The Secret Of Us. Liesel Schmidt

so this was the only logical explanation.

      Right?

      I took another deep breath and opened my eyes, steeling myself to walk out the door. I had to be calm and rational. I had to be the one to keep a level head right now, since Matt seemed to be temporarily incapable of that. Sure, he was putting up a great front and giving the appearance of complete control, but it had to be just that – a front. Underneath it all, he was probably just feeling the pressure of the countdown.

      If we could just talk about this…

      I reached for the door handle and pulled it open, the weight suddenly seeming far greater than I remembered. As I made my way back to the table, I tried my best to gather my thoughts into some semblance of order, and to find any measure of composure possible.

      And then, I lost it.

      When I reached the table, I found it empty. Aside from the detritus of our shared meal, the only thing waiting for me in the dining room was a napkin, its white paper layers interrupted by a hastily scrawled message.

       I’m sorry.

       Chapter Two

      There seemed no explanation – –no reasonable, traceable steps showing how we got from two people so in love to this place.

      To the napkin I held in my hand as I sat on the couch, three hours later.

      Three very long, very tear-filled hours later.

      There was a headache pressing now at the base of my skull, my penance to pay for allowing myself to finally fall apart once I’d come home.

      I’d held a very tenuous grip on it all until then, managing to very carefully, very quietly ask the waiter for the bill, unsure of whether Matt might have had the decency to at least pay for our final meal together. To my relief, he had taken care of it, one last gesture of kindness tossed in my direction like another balled up napkin.

      I’d continued to hold on, feeling my grip losing strength, as I walked home, four miles that Matt had undoubtedly assumed would be travelled in a cab.

      I had walked slowly, barely registering my surroundings as I took each step, trying to make some sort of reasonable sense of what had just taken place.

      Not that any of this made any reasonable sense.

      My fiancé had ended our relationship without a real explanation, leaving me nothing but a hastily scrawled apology – on a napkin. It sounded almost like the headliner on one of those ridiculous, sensationalist afternoon talk shows. I wasn’t sure whether to start laughing hysterically at the absurdity and outrageousness of the entire thing or to start crying.

      My instincts suggested the latter action, but the tears burning my throat seemed to be warring with both shock and anger.

      Had this been my fault? Had I pushed him too hard, put too much pressure on him to get married? We’d been together so long, and it had seemed like the next logical move. Logic aside, even – it was something I’d been dreaming of since the early stages of our relationship. I loved Matt so much, and there was nothing I wanted more than to share a life with him. To build a family and a home with him.

      And now the whole thing was being torn apart, finalized by words on a napkin.

      When had he stopped wanting a life with me?

      When had my dream become a nightmare?

      I couldn’t stop staring at the napkin.

      I’m sorry.

      I shifted on the couch, wondering if throwing the napkin in the fire with the nearly destroyed stack of magazines would reverse the words and set everything back to the way it was supposed to be. I looked at the sparkling engagement ring on my left hand and contemplated hurling it into the fireplace along with everything else. It would simply end up charred by the flames, sticky blackness masking the radiant beauty that it had once been.

      The flicker of the fire gave the room a warm glow, but I still felt chilled. I pulled my legs up under me and reached for the throw I kept folded in a basket next to the couch. I was so tired and so cold, but I couldn’t bring myself to go to bed.

      Not yet. I knew I wasn’t anywhere near sleep, not with everything that was going on in my head right now, despite my extreme fatigue. It wasn’t physical exhaustion – it was emotional. I felt as though someone had died, that same nebulous sense of loss and hopeless helplessness, and it was draining.

      I put the square white napkin on the floor beside the couch and looked up at the ceiling as shadows danced over its surface, set in motion by the flicker of the firelight. I felt so alone, but there wasn’t really anything I could do about that. Sure, I could call someone – my mother or my sister, but the idea of having to pick up the phone and explain everything when I didn’t even understand it myself seemed almost too much to handle. I couldn’t string two coherent thoughts together at this point, much less an entire conversation.

      I closed my eyes and tried to turn everything off, to feel nothing, to numb every part of my brain and my body and just… float.

      Float up to the ceiling and dance through the shadows.

      Matt wasn’t answering his phone. I’d called twice, already, and I knew calling any more than that would do more harm than good. I couldn’t let myself become that girl – the needy, desperate girl who called every two minutes in tears. As much as I wanted and needed answers, I couldn’t allow myself to do that.

      I had to be stronger than that.

      Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow everything would make more sense. To me, and to Matt. And I would be glad that I’d kept silent and not alerted anyone to what was going on right now, at this moment. Because tomorrow, it would all be straightened out, and Matt would realize that we were meant to be together. We’d been so happy – maybe he had just lost sight of that. Maybe it had been eclipsed by a momentary case of nerves.

      All very normal. All very fixable.

      Yes, that had to be it, I thought determinedly as I closed my eyes. We would talk and work it out, and everything would be back the way it was supposed to be. We would get married, and I would be Mrs Matthew Noble, and we would have our two-point-five children and a dog and a house with a white picket fence in the suburbs.

      It would all be okay. It would all be just fine in the morning, in the cleansing light of day.

      Matt just needed to remember how we got here, why we got here. Maybe he just needed to be reminded. Sometimes, in the happy glow of ease, pain is too easily forgotten. All the steps and the struggles that have shaped us become softened by time, and complacency blurs reality to make us believe that any new bump in the road is justification for surrender. As though we have been stripped of our fighting spirit. He needed to be reminded that we were too important to throw away on a whim.

      On a napkin.

      I shook off the fingers of doubt that were creeping back in, threatening to strangle the faith I was so desperately clinging to.

      He would remember. Matt would remember.

      Remember how we met, how we fell in love. How much we both wanted this life together.

      Tomorrow, he would remember.

       Chapter Three

       February 2002

       “My mother always warned me to watch out for redheads,” a voice behind me said. “They’re dangerous.”

       The words were hardly audible above the din of the darkened bar. Music rumbled in the background, competing for everyone’s attention against raucous laughter and a thousand different conversations all shifting shape under the neon glow of lighted beer signs.

       I turned