Nicole. “I don’t know about you all, but I need a drink.”
“Really?” Naomi asked and gestured in the direction Vince went. “After seeing what it has done for your friend, you want to consume some alcohol.”
“Honey,” Chad said gently. “Come on.”
Seth rolled his eyes and shook his head. “The difference is that I know how to handle my alcohol. And besides,” he said, looking in the direction Vince had gone, “that man there isn’t my friend. My friend wouldn’t say those things. Want to have a drink, Liam?”
Liam looked at me like he was waiting for me to say something. I wrapped my arms across my front and just stared off in the distance. “Yeah, one drink.”
Chad turned to talk to Naomi, leaving Liam and I. Before he could say anything, I spoke up.
“I think I’m going to get my own room at the hotel tonight.”
Whatever he had expected me to say, it wasn’t that. “Really?”
“Yeah. I want to be alone.” I stared down at the ground to avoid his gaze. I couldn’t handle it, not tonight, not after everything.
“You okay, Tori?” Nicole asked, rubbing her hand down my back. But she, like everyone else, had heard what Vince said to me.
“Yep,” I said, but it sounded flat to my ears. I turned to look at Liam, who was staring at me in that quiet, unsettling way. There was nothing subtle, nothing casual about the way he regarded me.
Beneath all my skin, tissue, and muscle lived a roadmap of heartache. All it took was one look at him, just then, to know that I would inevitably add another destination on that map. A place that had once belonged to me, but a place that would forever belong to him as soon as I said goodbye; as soon as I left him.
I understood what people said about their heart existing outside of their body, thanks to Liam.
Unable to take it any longer, I turned my gaze to the ground. “I’ll see you guys later.”
I turned to head the direction of the hotel. It was only a few blocks, but Liam caught up to me anyway, walking silently by my side.
“I can walk by myself.”
“But do you want to walk by yourself?”
Yes. No. I couldn’t say for sure one way or another. I was so confused, first by my feelings for Liam and then from hearing what Liam had told Vince. “I know where the hotel is,” I told him as a compromise to myself.
He tucked his hands in his pocket and exhaled. “I’ll just walk beside you then.”
Why did he have to say that? “I’m going to get my own hotel room,” I reminded him.
“I know.”
We walked, side by side, in silence all the way to the hotel. Liam didn’t leave me until we were at the elevators—the same place we had first spoken, when I had told him I loved him.
There was such an asymmetry to this moment, from the first time we had stood in this hallway. I was seeing those moments: my grin, the tiara slipping off my head as I stared into blue eyes so intense I could drown in them—clash with the now: neither of us able to make and maintain eye contact, a collective feeling of hurt from us both. Every step to the elevators loud like a shout into the void that existed where we—as a couple—had once been. We would soon part as individuals, say goodbye to the week we’d spent together and the memories that, if I thought about too long, seemed almost tainted by his feelings, and mine.
I stepped onto the elevator and turned, looking at him the way he had looked at me that first night I had told him I loved him. So much had changed since then.
The doors closed and I rode the elevator to my room in silence.
It wasn’t until I was behind my door that I pulled out my phone. Part of me wanted to see his name in my texts. Something. Anything. But instead, I saw a text from my best friend, Hollis.
Hollis: Did you fall off the edge of the earth? Call me!
So I did.
“Finally,” she hollered into the phone. “I was about to drive to Las Vegas to see what you had been up to.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t. I’m heading home tomorrow.”
“Good. It’s been too long since we last hung out.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got a fiancé that rudely takes up all your time. Pretty selfish, if you ask me.” I tried