Tears On My Pillow
Part 1
TITLE: Tears On My Pillow
AUTHOR: Alexandra K. (skaterxphile@hotmail.com)
DISTRIBUTION: Of course.
ARCHIVE: Ditto.
SUMMARY: Everything happens for a reason, and the bad in life is always followed by the good…
RATING: PG-13 (Adult themes, though nothing explicit... Ally's naughty)
TIMELINE: Somewhere in the end of Season 4, maybe later.
DISCLAIMER: They’re aren’t mine, yadda yadda yadda…
- - - Part 1 - - -
In one moment, everything stopped. Noises became faint whispers. The calm gray of the office walls turned into a dark, dark blue. Even her heart stopped. “… It couldn’t be. This is just all a really, REALLY bad dream, that’s all. No, it’s absolutely impossible. I’m just imagining this. My eyes are just playing tricks on me… It’s all a hallucination… A vision… This isn’t actually true…” … everything fell into a strangely dark fog. Her mind blanked, she seemed to walk out of her own body. She couldn’t tell where she was, or what had just happened. She felt first her legs, then her head hit the floor, and then all fell into darkness…
- - -
“Richard!” Elaine exclaimed as she walked into his office.
“Yeesss…?” Richard replied, not taking his eyes off the laptop screen.
“I have news!”
“Could you state it briefly?”
“Of course… Nelle is dead.” Elaine was utter serenity.
Richard jumped to his feet. “What? How? How can Nelle be dead?”
They both rushed out of his office, Elaine struggling to keep up in extremely high heels. As Richard pushed open Nelle’s door, the first thing he saw were her legs… Then, her still body (with a still moving rib cage which Elaine didn’t seem to notice), and finally, her perfect face with closed eyes.
“She collapsed.” Elaine stated in a matter-of-fact sort of way. Answering Richard’s glance, she quickly added “I heard a loud thud. You’d expect her to be light, but…”
“Elaine!” Richard exclaimed, annoyed. “She’s breathing!”
“Well, I’m sorry, Richard. I was so shocked I couldn’t really spare any time to look!”
The rest of the firm gathered in a suspiciously short time, since they had all received phone calls when Elaine made the startling discovery she’d surprised Richard with. Ling was slapping her cheeks and yelling at her to wake up, Ally was frantically tugging at her arms & legs, Richard was eyeing the whole procedure with interest and John was in the corner, taking a moment. Elaine made herself useful by running to the unisex to fetch ice cold water, with which she filled the rather large pail that had been standing by her desk. No one seemed to see anything wrong with the picture, until Elaine dumped the pail on the “patient”, which woke her up in an instant and sent her into a tirade of yelps. “You’re alive!” Elaine seemed brought back to life herself. “I can make YOU DEAD!!!” Nelle yelled at her, standing up to “pounce” on Elaine, and it took a great deal of Richard’s strength to prevent Elaine’s untimely demise. While the group was recovering from the shock, John noticed a peculiar thing on the floor not far from Nelle. He couldn’t make out what it was right then, but when it hit him, he became speechless. While Ling & Ally were calming Nelle down, John left the room in a state similar to Nelle’s before…
Lying on the floor of her office was an EPT, returned positive…
- - -
There are just so many things in life you can’t predict. You can’t predict whether your picky boss will be delighted or enraged with your report, you can’t predict whether your car brakes will fail, you can’t predict – no matter how hard you try – whether it’ll rain or snow or be sunny all day. And you can’t predict losing it all – everything, anything, your whole world – in one second… Sometimes it just happens. An avalanche comes down on you as if out of nowhere, and before you’re able to object, your whole world is turned upside down and your earth comes falling down onto your heaven. And sometimes, bliss blinds you. You don’t notice danger approaching. And then, like an antelope being chased by a cheetah, you try to run away to somewhere where NOTHING reminds you of that danger; yet therein lies the danger itself, for creeping up on you when it’s the last thing you expect is its favourite tactic.
- - -
Bless me father, for I have sinned. I really don’t know how to do this, because, well, my last confession was… anyway, um, is it okay if I just vent? Okay? Oohhkay…
We made a really, REALLY big mistake. I felt as guilty as he did about it, if not more… We’d agreed to NEVER, EVER see each other again – the decision was mutual, and mutually hurtful. Sometimes I’d come home from work and lie down on my bed and just cry; cry at the unfairness of life, cry at how tough it is, cry because for some strange reason, it brings me relief. Sometimes I’d imagine his arms around me, and the world would get a little warmer, a little brighter. I’d fall asleep like that, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep alone. But I *was* alone, and it was what I was struggling to realize.
And I was doing fine, you know, until… until I went to Detroit. No no no, it’s not like I planned this. For all I knew, they were in Canada leading one of those happy lives… You know? And I sure as hell – um, sorry, “heck” – did NOT expect to see him in Detroit. It’s all because of the damn - oops, darrrn - case… We had this client, and she just wouldn’t agree to come down to Boston for the trial, and we really couldn’t just drop her because she meant a LOT – and I mean a LOT – of money for our firm, and our senior partner, who’s obsessed with money, had to send a lab rat down there, and of course I was the one chosen because I had no “obligations”, so to speak – the rest of the firm, or at least the capable rest of it, were all leading those happy lives I told you about earlier… and so I’m on this plane, and this voice keeps telling me that something is definitely wrong here, but I guessed then that I was just tired and this guy in the seat across from me kept staring at me in a very, um, desiring, should I say, way… and so I really couldn’t think straight.
Yes, yes, not thinking straight was *exactly* the reason I went to the party I should have avoided at all costs… See, Georgia – a, uh, friend – was back in Michigan with her boyfriend – and it’s NOT him I… ya know – and they were throwing this party… and she’d called me two weeks earlier, and mentioned something about it, and invited me, and I really couldn’t have predicted anything, you know… but we’d been good friends, and I really couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see a friend since I was gonna be bored out of my mind in Detroit anyway…
And so there I was, at this party, wearing this incredible dark dress I’d bought for myself at a hideously expensive store, and… I was just going for “pretty”, not “slutty”… Oh! I, uh, apologize… And so anyway, Georgia’s boyfriend turned out to be a really sweet guy, and we got around to talking about jobs. And so Daniel – her boyfriend – told me he was a partner at a really great firm, and went to introduce me to his co-partner, and I just… I, uhh, well, he didn’t seem familiar at first since I’d been looking at the back of his head, but when he turned around I just… oh my god. I *must* use the Lord’s name in vain, I’m sorry, but I was soooo in vain at that moment I just couldn’t hold it back any longer. Maybe it was the lighting, or the setting, or the champagne in my glass, but it was HIM, and he was just the most incredible thing I’d ever laid eyes on – can you believe that?! He’d beaten his own record, set just several months before… And I didn’t faint or anything, like it’s been with so many guys… We just shot each other lovely smiles and notified Daniel that we’d met before, and he was so pleased to hear this he felt he had to excuse himself, the son of a-… sorry. Okay. So, we were right there, facing each other, with no way out. I said “Hi”, he replied with something inaudible that sounded more like a luscious sigh, really, than “Hi”. Soon we were joined by a group of people who interrupted us with their own conversation, and I was thankful for it at the time. I felt a sudden urge to just run away and board the first plane I find and fly away to wherever it would take me, but instead I simply smiled again… And we, with our company, went on laughing and discussing something I don’t even remember… And we seemed to be having a great time. I wasn’t mad or anything, I felt as if the slate had been cleared and he was simply an attractive man I was carrying on an interesting conversation with… And then I left. Well, *we* left, though I was completely sure of his totally divine intentions – he suggested he walk me to my hotel, as a “friend” thing. And my intentions were as divine as his, really, until we were standing at my door. I was lost, really, because inviting him in would be the equivalent of throwing myself at him, and leaving him in the corridor would be rude… And he just was about to turn around and leave, I knew it, but while we just stood there, I finally cracked. I said something about the non-existent wine that was supposedly in my room, and that we should really catch up on news, and the conversation was carried into my hotel room…
… and he was just soooooo…. Ya know…. Manly. Ohhhh… And the moment I caught myself staring at his a-uh, rear end was the moment something flickered and told me this was all a VERY, VERY big mistake. But I didn’t listen, and so here I am now… But anyway… back to the point…
There was, of course, no wine in my hotel room. And I didn’t have any “news” to report over, either. I was just standing there, with a longing in my eyes I knew he noticed, because he knew me just so da-rrrn well… and he walked over to me, and I… just… let go. I felt it was inevitable, and I wanted him – uh, it – so much that I just couldn’t say no… and I know that it was wrong, but… it didn’t feel wrong… everything was just so perfect… and he was so gentle, tender, careful not to make the wrong move, and I saw such adoration in his eyes… I had to gulp down tears, because the whole experience was just… too much for me. I shagged him silly that night… uh, sorry, but it was so soft and gentle at the same time, and it was just … *the* most incredible thing ever… And, believe me, I really had no intentions to… well, I know it says “Do not covet Thy Neighbour’s… um, boyfriend”, and the said boyfriend had nothing but friendly intentions at the beginning as well, but the said Neighbour is just such a BITCH – I apologize, but I just can’t find a godly term for her – and… No, no, I wasn’t doing this to take revenge, I was… I was mesmerized. By everything. By him. By his body. By his touch. By his eyes. I know I really screwed up, because now my life is even more complicated than it already was, but… I just… I couldn’t say no. Now, I’ve been in situations like this before, and there it was just raw passion, and I was probably looking to let off steam, but this… this was different. This was slow. Blissful. Tender. This was something I’d never experienced before – where you know it’s wrong but it just feels so right – and for several moments I felt as if he was *mine*, and we were together, and nothing could ever tear us apart, and…
And then I realized it wasn’t really *like* that. He got dressed, kissed me on the forehead, asked me to call him, to which I responded in a whisper “I will”, and left, closing the door quietly behind him. Again, I was alone. I could just lie down and cry, but the tears wouldn’t flow. And, you know, I felt strangely relieved to have him out of my hotel room. Maybe, I thought, I could bog down the thoughts flowing around in my brain with the case, but… As far as litigation goes, it *never* takes my mind off of my love life. And I knew that if I were to win the case, I would need to incorporate my life into it somehow… And I just couldn’t get him off of me – err, *out of* - my *mind*…
But anyway, that’s not the important thing. The important thing is… that I understand I made a mistake. Thou shalt not think impure thoughts about thy neighbour’s boyfriend, especially the really tantalizing ones where he… okay. Never mind. That’s not the point.
The *point* is that I have sinned, and I won’t sin any longer.
At least, I think so.
Am I forgiven?
- - - End of Part 1- - -