Emancipating Andie

He knew what it looked like a little while ago; swollen shut, the skin pulled tight over the purpley-pink lump. He doubted it looked any better now.

“What happened?” she asked with alarm, and he looked up at her, exhaling heavily.

Chase watched her eyes change as the realization finally hit her. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “How?”

He knew exactly what she was asking, and he gestured halfheartedly at the coffee table. Andie turned, catching sight of Chase’s crumpled soccer shirt in the center of it. “He found it when he went to your place to pick up his stuff,” he mumbled.

It was a moment before she turned back to him. “I just don’t understand this,” she said, her voice pained. “It was my decision to break up with him. My choice. You didn’t do anything. You never even touched me when I was still with him. Why would he do this to you?”

Chase laughed bitterly. “Well what did you expect him to do? Shake my hand? Congratulate me on nailing the girl he wanted to marry? Offer to compare notes?”

She jerked her head back slightly, looking somewhat wounded. After a stu

“Does it hurt?” she asked gently, reaching out to touch him.

Chase moved his head out of her reach as he put the pizza back on his eye. It bothered him that she had given him a free pass for that last comment, that she was being so kind to him right now. He deserved to suffer a little.

“It’s just a black eye, Andie. Believe me, he’s hurting much worse than I am.”

She dropped her hand back to her side, lowering her eyes. “You hit him?”

“No, I didn’t hit him,” he scoffed. “We both knew I had this coming. He had every right to do this. Why the hell would I hit him?”

“I just thought…you said he was hurting much worse than you.”

“Yeah, I meant because his heart just got ripped out of his goddamn chest by two people he trusted. Not really something a frozen pizza can take care of.”

She dropped her eyes again, and Chase saw her chin tremble. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said, her breath catching before she added, “I’m a terrible person.”

He laughed humorlessly at the very sentiment he’d been chastising himself with for the past half hour. “Well then, we really are a match made in heaven, aren’t we? He should be thanking his lucky stars he’s rid of us.”

Andie lifted her eyes to his; there was a hint of anger behind them, warring with the hurt that had been swimming there since she’d realized Colin had done this. She shook her head slightly before she whispered, “What is wrong with you?”

He laughed softly before sighing. Did she really not know the answer to that?

“The same thing that was wrong with me the night I met you in Justin’s wine cellar, and that first morning we drove to Florida, and the night I offered to give you a piano lesson. The same thing that will be wrong with me tomorrow, and next month, and next year.” He took the pizza off his eye and turned toward her, his voice impassive. “I’m an asshole, Andie.”

She stared blankly at him until he turned away from her to look back up at the ceiling again, and Chase felt the couch dip as she stood.

“Yes, you are.”

He closed his eyes and brought the pizza back to the swelling, and he heard a slight rustling sound accompanied by footsteps; his door opened and then slammed shut, and Chase listened as the clicking of her heels in the hallway faded away until there was nothing.

This time, Chase didn’t have the luxury of being oblivious to time; he felt every second, every minute that passed after the door closed behind her.

It was seven minutes of deep breathing before his heart rate slowed and bordered on regular again. It was ten minutes before the pizza had thawed completely and the wrapping started to come apart in his hands, and it was another five minutes before he even gave a shit. After he’d gotten rid of the soggy mess that remained, it was twelve more minutes of cursing the clusterfuck of a self-fulfilling prophecy that had destroyed this entire evening. He had been so bothered by the fact that Colin called him out for being a prick that he turned around and acted like one to the person who deserved it the least.

Chase was sitting up on his couch now; the throb behind his eye had diminished some and his thoughts were much clearer than they had been a half hour ago. He just kept wishing she hadn’t shown up at his place when she did. If she had come now, he wouldn’t have been such a snarky, insensitive jerk. In his current frame of mind, he would have been able to act like a human, to comfort her, to reassure her.

To take care of her, the way he promised her he would.

“Shit,” he mumbled to himself, ru

He had thought he wanted to be alone tonight, but as he stood in his living room looking over at his kitchen floor, at the grocery bags strewn where she had dropped them in the broken glass, he realized how badly he wanted her there.

With a heavy sigh he walked over to the mess in the kitchen. He was going to clean up, and then he was going to call her and ask her to come back. He’d beg her if he had to. He didn’t even care if they had di

As Chase knelt down and used a piece of cardboard to sweep the shards of glass into a pile, he took slow, deep breaths, exhaling the bitterness and shame that had been consuming him since Colin’s visit. With every inhale, he focused instead on what it would feel like when Andie was with him again.

Because that feeling was what made all the other shit tonight worth it.

After he had swept up all the glass and wiped the floor down, he put Andie’s groceries away and went to the bathroom to check out his eye one last time.

“Shit,” he exhaled, bringing his fingertips to the lump. It had changed from dark pink to a bluish-purple, and he was still unable to open it fully. It was going to look like hell for the next few days.

Chase sighed as he closed the light and walked out of the bathroom. It was going to be extremely difficult to take Andie’s mind off what had happened with a constant reminder literally staring her in the face.

He grabbed his cell phone and hit the button to call her, closing his eyes when it went straight to voicemail.

He should have expected as much. He wouldn’t want to talk to himself either if he were her. Still, he hit the button to try again, already walking toward the closet for his shoes. And when he heard her voice, asking him to leave a message, he hung up and grabbed his keys before heading out the door.

She could ignore his calls all night, but she wouldn’t leave him standing outside her door for very long. He was sure of that.

Chase jogged down the steps and through the lobby, stopping short as soon as his feet hit the pavement outside.

Her car was still parked in front of his building.

He pulled his brow together and turned, looking as far down the block as he could before he turned and looked the other way. There was nowhere for her to go here, no restaurants or stores or anything within reasonable walking distance. Where could she have gone without her car? His neighborhood certainly wasn’t the type of place someone would want to take a walk around to blow off steam.

Chase decided to make a lap around the block anyway, in case she had taken off in her frustration without really thinking about her surroundings.