearance was obvious. She finally confessed the truth to her mother after much prompting. Her mother held her while she cried, on more than one occasion. She wished her mother was alive to hold her now. She shook her head. This was ridiculous. She had gotten over Ali years ago. She’d had a few relationships since then. Okay, none of them had lasted more than a few years, but that didn’t diminish their importance. Ali showing up now didn’t diminish them either. It didn’t change anything.
Madison stayed in her office for over an hour. The crying barely lasted fifteen minutes before she got it under control. She cautiously stuck her head into the shop, half expecting to see Ali still sitting there, and fully prepared to call the police if she was. To her relief, the place was empty. She locked the door, shut off the rest of the lights, and went out the back door. She breathed an audible sigh as she made her way to her car in the deserted parking lot. A quick look at her phone told her it wasn’t too late to call Jenny, but she decided that with her emotions now under control she could wait until their morning meeting to fill Jenny in. She felt stupid for her earlier reaction anyway. Not the anger, that was justified. She felt stupid for all the tears she shed over someone who didn’t deserve a second thought, let alone tears.
She decided on her short drive home that she would just put Ali out of her head. There was no sense rehashing their conversation tonight, let alone what had happened so many years ago. But her brain had other ideas, and her mind returned again and again to Ali. The drink she made herself once she was home didn’t do much to help. The more Ali appeared in her thoughts, the angrier Madison got. She had to figure out a way to get her out of her head. Only time had done that so many years ago, but she wasn’t willing to give Ali or thoughts of her any more time. That door needed to be closed—and dead-bolted shut. Never to be opened again. That was the plan anyway.
Chapter Seven
Ali slipped the key card into the lock on her motel room door. Her head was swimming. Charley had called her on her drive back to the motel, but she hadn’t answered it. She wasn’t ready to talk about this. She needed to process it first. Images of Madison and Howard kissing ran through her brain and coursed through her veins making her feel sick to her stomach. This was nothing new. It had happened periodically, without her consent, throughout the years. What was new was what followed.
Madison said she’d pushed Howard away. Ali could see that happening now. She added that image to the old one, and everything changed. Madison wasn’t cheating on her or breaking up with her. Ali was actually the one who did the breaking up. That fact weighed heavy on her now. She had broken Madison’s heart, not the other way around.
Her phone rang again as she turned the shower on. Sitting in a donut shop all day left her feeling a little greasy and powdered sugary—if that was even a thing. She took a second to decide what to do and turned the water off. Landing heavily on the bed, she pressed the answer button on her phone.
“Honey child, you have left me hanging all day. What happened? Did you get answers or give Madison Parker a piece of your mind?” Charley didn’t bother with pleasantries. That was something Ali usually liked about him. He got right to the meat of the matter.
“By the time we got done talking I didn’t have much of my mind left to give her.”
“Let’s not talk in riddles here. Tell me.”
Ali let out a loud sigh.
“That bad, huh?”
“Worse.”
“Oh no. It didn’t get violent did it? Did you hit her? Did she hit you? She better not have hit you.”
Ali stretched out on the bed. Sitting in a booth all day with just two short trips to the restroom didn’t do her back any favors. “I’m not sure where to start.”
“The beginning, baby doll, is always a good place.”
“I literally sat in the donut shop all day long because Madison refused to talk to me. I kept hearing your voice in my head telling me not to give up.” Ali filled him in on the details of the day including Madison’s revelations about Howard and coming out to her parents.
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. That was so not what I expected. What did you do?”
“You know me. I cried.”
“Baby, I do know you and I’ve never seen you cry.” Charley paused. “Never. Not when any of your girlfriends broke up with you, not when your book hit the best seller list, not when—well, never. But you cried over Madison Parker. Why do you think that is?”
“Guess I was saving it all up for today.” Ali searched her memory. She hadn’t cried over any other breakup. They were annoying, but never heartbreaking. “Maybe I never really cared when any other relationship broke up. I never thought of that before.”
“What are you going to do? Are you coming back home tomorrow?”
What was she going to do? She had messed things up very badly twenty years ago. Was there any coming back from that? If she went home, what then? Would anything change? Could she ever find happiness with someone the way she had once found it with Madison—before she had fucked everything up? “I’m staying here. I’m going to win her back and make up for what I did.” Her own words surprised the hell out of her.
“I thought you said she was really angry. Do you think she would even be open to that idea?”
Ali thought about it before answering. “I won’t know until I try. All I can do is my best. That doesn’t mean the tide will turn in the direction I want it to. But maybe it will. Who knows?” Ali spoke without thinking, as if the words and viewpoint were being given to her. “See, that’s the thing. We don’t know. Not really. No one knows. Because one step in a different direction by any of the key players changes the whole outcome of the play. The ending is not written. It’s being written as we live it. The main thing is to be a part of the performance and learn and grow from it.”
“Whoa. That’s deep. I’m impressed.”
“I changed the course of the play when I left. Maybe I can change it back with my return. I know Madison is angry now, but I am going to do everything in my power to change her mind. To get her to forgive me. To give me another chance.”
They talked for another twenty minutes, until exhaustion overtook Ali. She fell asleep with the phone by her side, smelling of donuts and dreaming of ways to get Madison to forgive her. She was determined to do just that, no matter how long it took.
* * *
“So, Ali showed up here yesterday,” Madison said to Jenny as soon as she walked in.
Jenny set her folder on the table and slid into the booth. “What?”
Madison poured them each a cup of coffee. “Yep. Showed up and spent the whole day in that booth over there.” Madison nodded in the direction of the booth. “I may have to get a priest in here to do an exorcism on it.”
“Did she say anything to you or just sit there?”
“Oh no. She had plenty to say.” Madison filled her in. “Can you believe her nerve?”
“Sounds like she was really sorry,” Jenny said.
Not the response Madison was expecting. “Sorry? She should be sorry. She threw away something very special.”
“Maddy, I’m not arguing with you. Just seems like you are reacting really strongly to this. It all happened so long ago.”
“Yesterday wasn’t that long ago, Jen.” She set her coffee cup on the table with a thud.
Jenny pointed to the cup. “That’s kind of what I mean. You have every right to not want her here, but geez, you are just so angry. Should you be this mad?”
Jenny wasn’t helping. If she was trying to get Madison to be less angry this wasn’t the way to do it. She wanted this conversation to be over. She wanted her life to be the way it was before Ali showed up.
“Did you order more napkins?” Madison asked.
“Way to change the subject.”
Madison ignored the comment. Jenny obviously got the point because she dropped the subject
and got down to donut shop business. They were just finishing up when Valerie arrived for her shift. Madison slipped out of the booth, put her hands on her back just above her hips, and leaned back. She had spent her Sunday off two days ago gardening. She was paying for it now. One more thing to add to her my life is shitty list for the week.
“You okay?” Valerie asked her.
“Yeah. I overdid it a couple of days ago. I bend over to plant my flowers, then I’m confused as to why I hurt. My brain still thinks I’m in my twenties. My body strongly disagrees,” Madison said.
“Oh, I know that feeling,” Valerie sympathized. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-four. Madison was sure she had no idea what it was like.
Madison let out a small laugh. It felt good to laugh. To push thoughts of Ali out of her head, if only for a few moments.
“I’m going to get going,” Jenny said. “Try not to let this get to you.”
“I’m trying. But I have every reason—” She stopped. No sense beating a dead horse, even if that horse was Ali. And she deserved to be beat. She laughed at herself.
“What?” Jenny asked.
“Nothing. Just my brain. Nothing to worry about.”
“Should I be worried about your heart?”
“Nope. I’ve got it under control. I’m going to point my nose forward and live my life without looking back.” She said it with more confidence than she felt. “Watching Grayson today?” Madison asked.
“Yes. That little guy fills my cup and drains it at the same time.”
“I hear that,” said Valerie, the young single woman who, to the best of Madison’s knowledge, didn’t have any young kids in her life.
Madison laughed again. She was determined to make this a good day, no matter what had happened yesterday. Yesterday was history, just like what happened twenty years ago was history. If you don’t learn from it, you repeat it—or however that saying went. One thing was for sure, she didn’t ever want to repeat it. It was far too painful the first time around. “Give that kiddo a kiss from Aunt Maddy.”