Chapter 4

Sofia Adams - March, 2012

Anne entered my apartment horrified at my condition.

I was drunk. Again.

Céline Dion was playing the song from Titanic in the background and I had a bottle in my hand and was screaming at the top of my lungs while dancing with my bottle feeling like Rose herself owned the fucking world.

“NEAR, FAR, WHEREVER YOU ARE I BELIEVE THAT THE HEART DOES GO ON”

“What?” Anne was torn between being scared and confused, and then her eyes fell on my clothes. I was wearing a black dress shirt that was too big to be my own, a samba panty and a suspender.

“Are these his?” she asked cautiously, but she knew the answer. They were his.

I was packing my bags when I found them buried in a mountain of my clothes. I carefully picked them up in shock flooded by the whirlwind of memories it brought back.

I knew I shouldn't smell it. But I did, and then everything became hazy. I just urgently needed to drink or I would go crazy.

Which resulted in my current state.

Anne looked very angry and about to drag me into the bathroom, but when she looked into my eyes her own body relaxed. Whatever she saw in me her gaze immediately softened.

She had known me for eighteen years.

Eighteen long years for her to know that I was at my limit. I couldn't take it anymore. I was so, so tired of everything.

And then, contrary to everything I thought she would do, Anne ripped off her suit and let down her hair. Then she took the bottle out of my hand and took a big gulp and started yelling at me.

“ONCE MORE YOU OPEN THE DOOR AND YOU'RE HERE IN MY HEART, AND MY HEART WILL GO ON AND ON”

At that moment seeing Anne, the always even-tempered and straight Anne Carter give up the reasoning that screamed to scold me, but not doing so, I saw how much she knew me.

It was without a doubt one of the most amazing things she ever did for me.

We screamed, we cried, we jumped on the couch, we got drunk and I don't know how we managed to get enough sense to finish packing my bags.

“You are ready now," Anne concluded, trying to close her suitcase, but fumbling with the zipper. She was terrible at drinking.

“Move over, you little baby” I pushed her away and closed the suitcase, I drank more than she did, but my body was used to the drunkenness.

Anne sobbed and sat on the tea on our pile of clothes titled "You don't deserve Las Vegas." I sat next to her supporting my back on the couch just as she did.

“Oh Soso, how I miss..." she sighed suddenly looking at the armchair in the corner of the room.

I looked too, with a wave of sadness flooding over me.

“I know, Anne, I miss him all the time too. Sometimes I pretend he's still here, drinking coffee or reading his stupid books."

“No, you don't understand," Anne said, slurring her words, "I mean, I miss him too, but I mean I miss YOU. The way you were, before all this shit happened." Anne sighed and pointed around the room, not focusing on anything specific.

I remained silent. Anne knew that I didn't like it when people talked about how I used to be. Simply because things would never go back to the way they were, including me, there was no point in dwelling on that, it was easier to accept and go on with what I had.

I shrugged “This is who I am now, Anne”

“No, Sofia... This is how you pretend to be. You pretend not to be everything you were when he was here, because if you forget who you are, maybe you can forget him too.”

Wow, drunk Anne was painfully sincere.

“I never want to forget him, Anne.”

My answer in a low voice denoted my effort to hold back tears. We never talked about him so openly, it was like a forbidden subject.

Anne snorted.

“Nonsense, you big liar," she accused, "You distance yourself from everything about him. Please, you can barely enter the room, Sofia! All this to cover up how angry you are.”

“Anger?” I asked incredulously.

Anne was stumbling over her words, but they were no less sharp for it. I don't think she was even aware of the seriousness of what she was saying to me, but I'm sure she had been thinking it for quite some time by how naturally it came out.

“Sofia, admit it... It's very clear that you feel anger towards him, you don't want to talk about it, you want to push it under the rug, and beauty is your right, but it's not good for you.”

She couldn't be right, how could I be angry with him?

“You live in fear of the world trying to prove yourself as a girl who doesn't care. But, Soso... You do. And you can't forgive yourself because you never forgave him.”

Suddenly, my mind goes back to that night and the months of suffering that followed. How I kept troubling myself with the "what ifs" of life. What if we hadn't fought? What if I hadn't let him leave? What if I had gone along?

Every day it consumed me and devoured me. I had so much anger and guilt about everything. All this feeling hit me at once, like a wave of the sea, the wild ones that can't be stopped.

I burst into tears.

“Anne, there are times that I hate him for leaving that night and for never coming back, he's gone Ann, he's gone, he's left me and I hate him for it, sometimes I wish I'd never met him. I hate him for making me love him so much it hurts. I didn't mean to hate, it wasn't his fault, it was my fault, but he didn't come back, Anne” my breath caught and I began to choke, the anxiety crisis rising up my throat grabbing me by the legs and putting pressure on my chest. Anne immediately hugged me as she supported me.

“He didn't come back Anne, he didn't come back, why didn't he come back?” I repeated over and over, crying and sobbing as I finally realized that truth.

He is gone.