Page 44 of Playing For Keeps

“Come on? Come on, what? I told you I couldn’t do this tonight. I’m scrubbed raw. Everything is twisted up and wrong. We’re yelling at each other! I still feel like I’ve been tossed in the washing machine and wrung out to dry. I can’t do this. I feel like I’m being pulled apart. I want to be free of this pain. This is too much. I am not okay right now, and this isn’t helping.” Farren felt his unspoken: you aren’t helping.

Sebastian’s eyes glistened with tears, and Farren sat in the aftermath of the pressure they’d both been carrying exploding between them. He wasn’t wrong. She was scared of failure, of being hurt. But so was he. He pulled away to retreat back to what he knew, what was safe, even though it added no joy to his life. Protecting himself the same way she was trying to.

“That still doesn’t make it okay to be hurtful and mean or to make it out like I’m the bad guy here.” When all she’d ever done was care about him and try to pull him out of his dour shell.

“I never said that. Not once did I say that!” His voice was doing this funny thing, dry and hoarse and tight. She wondered if he’d let the glistening tears fall or if he would hold onto them with his tight-fisted control.

“No, I’m not a bad person, just the wrong kind. You don’t want a serious relationship, but you want to give me crap for not being a serious person. You’re scared and stuck in the past. You don’t even know what the hell you want,” Farren scoffed, backing away toward the door and tightening her coat around her body to ward off a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room.

“Sorry, Sebastian, but I don’t see how those things add up. If you don’t want to be in this anymore, just say so. Better to know now before I do something stupid like introduce you to my friends and tell my family about you. Before I sleep with you and stupidly think it means something!” Farren’s voice cracked as she shouted, and she turned so he wouldn’t see her cry, walking away while she still kept some sense of composure. Her hand wrapped around the doorknob.

“It did mean something!” he said back, and she stilled for a moment. Waiting.

But nothing else came, and inside her chest, she felt something shutter.

“Not enough, evidently. Good luck, Sebastian. I hope your big ‘fuck you’ moment is worth it. I hope you find happiness. Or success. Whichever one you decide is most important.”

The door clicked shut behind her. Farren made it down the stairs and onto the sidewalk before new hot tears obscuring her vision started to streak down over her cheeks. Cold cut through her clothing as she walked home, not caring, not bothering to call a rideshare. It was the loneliest walk of her life, and Farren never wanted to feel like that again. Ever.

A good night's sleep was relative. Sebastian was never a particularly restful man, but that night, he stayed up until dawn crept through the cracks around his curtains. His bed felt overly large, the room emptier than it’d ever been. Which was strange; she’d only spent the night here once. Her scent shouldn’t be embedded in his mind. His hand shouldn’t be reaching for her on the other side of the bed. Something in his chest collapsed, and it seemed like nothing would alleviate it no matter how slow he tried to breathe or how carefully he focused on the air stretching his ribcage.

It was the right thing. He wasn’t wrong in being afraid, in wanting to avoid their blow-up in the first place, was he? In wanting to focus on what he’d come here to do. They weren’t well suited. Though at this point, Sebastian wondered if anyone would be a good fit… or if he should bother being with anyone. Maybe the thing with Ashley fucked him up more than he realized until now.

It was fine. It would be fine. Farren would go on with her life, content with how it was. He would focus forward like he always did. Like he’d done when they fired him in Ohio. He had some tough decisions to make. On to the next project. The next pitch.

And miss out on all the living in between?

It was an annoying thought. A traitorous thought. It sounded so much like Farren, like something she would’ve said. Succeeding at work, in his field, was all he’d ever wanted, even before Ashley. He’d put in so much time—

Is that really it, or is it just sunk cost fallacy at this point?

He couldn’t tell anymore.

It was too late. He packed away the box—Farren’s so-called dream—still wrapped, in his hall closet to forget about.

It had only been a few months since they’d met. He’d go back to normal, and everything would be behind him. They were into November, so close to the new year and a fresh start. He could get back into Andrew’s good graces. The pitch was a non-starter, but maybe he could prove he deserved the more significant project manager promotion when it became available. Not much time, but not impossible.

Okay. Yeah. He just needed to refocus. Get back in the game.

Work proved miserable. Sebastian forced himself to perform. His phone stayed silent and that little pep talk he’d had with himself—the one where he was so convinced he’d been right—its impact faded with each passing day the gnawing within didn’t subside.

He missed her. And it pissed him off.

Sebastian was supposed to be beyond this. He couldn’t love her, right? It was only ever meant to be casual, fun. Nothing more.

Even though you shared things with her you’d never told anyone else? Even though she made each day feel a little more vibrant?

Still, Andrew mistook his general quiet contemplation around the office for work ethic, so that was a relief. Rachel gave him a puzzled look, tried to strike up a conversation with him and offered another drink after work, but he declined. No use for frivolity, no time to waste.

Instead, he went home after working late, cooked himself a meal, scrubbed the apartment, and exercised until he was too tired to move in the hope of getting some sleep.

On Thursday night, he got an unexpected call that made his breath catch in his chest, only for his stomach to shrivel up when he saw the caller ID. The name made him want to open up his blinds to check if it was a full moon or something. There it was: Ambrose Clark, plain as day.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, Bash! How’ve you been?” His dad sounded grittier, older than he remembered. Something in his voice sounded weary and made Sebastian concerned.

“Been doing okay. Just work and stuff. What’s up with you?” It was stiff. It almost felt scripted with the words not flowing out as they should. Too many suppressed sentences stuck in between the ones he said out loud.

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