Lawyer Up

ADA

I closed the car door in silence and turned to walk into my building, still trying to regulate my breathing.

I had hoped that in my drunken haze I had only imagined that I had told Sebastian that I wanted him to stay.

That it was just my brain playing tricks on me.

But when I heard him speak the words, heard him say that he had in fact wanted to stay, I felt something that I couldn’t explain.

But it was wrong. I was still grieving my losses. I shouldn’t have been able to feel anything close to what he made me feel.

It was wrong.

But what was worse was how he had looked at me when he pulled back. He didn’t just stare into my eyes and wait for me to react.

His eyes had studied every part of my face like he was trying to memorize it, and it felt…real.

More real than anything I’d ever experienced, which couldn’t have been right.

I had been in love with Trey. He had looked at me all the time, but the only word I could find to describe the way I used to feel when he studied me was comfortable.

I searched through my memories, trying to find anything else, but I came up empty-handed so I decided to go to sleep instead.

Sleeping didn’t help at all. I woke up with a headache and found my brain at the same stop I had left it at last night.

What was so different about Sebastian?

It had to be because he was my lawyer. Yes, that was definitely it. It made everything feel inappropriate.

He’s not your lawyer anymore…

I had to turn those thoughts off. I wasn’t ready to do anything except to just be by myself for a while.

My heart needed to heal, it needed to be whole. And I reminded myself that I never wanted to give it away again anyway.

We could be friends—if he wanted that. But even that seemed odd.

I decided to trade one feeling for another and read one of the texts Trey had sent me this morning. I wondered when he would stop sending them.

I wasn’t sure, but I knew that his words, no matter what they were, would always send something similar to electricity through my heart.

Maybe I really was as weak and pathetic as my mind made me believe anytime I thought of him. Because just off of basic instinct alone, I scrolled to his number and pressed it.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, and I had to take a deep breath, caught off guard by the memories of the last time I called him as they raced through my brain.

It was just a few days after I had found out what he had done. I was at our house packing my things when I felt something sharp in my lower abdomen.

It wasn’t strong at first, but within twenty minutes it had brought me to my knees. I grabbed my phone and called the last person I wanted to talk to. Then I called an ambulance.

Trey met me at the hospital, and after the doctor came in and shattered our already crumbling world, we were left alone, staring at one another.

Neither of us spoke. Trey climbed into the bed, wrapped me in his arms, and we held onto each other while we cried.

I had thought that what Trey had done was the worst pain my heart would ever feel, but I had been wrong. Nothing compared to the feeling in that moment.

The joy of growing a life inside your body was unexplainable, but so was the agony of realizing that it was gone.

Everything was just…gone.

Trey and I went through the motions. I signed papers and had the procedure. When we were released late that night he drove us back to what had once been our home.

He begged me to stay the night—he said that I needed to rest, that he would take care of me, but I couldn’t let him.

Not because I didn’t want him to, but because I knew that if I stayed that night, I would never leave.

He would rope me back in and I would have a content life with him, but that dark cloud would never be too far behind.

Besides, I didn’t want content… I wanted to be genuinely happy.

“Ada?” He raised his voice just the slightest bit, enough for me to hear the panic.

“I’m here,” I said.

“Are you okay?”

Am I?

“Yeah, I’m okay.” For once, I really thought I was.

“I can come by later and pick up my Kindle. I left some things in the closet too, that I’ll need.”

It was probably a bad idea, but I didn’t want to feel like I couldn’t be around him. I didn’t want to necessarily be best friends, but I did want to have actual conversations with him eventually.

“Yeah, of course. Come whenever you’d like.” He rushed his words out.

“Okay,” I said before hanging up.

I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to do it.

But two hours later, I found myself on the familiar tree-lined street that led to the house we had bought together.

I pulled into the driveway, but not into the garage, because it wasn’t my house anymore.

Trey was on the front porch, and I wondered how long he had been sitting there waiting.

I got out of my car and walked toward him.

Wow, it was so awkward.

“You look pretty,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

I nodded. “Thanks.”

We stood there unmoving for a few seconds before he turned to open the door. I followed him inside.

“Are you hungry? I don’t really have much here, but we could order a pizza.”

I thought for a second about asking him why he didn’t have any food in the house, but I changed my mind. It wasn’t my concern.

“No, it’s okay.” I shook my head and I walked down the hall toward my stuff.

This was way harder than I had expected. Everything looked exactly the same, except we were so different now.

“Do you need a box?” he asked as he walked into the room.

“Oh no, it’s just a couple of things.”

I went into the closet to get my black boots from the top shelf. I stood on my tiptoes, but I still couldn’t manage to find them. Trey saw me struggling.

“Here, let me.”

He put one hand on my back and the other on the shelf, reaching the boots with ease. He handed them to me and I thanked him, but I couldn’t turn around, he was too close.

When he moved his hand up to my shoulder I hung my head.

I couldn’t do this. I thought I was ready, but I was wrong.

“Ada…”

“Don’t say you’re sorry again, please…,” I begged.

“I won’t.”

I didn’t reply.

“I love you,” he bent down and whispered into my hair.

Shit.

“I know,” I breathed.

He slowly spun my body around and fell to his knees. He pressed his head against my stomach and wrapped his arms around my thighs.

“Just let me hold onto you for a little while, Ada.”

My shirt was already wet from his tears, and against my better judgment I dropped the boots on the floor and let my hands fall in his hair as I looked down at him.

This big man, broken by his own doing. And I still wanted to put him back together. I still wanted him to be whole again, maybe more than I wanted it for myself.