She stood there for a second before she closed her eyes and exhaled, hitting the button to end the call.
The ball is in his court now, she told herself as she walked back into the building. It’s out of your hands.
And while that should have provided her with some level of relief, it only made her more anxious.
Lauren went back inside and helped the children clean up, and then she stood in the vestibule for the first time in two weeks to help with @edck you todismissal.
In a matter of fifteen minutes, all the regular students had been picked up, but Erin remained once again.
Lauren lingered for as long as she could, finding a shelf to straighten here, a toy to put away there, hoping he would show up before she had to leave for class.
“What are you still doing here?” Deb asked as she walked past Lauren to the file cabinet. “Delia has the late pick-ups tonight.”
“Oh, I know…I was just,” she looked around. “I couldn’t find my phone. But I got it now.” She held it up with a tiny smile as she walked toward the exit. “See you tomorrow.”
“Good night,” Deb called cheerily as she rooted through one of the filing drawers.
Thirty minutes later, Lauren was sitting in a lecture hall staring through the professor in the front of the room. She realized within the first five minutes of class that attending had been a pointless endeavor. She couldn’t focus on a single word of the lecture.
She had her phone on the desk, set to silent, and every minute or so she would glance down at the display, even though she hadn’t felt it vibrate.
She spent the entire class running through different scenarios in her mind. What would happen if he called and he was angry. What would happen if he called and he was reluctant. What would happen if he called and was just as anxious to put this behind them as she was.
She planned what she would say in each situation, rehearsing it in her mind, until suddenly the professor was dismissing them.
By the time Lauren was pulling onto her street, a feeling of despondency was beginning to overshadow her anxiety.
It was almost seven o’clock. Erin had already been picked up. He would have seen her missed call by now. He should have already listened to her message.
As Lauren walked into her apartment, she realized there was one scenario she hadn’t accounted for.
What would happen if he didn’t call her back at all?
She had been so concerned with making sure she’d say everything right when the time came that she hadn’t even thought about the possibility that she might not get the chance.
Lauren walked into her apartment, stripping off her jacket and throwing it over a chair before she sank down onto the couch, staring at the screen of her cell phone.
After five minutes of silence, she tossed the phone to the other side of the couch and stood up.
She couldn’t keep torturing herself all night. Either he was going to call her, or he wasn’t, but staring at the phone for hours wasn’t going to change anything.
She was going to make herself dinner. Then she was going to take a bubble bath, something she hadn’t done in years. And maybe after that, she’d finally start watching some of the shows that had been sitting in her DVR for weeks.
But first, she needed to e-mail one of her classmates and ask for a copy of the notes from tonight’s class.
Lauren powered up her laptop, signed into her professor’s website, and found the list of students from her class. She scrolled down, clicking on the e-mail address of one of the girls she sat next to and asked for a copy of the notes she’d missed.
Then she closed out and clicked on her inbox, deleting a few spam messages and reading a hilarious forward from Jenn. Just@ finally leasi as she was about to log out, her eye landed on the e-mail from Michael, the one he’d sent a few weeks ago on Erin’s birthday.
Lauren bit her bottom lip, slowly running her finger over the track pad, and she clicked on it, rereading the words that had originally sent her into a panic.
But tonight, they made her ache.
She scrolled down to the bottom of the message and clicked on the song attachment she had refused to open that night.
The first chord broke through the silence of her apartment, giving her goose bumps.
When you try your best, but you don’t succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can’t sleep
Stuck in reverse.
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can’t replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste,
Could it be worse?
Lauren closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, trying to stop them from trembling.
And high up above or down below
When you’re too in love to let it go
But if you never try, you’ll never know
Just what you’re worth.
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you.
The sob that ripped through her throat momentarily drowned out the music, and she covered her face with her hands, trying to catch her breath. But the more she gasped, the faster the tears came until she was only hearing bits and pieces of the song intermingled with her stifled sobs.
…when you lose something you cannot replace…
…I promise you I will learn from my mistakes…
…Lights will guide you home…
and I will try to fix you.
With the music still playing, Lauren leapt from the chair and scrambled out of her room, grabbing her keys from the entryway table on her way out the door.
And then she was running down the walkway.
She hadn’t even thought to grab a jacket; the freezing February air bit at her skin, and a cold drizzle had dampened her hair by the time she got to her car.
Swiping at the tears that wouldn’t stop, Lauren sped down the road that would take her to him. They had wasted almost nine years, and she refused to waste any more time. She had to apologize. To tell him she finally understood.
She needed to tell him she had forgiven him.
By the time she had gotten to Michael’s apartment, it was pouring. Lauren jumped out of the car and ran up to his front door, ducking her head against the freezing, needle-like rain that was stinging her skin.
She rang the doorbell before wrapping her arms around herself; the cold air was becoming unbearable as her clothes quickly beca@ pulled leasime soaked through.
“Michael?” she called, knocking on the door.
When a few seconds passed and he hadn’t answered, she knocked again, a little harder this time. “Michael?”
“Hello?”
Lauren whipped her head in the direction the voice came from, squinting against the downpour. The door of the apartment next to Michael’s was open, and a small elderly woman was standing in the entryway, silhouetted with light from inside.
“Are you okay, dear?” she asked, pulling a knit cardigan a little tighter around herself.
Lauren opened her mouth to respond just as a little voice cut through the darkness.
“Miss Lauren! You came over!”