CHAPTER NINETEEN

NOBLESSE OBLIGE

( — the moral obligation of those of high birth, powerful social position, etc., to act with honor, kindliness, generosity, etc.. )

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆

          MICHAELA WATCHES LINCOLN CAREFULLY POUR HER A GLASS OF RED WINE WHILE WAITING FOR HER TO SPEAK. It clearly shows how much he has changed throughout the years, as he could barely open a bottle of champagne when they were still together, but now he does it quite effortlessly, without spilling the drink.

          He moves slowly, as if they had all the time in the world, and Michaela finds herself watching him in awe, crossing her arms over the couch and seeing him through the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. He tells her he has cut back on the wine, as it wasn't doing him any good and left him even deeper in his writer's block, but she has found out the drink has the exact opposite effect on her.

          In the short term, at least. We all know how drowsy people get when they drink, much like we know Michaela's history with alcoholic beverages. Still, she only drinks wine on special occasions, like Christmas, family reunions, and any events where all she wants to do is go back to bed. This is one of those events, because she's a mature woman who clearly knows how to properly deal with her problems.

          (Said no one ever, but let's keep it at that.)

          When Lincoln returns to the living room, carrying the crystal glass as carefully as if it were a baby, Michaela wishes she wasn't thinking about the parents they could have been. She hopes they wouldn't be like hers, always so distant, even when they're all sitting at the same table. Her parents are good parents, despite all their flaws and mistakes, but she'd like her own children to have more parental support than she did.

          "Here you go," he says, in a low voice, as he hands her the cup. She starts by holding it with both hands, treating it as if it was her laptop, her most prized possession, but quickly shifts it to her left hand.

          She doesn't trust anyone to the point of holding a cup with her right hand. Her college memories are still too fresh and, if she closes her eyes, she can almost hear the chants of her classmates insisting for her to drink everything in her cup in one go because she had been holding it with her right hand and that's the way things work when you're at college. Yale is no exception, even if it's part of the Ivy League.

          "Thank you," Michaela mutters, twirling the cup before timidly sipping the wine. The off-dry taste lingers in her tongue, briefly dehydrating her mouth with just one sip, and she doesn't even want to think about the reason he has been buying Italian wine if he's supposedly been working so damn hard on the book. "What do you want to talk about?"

          Lincoln throws her a sad smile, running a hand through his hair to brush it back, and her heart sinks. That damn smile. "I'm not sure. It feels as though we've run out of things to say after all this time, doesn't it?" One of his arms is swung over the pillows of the couch when he sits in front of her, with a leg beneath him, but the other one is draped around his stomach. If one of them moves a single inch, they'll touch—Michaela doesn't want to be the first to give in. "It sucks that things have reached this point."

          "You tell me." She stirs on her seat, but moves back almost imperceptibly, just enough to give her enough freedom. She and her skirt and cashmere sweater feel strangely out of place in an apartment she once used to call home. Lincoln, on the other hand, feels like the rightful owner of this place and everything about him, sitting on this couch in front of her, feels like coming home—his hair, more brown than red when the light hits it, pulled back into its usual bun, reminds her of Christmas. "I just . . . don't really know what to say. It's been a long time."

          He nibbles on his bottom lip. "Yeah. Two years felt like forever."

          Forever is an understatement. She could write an entire article about how missing him felt like missing a limb, but that would only reflect the toxicity that surrounded their relationship, even months before the break-up. It would show people the darkest parts of who they were together—how they didn't know how to live without each other and how that was what forced them apart.

          Michaela is eager not to make the same mistakes she did the last time. Her pulse kicks up when her eyes meet his for a brief moment and she forces herself to focus on her wine for a bit, hoping she won't say anything she'll regret later.

          "We screwed up," she continues. "I mean, it wasn't just one thing we did wrong. There are plenty of ways we went wrong, and I don't think it would have taken an entire novel to figure it out. Forgive me for saying this"—Michaela places a hand on her chest, right above her heart—"but things between us felt claustrophobic. We were too dependent on each other and that's not how I wanted to live my life. I'm certain you feel the same. We could barely do anything without each other and, when that started affecting our lives outside of our relationship—if there even was such a thing—that's when we should have stopped and tried to fix it. Except we didn't. We let it reach a boiling point and, by the time we tried to save it by going to counseling, it was too late. As much as I loved you, as much as I wanted to keep fighting for what we had, as much as I wanted you to keep fighting for us, going our separate ways was the best thing we could have done. It was like ripping off a band-aid—it all happened so quickly we didn't have time to feel the pain, at least not immediately, but, when it came, it hit us like a train." She stares down at the now empty glass. "At least it hit me."

          "I never meant to hurt you," Lincoln confesses, and she leans her cheek against his palm, lacing her fingers through his. His skin is as warm as ever, but her breath still gets hitched in her throat. "I don't . . . I don't even know what to tell you other than I'm sorry and that I wish I hadn't messed up as much as I did. I wish we had done things differently—maybe we wouldn't be sitting here like this if we had." He gulps. "I think we . . . wanted so bad to make it work that we still chose to ignore all the problems, even after counseling. That's where we went wrong."

          "Maybe we tried to fix something that couldn't be fixed." His smile drops and she lowers their hands, still keeping them over her leg. The one he's holding is the one where her engagement ring used to be, cold against her skin. "Not everything can be fixed, and maybe that's what we were. Maybe we were unfixable. Even after all we did to try to save what we had."

          Lincoln follows her stare, looking down at her knuckles. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything I put you through; I'm not trying to make excuses"—she shakes her head, as she's not completely innocent—"but you have to understand I . . . these books never left me in the right state of mind. What happened back then was me constantly stressing over deadlines and releases and sales . . . and I couldn't control that. All I could control was the number of words I wrote—at first, at least. They soon took that away from me too. I freaked out." He sniffles. "I freaked out and took it all on you. On us. I'm sorry, Mich. For everything."

          Michaela almost breaks. Almost. Instead, all she does is sigh. "I know. I'm sorry too."

          Lincoln risks a glance up. "Just so you know . . . if you ever decide you want to try to fix things and give this a second chance . . . I'm on board too. I'm willing to give it a shot if you are."

          After a particularly long moment of silence, which Michaela spends trying to weigh the pros and cons, she wipes a tear from the corner of her eye, using the hand she's holding the cup with. "I don't know. I think I need more time to think this through."

          She wants to say, thanks for believing in me. Thanks for believing in us. Even after all this time.

          Instead, he's the one who speaks next.

          "Happy Valentine's Day," he whispers, resting his forehead against hers.

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆

          THERE'S SOMETHING STRANGE ABOUT HAVING LILA CALLOWAY ON YOUR BED. She just threw herself to it, storming inside Michaela's apartment at nine in the morning on a Saturday, and has been lying on the bed for the past forty minutes, watching Michaela do her Pilates. She does Pilates and yoga and even rides her stationary bike, all while Lila does nothing other than check her phone and blabber about all she has been doing.

          Michaela missed her, though, she really did, but she's afraid this doesn't quite qualify as catching up with one another, at least not in the way she thought they would, but it's not like things have changed that much. Though Lila is nowhere nearly as chatty as Jillian—Michaela doubts there's anyone who beats Jillian's talent for small talk—they manage to make it work.

          It's a lot more than what Michaela has done with Lincoln since that first interview. 

          "Do you ever sleep?" Lila questions, dropping her phone for the first time, while Michaela wonders what could possibly be so interesting that it monopolized her friend's focus—not that what Michaela is doing is particularly appealing to anyone but herself and fitness addicts. Her stomach grumbles just by thinking about the green smoothie she'll drink once her workout is finished.

          "When I'm not working," Michaela replies, cycling faster, even though her calves already ache and scream in pain, "or eating or doing something else. So, basically, around four hours per night."

          "And you think that's healthy? I mean, Michie, you might be a vegan, eat really healthily, and work out, but, if you don't sleep, you're only going in circles. Sorry to break it down to you." Michaela huffs, gripping the handlebars tighter, with her hands threatening to slip off the bike. "You always look exhausted. I follow you on Instagram," she adds, when Michaela quirks an eyebrow. "You can hide your dark circles and drink your weight in coffee as much as you want, but people can still see it. You included."

          "I'm fine."

          "Of course you are." Lila sits up, with her bedhead looking a hundred times better than Michaela's hair before she straightens it. Michaela is envious of all of them—Jillian, Roya, Ginny, Lila, and Kelsey—as she watches them excel at everything they do, while she pours her heart into her work, her appearance, and her health, and still falls flat behind them. "I really do think there's something going on with you. How are your parents?"

          "Busy. Mom presented her collection at Fashion Week, and I think she's headed off to London in a few days. I'm not really sure." Michaela turns off the bike and stops cycling to let her muscles rest. She's panting, feeling ridiculous, and everything hurts when she leans forward to reach out for a bottle of water. "Dad's been having plenty of complicated cases. They're okay, though. They're happy with their jobs and everything else is working out for them, so there really is no reason for them to not be okay, I guess."

          "But you're not."

          "Happy with my job or happy in general?"

          "Would you kill me if I said 'both'?"

          With a tiny sigh, Michaela hops off the bike, with sweat running down her neck and chest, and she feels too sticky to want to pursue this particular conversation. "No. No, I'm not." She wipes her forehead with a small towel, already craving a shower, and Lila crosses her legs over the light-pink duvet. "I feel miserable. The only thing that keeps me minimally sane in this place is knowing the people I care about have their lives under control—in the most part, at least—and they know exactly what they want. I'm just sort of . . . here. There are Barbra's flowers . . ."

          "Barbra Streisand?" Michaela nods, with a tiny spark of enthusiasm slowly creeping its way up her spine and getting lodged in the walls of her brain. Maybe there are some enjoyable things in her life. "Wow. That's impressive. How do you know they come from her or her team, anyway? Do they send a tiny postcard sprayed with her perfume, or something?"

          Michaela stops, halfway across her room. Barbra's PR team did send a postcard along with the bouquets, at least when the flowers first started coming, which always brightened up her day. Barbra would sign them herself—Michaela could easily tell she did, as her signature didn't look exactly the same every time, as signatures can't be copy-pasted—and Michaela would smile a little at herself, knowing the woman cared about her.

          It would have sucked if she didn't. It wasn't a short interview—in fact, it was quite similar to the one she and Ginny did with Lincoln—and it took plenty of time to put together, as they had to find a compromise between Michaela's schedule and Barbra's much more hectic one, but Michaela was proud of the final product. She had put her whole heart and soul into that story, and was grateful to know all her hard work had paid off.

          Until, one day, the postcards disappeared. Michaela assumed it was because the PR team already knew Michaela had gotten used to them and felt like she didn't need to be reminded of who was sending those bouquets . . . but that's what she convinced herself of. In retrospect, it might not be true.

          "They're not from her," she mutters, leaning her shoulder blades against the wall. The sweat covering her bare skin is gelid and she's dizzy, with an annoying buzzing echoing in her ears. "They're not . . . of course not. It has been an eternity since that interview, and she has so much better things to do than send flowers to some random reporter. God." She hides her face behind her hands. "I'm so stupid. I thought—I really thought I mattered."

          "Of course you matter," Lila argues. "But Barbra is, like, super famous. She . . . she cared about you, but it wasn't—I mean, it wasn't really practical to send you flowers every day for months, or years, right? I'm not trying to put your work down, but she has been interviewed countless times. I think all celebrities are like that—they care until they find something else to do. They're very busy people, but that doesn't mean they're machines. They . . . I don't know, Mich. All of them, deep down, are like that, but—but you know."

          But not Lincoln. Of course not. Because he has always been an exception and has been constantly praised for it. 

          Michaela doesn't know which part is worse.