Status: All finished! :)

One More Night

Chapter 11

“Okay, you have to spill the beans Bree! It’s killing me to see you like this,” Anna groaned. She’d came over for coffee on Bree’s day off – presumably to tell her all about getting back together with Mike – and Bree still hadn’t managed to pull herself totally together yet after Marc leaving the way he had. She’d tried to be strong – convinced herself he’d left the way he had just because he didn’t want to hurt her, so he wasn’t leaving her hanging on back here while he was in New York and wherever else. Unfortunately that didn’t make the pain of him leaving any less.

“I’ll be fine Anna – really. Just working through something, it’s not important,” she tried to shrug it off, but the expression on Anna’s face told her that her friend wasn’t going to just let it drop.

“Bree, seriously. What is going on? You look devastated,” Anna’s voice was softer this time, and Bree sighed, fiddling with the stir stick of her coffee. She didn’t want to talk about Marc, and more so she wasn’t sure if she should talk about him. They hadn’t told anybody about being together, so to Bree, that meant not telling anybody after the fact. It wasn’t that she was ashamed – far from it, Marc was incredible – but it hurt far too much. Reliving everything that had gone on with him so Anna would understand would more than likely end up with Bree in tears once again, something she didn’t want to happen. It had been nearly a week since he’d left; she was sure she’d get over it soon.

“I am. But I need to figure it all out myself, okay? When I know how to deal with it I’ll let you know,” she sighed, and looked up to see Anna nearly in tears.

“You sure? Bree you really look like something awful happened to you. You know I’m here for you, right? No matter what,” Bree nodded, and gladly accepted the hug Anna offered. She then tried her best to change the topic to something lighter, and soon got Anna talking about Mike. It was easy to just smile and nod, not really pay attention – especially when hearing how happy Anna was with Mike caused a little pang of jealousy that Bree no longer had that – and while she felt bad about zoning out on her best friend’s obviously exciting news, she did it anyway.

Mike and Anna had made up, deciding this time to give it a completely committed, one-hundred percent plus effort, hoping that there would no longer be any of the off and on they’d had for so long. Bree offered some encouragement, excited smiles, but in the back of her mind all she could think about was Marc. The worry that she should have pushed them trying the long-distance thing still ate away at her; maybe he was just scared about a relationship becoming more serious, and that had been the cause of the breakup. There were so many ifs floating around in Bree’s head it was enough to make her nauseous.

But every last one pointed back to Marc, and being with Marc.

Bree wasn’t an idealist; she had her feet firmly planted on the ground, and had been that way since she was a little girl. She didn’t fall head over heels for somebody and start picturing the fairy-tale proposal and wedding and happily ever after. She took things as they were, and had learned to live in the moment. Being this torn up over Marc, who for all intents and purposes was nothing more than a ‘summer fling’, was eating away at her. For the first time Bree had felt like she’d found somebody who she could spend the rest of her life with. And she’d let him walk away without so much as putting up a fight.

What scared her was the unknown. What if he was the one? What if Marc was her happy ever after and she’d let him walk away and leave to New York and they’d never see each other again, but always wonder what would have happened.

She tried to rationalize that it worked both ways. What if they just weren’t meant to work out? What if there was a whole other side to him that she didn’t know about that would render them completely incompatible? That’s what Bree tried to grasp and hold on to, but somehow she still clung to the memory of him.

“Earth to Bree?” her head snapped up, eyes wide as Anna waved a hand in front of her face. She must have really zoned out that time.

“Yeah? Sorry,”

Anna’s expression softened and she wrapped her arms around her best friend. “You’re not okay Bree. I don’t know what happened, but I know it must’ve been big. A guy?”

“Yeah, a guy,” Bree finally admitted. She didn’t need to tell Anna the details, but she knew it would eat away at Anna the same way it was eating away at her. Anna mothered everybody around her, and sympathized with everybody’s situation whether she needed to or not.

“Honey I’m sorry… was he a douche?” she asked. Bree let out a strangled laugh then; Marc was everything but.

“No, he wasn’t. He was perfect, actually,” the words seemed to just flow from her mouth. “He… he works in New York; comes back here for the summer. He broke it off because he didn’t want to leave me hanging on here when I could supposedly ‘deserve so much better’.”

Anna’s eyes watered up then, and Bree found her breathing slightly constricted by her friend’s tightened grip on her.

“Bree I’m so sorry. If he comes back every summer maybe you two will meet up again next summer? Maybe right now just wasn’t the right time, you know? Fate and serendipity and all of that stuff?”

Bree had to laugh then. Leave it to Anna to find the brightest possible way to look on what appeared to be such a bleak situation. She shrugged, before removing Anna’s arms from around her so that she would be able to breath.

“Maybe. Hopefully – I mean, he’s only been gone for like a week, but I’ve wanted to call him so many times…” she sighed, trailing off as the misery once again surrounded her. Anna gave her a knowing look, and sighed.

“You fell really hard for him, didn’t you?”

Bree stuttered and floundered trying to find an answer for her, before settling on nodding. No use denying it when it was so blatantly obvious.

“Yeah. I could actually picture it being something with him, you know? It’s stupid, we only knew each other for a little more than two months,” she grumbled, and Anna shrugged this time.

“Sometimes it’s unexplainable Bree. It might not make sense, but that doesn’t mean it meant any less,” there were the sagely words of wisdom she had anticipated from Anna, and Bree gave her a thankful smile.

“We’ll see, I guess,”