118A/N 1: The opening quote is from "A nice welcome back", it's kind of a sequel but can totally stand on its own.
A/N 2: Dear Kings, if Will leaves without walking into the sunset with Alicia, I'm gonna come after you.
o-o-o
"One year." Will's voice was a bare whisper. But the quiet of the deserted firm and the importance of that promise made it sound like a scream. A scream to the world that in one year they would try and give themselves a real chance.
o-o-o
They never did it. Instead, one year later she was sitting with Cary in her kitchen, ready to jump ship and to batter down the last bridge that still tied her to Will. How did that happen? Somewhere down the road her priorities had changed. Somewhere during one too many stolen kisses, heart and mind, desire and common sense, started to clash, irreparably. Somewhere down inside of her, fear had decided to team up with duties and responsibilities, leading her to a choice that changed her life forever.
All in all, she can't complain. She loves her firm, she loves working with Cary, he's proving to be one of the best friends she's ever had in life and the only person to incite her whenever she's on the brink of breaking down.
But sometimes, when things are calm and her mind has time to process the events, when at the end of the day she comes back home alone and feels that something is missing, only sometimes she regrets it. Was it that the vote tampering scandal had broken her – and her marriage - apart for the millionth and last time? Was it that with the hurricane that was Will's resentment gone, she suddenly felt forgotten, apathetic and aimless? She's not sure, but since the day he left to run the new LG branch in New York City things have never been the same again. One year. She hasn't seen him or heard from him in over one year.
At the beginning, his memory used to barge into her mind more often than she demanded, until slowly but inevitably he fell back into the oblivion, engulfed by the routine.
She spent fifteen years without him. She can do it again- Adjust to not having him around. Not anymore. As a friend. As a lover. As an enemy. It doesn't matter. Eventually all the sadness funneled in a corner of her mind where she can easily control it, ignore it, draw from it when needed, when pain is unbearable. It doesn't happen often. She's afraid to lose the rein on her past. She's afraid that if she allows herself to think about him for too long she will end up unable to close that drawer again. And it hurts too much.
It hurt when he left, it hurt when she slipped into his office to say goodbye, like an intruder, and her murmured apologies crumbled in the void of what used to be his corner office. She had arrived too late. It hurt when her attempt to call him turned into a voicemail likely to be either ignored or lost forever. It hurt when every morning she woke up thinking that they would never again bump by chance into each other in a heated face-to-face trial session until eventually she got used to live without that adrenaline.
Today she has to meet a client in New York City. At first she didn't think about it. She said okay, booked flight and hotel for three days which were already more than needed. At least she thinks that, because with these wary moneybags you can never know. She prepared her best speech and the most convincing arguments as if she had to face a hostile jury, determined not to fly back home without a signed agreement. Maybe if she was brilliant enough she could solve it all in one day.
But then… it happened. She dared to open that drawer again. It hadn't been intentional. It's like when you keep pressing stuff and stuff into the closet and one day it explodes, immersing you with everything you tried to hide. She remembered a dinner, she remembered a terrace with a breathtaking view of the city. She remembered a glimpse of happiness.
This is crazy romantic.
She shivered.
It's just a memory.
Memories belonged to the past and were supposed to stay there. She was going with a purpose; ensuring her firm an important client.
Still, the more she mulled over it, the less frightening became the idea that maybe, only maybe, she could call him, say hello, ask how he's doing. Maybe they could meet for a quick coffee. At worst he would say no. At worst he would say yes.
The little she knows about his current life is through Diane. Her former boss never discloses much; just that little enough for Alicia to know that he is fine. She drops discreet hints and Alicia is not sure whether it's better or worse because she'd rather not think of him.
But now she craves and dreads at the same time to hear him, to see him. And it takes her two hours of staring at his new number to muster the courage to make that call. A message left to his secretary that she's staying in New York for three days, an invitation for him to call her back, so he can conveniently pretend to be too busy or blame his secretary for miswriting her number. It's the perfect plan. She thinks he won't call. She believes it. She hopes it. She fears it.
Her first day goes by with his silence. He hasn't gotten back to her. He hasn't called her. Neither has his secretary, not even to politely decline her request with some lame excuse.
But when on the morning after her ringing phone shows a number she can't recognize, her heart skips more than just one beat as she realizes that it might be him.
She swallows, flips her hair in an unconscious gesture, then finally answers. "Hello." She hopes that her voice doesn't come out as too quivering. She can feel her hands getting sweatier and sweatier with each second.
"Hey." The male voice on the other end is quiet, a bit distant. A voice she hasn't heard in over a whole turn of the calendar. A voice that still has the ability to give her the thrills.
She closes her eyes for a moment, savoring the echo of those few letters. She has to remind herself to breathe. And to answer, before he thinks she's gone or dead. "Hey," she whispers.
What should she do? Wait for him to say something? Ask him how he's doing? If he got her message? No, this would be stupid. Of course he got it or he wouldn't be calling her right now.
"How…" Their voices choruses, causing them both to stop.
She can't help but laugh softly at the awkwardness and she is relieved when on the other end she hears something that sounds a lot like a muffled laugh. "How are you doing?" she finally asks.
Such a prosaic question but it's all she can think of. And honestly enough, what would you say to someone you haven't heard from in more than you want to remember? Do you still hate me? Have you forgotten me? Do you still think of me sometimes? Do you ever ask Diane of me?
"Fine. You?" His telegraphic answers are softened by his voice being almost a whisper.
Alicia has no idea if he's being cold, faking uninterested, trying to control his emotions, or what else. But behind that apparent calm, she wants to believe that if he took him a whole day to call her back, it probably means something, whatever that something may be, it's better than nothing.
"Fine," she repeats. "It's been a while."
He doesn't say anything but his silence that doesn't sound like silence at all. What is he thinking? Reminiscing the good? Dredging up the bad? Her lips clenched in tension, she waits for him to say something. She wasn't expecting it to be all warm and congenial but never to be so tense.
"Yes," he confirms with a deep sigh.
She can easily imagine him look down and away. "I'm in New York," she attempts.
"I know. My secretary told me. Work?" he asks with what is his first complete sentence.
"Yes. I'm leaving on Friday," she explains, though he's supposed to already know it.
"Okay. Good. Day-tripping while you are here?" he jokes.
"Not really," she laughs. "I was thinking…" She stops, as her former idea of meeting seems less and less like a good one. She exhales. It is just a meeting. Two old friends. Two old lovers. Two old enemies. Two people who for a while shared something and now moved on with their lives. " I don't know… maybe we could meet somewhere. Coffee, lunch…"
She's made her move. It is up to him now to take it or leave it. In two days she will be back home again, back trying to forget him, to forget his voice, kicking herself for even trying this. He moved to a new city so he didn't have to see her again, why in this world - or in any other - would he want to meet her now?
"I… I have a very packed agenda for the next two days, we are working on an important trial," he excuses himself.
Of course.
She shakes her head, smiling bitterly at her stupidity. He could have easily asked his secretary to call her back and decline or just not call at all. Instead he called to make the rejection more stodgy. One year of distance hasn't changed anything, it seems.
"But there's a restaurant across my office's building, nothing fancy or particularly refined," he explains.
Restaurant? Wait. He isn't declining?
"If it's okay for you we can have dinner there tonight," he asks, his voice clearly faltering.
"Dinner?" she asks, convinced that she must have misheard.
"It's just that… it's close to the office so I don't risk getting stuck in the traffic and trust me you have no idea what New York City's traffic can be at rush hour," he apologizes.
She has to breathe and breathe and breathe again at the anxiety that the word dinner is giving here, but she accepts because part of her would die if she didn't get a chance to see him. "No, of course, dinner it's fine."
She hears a voice in the background. Someone calling his name. "I have to go to a meeting now, I ask my secretary to call you back with the directions and the name of the restaurant so you don't get lost."
"Okay, see you later."
When she hangs up, she needs a moment to take in the mix of excitement and fear that the upcoming event gives her. She realizes she has nothing suitable for such an occasion. Everything she brought is either very businesslike or very casual. So she enters the first shop she finds on her way and ends up buying a nice dress which costs her an arm and a leg and she doesn't even know why. Businesslike would have been perfect anyway. But for some inexplicable reason, she wants to look special. And red is her color. It has always been.
When Will's secretary calls her one hour later, she's already in a sweat and nearly drops the phone. She orders a chilled bottle of red to the room service and sips it as she gets ready, because maybe if she's slightly drunk she won't get to the restaurant with every nerve of her body twitching in an irrational ballet. Though on second though she's not sure what's worse between being nervous and drunk. But with every little sip she feels her worry assuaged. Whatever happens tonight, whichever is the outcome of this dinner, she'll be back in Chicago in two days; quick enough so she won't have the time to brew any kind of afterthought. Far enough so she can't rethink anything. Back to her life – at least what's left of it after the scandal took away from her good part of what she had. In the end, she has nothing to lose, does she?
The loosening effect of the alcohol has already evaporated by the time she reaches the restaurant and she regrets not having treated herself with one more glass. She has no idea if Will is already inside or still at his firm. Instinctively, she turns to stare at the building across the street. It's probably fifty floors, maybe more. She sees a lot of lights on and her mind tries to guess which floor is LG. She has no idea. Knowing Will's newly found ambition, it's likely one of the highest, if not the top.
She inhales as deeply as she can. It's pointless to postpone this moment. And at the end of the day, she's the one who phoned him in the first place. If anything, Will is the one who should feel anxious. So she plucks up some courage, lifts her chin and walks into the restaurant with all the self-confidence and boldness she can rely on.
With a quick glance, she takes a picture of the inside. Will's description of the place, though rough, was pretty accurate. Not fancy, not elegant, very simple. It looks like one of those places where quality wins over quantity. She resists the urge to scan every single guest, instead tells the waiter there's a reservation under the name Gardner and waits for the girl to show her the way to the table. But when she spots the familiar figure - yes, he still looks familiar in spite of everything - already sitting at the table, she halts. It lasts a moment. She doesn't want him to notice she's a turmoil, actually a volcano of emotions. She puts on a vacillating smile and when he's in full sight she greets him with an excited hey.
He still looks the same and she finds it ridiculous to even make such a consideration since it's been only a year, though it seems more like a decade.
His smile is warmer than she remembers but it can be a figment of her imagination, for she can't even say when she saw him smile last. Or was happy to see her at all. The strong smell of cologne brings back memories she tries to ignore. His grey suit tells her that he's probably come directly from his office and freshened up there. He looks a bit tired but overall the same old Will. Slightly boyish, attractive like always.
He returns the hey, calm, all composed-looking, but his eyes betray him. They always did. He eyes her up and down with discretion and observes, "You look good."
"You too," she returns the compliment, suddenly shying and she prays that the blusher and the soft lights are enough to conceal her flushing cheeks. When he doesn't offer a kiss, or a hug she's relieved and a tad disappointed at the same time. He moves her chair so she can sit and she appreciates the sweet cavalry.
For a while, they just sit in silence, stealing furtive glances at each other, maybe pondering what can be said and what's better left neglected. The waiter puts the awkwardness on hold for a while as she invites them to order. Eventually the initial embarrassment has to come to an end and Alicia is happy when Will is the one who breaks the ice between them.
"How have you been?" he asks with a soft voice she knows all too well. He's obviously privy to the news. And she always suspected he probably had more involvement in Peter's downfall that he ever admitted, but in the end she never faced him openly. Would that change anything? Would that take away anything to Peter's guilt? This is not why she's here tonight.
"I've been fine. Wiped the slate clean. Gave a fresh start. Reset my life." It took her way too long to realize what was in the end the best for her. For once she put herself above everything else. For once she took her kids' words into real consideration and did what was really the best for her family. No more façades. No more shows. No more limbos. No more scandals. She was done with that life.
And the irony in it all was that it was Will's departure to give her such awareness. Most people would have considered his move as an escape, as a sign of weakness, the proof that Will Gardner wasn't worth his reputation anymore. In the cat and mouse game, he had become the latter. For her it showed courage. It takes guts to cut with the past and restart from zero. It was what she never found the strength to do. She had kept choosing the easier way out, she had always chosen not to choose. Even when she started her own firm, she had done it out of fear. She had chosen the coward way out of Will's life.
"Sounds familiar," Will hinted with a half-smile.
"Yep, I guess so," she nods.
And as their dinner is served, conversation finally gets more relaxed.
Still, she doesn't dare to ask anything personal. She's not sure of what she wants or doesn't want to know or how much he's willing to share so she asks him about the firm, about New York, he jokes about the strong competition there and how it's weird to be in a city where nobody ever heard of LG. It was a challenge inside the challenge.
"You belong to this city," she observes, with a shadow of admiration because he finally looks like himself again.
"The city that doesn't sleep. I always thought it was a metaphor until once I found myself walking down the Fifth Avenue at three in the morning," he jokes.
She laughs at the image of Will walking down the dead-night streets, Tony Manero style.
"But I miss Chicago sometimes," he clouds a bit.
"It's still the same as you left it. Chaotic, grey, polluted and corrupt."
"Nice picture."
This time she just smiles. "Very true to reality." She lower the gaze, grabbing the opportunity of his nostalgia to admit how much it hurt when she couldn't wish him goodbye. "I tried to call you," she says softly.
Will stiffens a bit in his seat. "I know."
"Okay." At least she now knows he tried to avoid her on purpose.
"I couldn't do it," he adds, gravely, yet with a shade of apology in his voice.
"Do what?" she asks, confused.
"Hear whatever you had to say. Was it an apology, a goodbye or an attempt to make me stay. I would have ended up changing my mind and blaming you for the rest of my life. I had to do it." His words rip her with their bluntness.
If she had ended up making him change his mind, she would have probably hated herself too. There was too much going on in her life back then. He had left right in the middle of the storm. In retrospect, his departure had saved them both.
"Yes, now I know it," she admits for the first time.
Her words fall into the silence. They both take a moment to understand where this all conversation is leading. Trying to make amends? Clean the conscience? Make things clear once and for all? It's hard to say.
"Why did you want to see me?" Will asks out of nowhere.
Or so she thinks. "I don't know." And sadly enough, it's the truth.
"I'm happy you did," he says, his gaze peeping discreetly at the other tables. He always does it when he's too nervous to look straight into her eyes.
"I'm happy too," she agrees.
And when his eyes are back on her seconds later, she takes a long sip of wine because she knows that gaze enough to recognize that it means trouble. Regardless of his intentions, it makes her weak on her knees.
Conversation and looks start to grow in inverse proportion with each minute that passes. The more natural becomes the conversation, the more charged and intense become the glances they exchange in a crescendo of tacit coo. One year apart didn't change anything. They are still in that same old place. One year of distance annihilated, vanished, rubbed out like charcoal pencil, blown away like autumn leaves. She leans forward and before she's aware of what she's doing, her fingers are brushing his, very delicately. For a moment she's lead to think he doesn't even notice, until he looks down at their hands then back at her. She can't say he's totally lost but he clearly expects her to say something. She doesn't know what. But she regrets her audacity and retreats, wishing she could disappear into thin air.
"Why did you really want to see me?" Will asks again. And this time his tone accepts no lies or pretexts.
"I guess I missed you," she confesses.
Will's features are tense. He sits back, tension is suddenly strong again. "This won't make it easier."
"Neither it'll make it worse," she answers back.
"And tomorrow?" he asks quickly, giving her no time to pile up more arguments.
And tomorrow? She remembers posing the same question, a lifetime ago, to a friend. And she remembers how her answer had made her laugh. It sounded so wrong back then. It sounded like something Alicia would never do. It's been only a few years and it amazes her how she's not that same Alicia anymore. "Tomorrow we wake up."
"You will regret it," Will puts into words what she already knows.
"Would you regret it?" she questions him back.
"I regretted a lot of things in life." He smiles but the imperceptible blow that follow his words is bitter, ironic.
"Have you ever regretted me?" Does she really want to know?
"At times," he admits.
He regretted her. He regretted having her. He regretted loving her. His brown eyes, hurt and lost in the distance, tell her that he's probably regretting her in this exact moment too. You should never regret love. Did she hurt him that much? Did she hurt themselves so much? "I should go back to my hotel, it's getting late," she whispers, offering them both a way out of this misery.
"It's already late," Will's words halt her as she's already standing and about to leave.
"What does that mean?" And she really can't seem to read him.
"That it doesn't matter if we will both regret it," he caves in, gaze down.
She fights hard to calm the flock of butterflies swarming erratically in her stomach, as roughly twenty minutes later Will closes the door behind them. It feels a lot like a déjà-vu, with the only difference that the hands on her body and the lips which taste hers slowly at first, then devouring her mouth, are not unknown anymore. It's reliving senses that had been buried alive. It's welcoming back a passion that wasn't banked enough, thus never really extinguished. It's opening the door to a hurricane, knowing it'll blow you away. It's, ultimately, that one too many dresses that makes the closet explode. In this moment she doesn't care. He still feels exquisite inside of her, his body still covers her with that same passionate care. There will be time for regrets tomorrow.
When she wakes up the morning after, it takes her a moment to remember where she is. She's neither home, nor in her hotel room. And as the cold air of the early morning makes her shiver, she realizes that she's definitely undressed. She can see the flakes of a light snowfall, probably at its beginning, falling through the window, making her shiver unconsciously even more. Lying on her stomach, she turns her head to the other side of the bed. Will is still sleeping. What did they do? She knows she'll regret it the moment she leaves this room. But in this moment, it still feels crazily good. For a brief instant she considers slipping out of the bed and of the room before he wakes up so she doesn't have to face the heartbreak and the embarrassment that come along with any parting words. She knows he'd never call her or search for her and it would be cowardly convenient enough to just cut and run. But she can't. She can't bring herself to leave. She can't force herself to go and turn her back on him. She slides against his resting body. He's warm and it feels good against her skin. And when he stirs in the half-sleep, she smiles. She always loved to wake him up. And if memory is not failing at her, he always loved to be woken up by her, especially by her wearing nothing. But this time it's different. It feels so much like the umpteenth goodbye and it makes her sick in her stomach. Her gaze wanders up and down, she studies every muscle of his body, knowing this is really going to be the last time.
"I told you that you were going to regret it," Will whispers, catching her off-guard.
Her gaze stops somewhere above his pectorals "I am not."
"Then why so sad?" he unmasks her.
"Because I have to go and I don't want to," she whispers, hoping that neither her voice nor her eyes say what she'd rather hide from him. It's much more than that.
"I'm going to miss you," he admits, looking at the ceiling as if it could make this moment less painful.
It doesn't for her. It probably doesn't for him too.
"Me too." Words leave her mouth barely audible. She has to leave this room before she starts to cry, looking more miserable than she already is. She gathers her clothes, scattered all over the room, and gets dressed as fast as she can. She's running away again but for some reason it feels like this time the tables are turned and she's the one bleeding more.
Will was right. She's going to regret it but for the wrong reasons. It doesn't feel like a mistake at all. It feels like another missed chance to make him her own. She kisses him softly. "It was nice to see you again." And her voice is already cracking.
She doesn't even turn back to give him one last look. She grabs her purse and coat and runs out and into the snow. She gets lost twice on her way back to her hotel and when she finally reaches the safety of those four walls, she drops everything to jump into the shower and forget everything that's not client-related. But when she takes the phone from her pocket she notices the flashing warning of a text message. No name, but it doesn't take her long to figure out the sender. "Forgot to tell you that I'll be in Chicago in two weeks for the LG board meeting."
Forgot my ass, she thinks, but as she does, her lips are already curled up in a smile. Tentative at first, then brighter, a genuine one like she hasn't in years.
One year of distance changed nothing and everything, it seems.