Adelaide

by Genevieve Wheeler

Rory had called ahead, requesting a room with two single beds at the villa, which broke Adelaide’s heart just a bit.

I’m sorry, she said. I’m losing my mind and I’m sorry. Maybe we just need a few days to breathe and reset and figure this out.

She hadn’t realized she’d hoped Rory might offer to view the flats with her until he didn’t.

Couldn’t get an English girl, could you, Rory? he said, turning away from Adelaide. I tried, Rory said. None of them would have me.

(Was Adelaide being overly sensitive again, or was this a cruel thing to say in her presence? She felt it was.)

She was growing fatigued of the constant comparisons. Perhaps they’d be better off friends, she thought again.

All of those words, those books, that love. All of it felt wasted on someone who didn’t want it, someone who would let it all burn.

But it wasn’t fine, and something inside of Adelaide twisted. Had she misplaced her priorities? she wondered.

Actually, Madison said. One more thing, then we’ll drop it for real. I’ve been holding my tongue for months now, but Rory? He doesn’t fucking love you, Adelaide. He doesn’t show up for you. She was tying a knot in the garbage bag, still avoiding eye contact, but her words knocked the wind out of Adelaide. A gut punch. I know that’s hard to accept, she continued. I know that’s a tough pill to swallow, but you’ve got to stop putting him above everything else in your life, okay? Enough already. It’s enough. Adelaide bit her cheek, nodded her head. Madison left for Anurak’s. She sobbed in the shower—so hurt by Madison’s words, so desperate to believe they weren’t true. (So ashamed to know that they were.)

(The reality, of course, is that Rory was looking to patch up a Nathalie-sized void. No person was big enough to stretch across that hole in his heart and hold it together—though Adelaide really did try. But even this knowledge couldn’t make it all hurt any less.)

This doesn’t need to be a long drawn-out conversation. I wish you the best, but I’m done now. This is done.

He would challenge her. He would say he’d had a terrible year, that he’d been suffering for so long.

No, she would say. I’m not buying the victim narrative right now. You intentionally betrayed my trust an...

What he loved, truthfully, were the perks that came with dating a woman like Adelaide. The sex, the cupcakes, the little surprises she sent to his door—Adventures in the Screen Trade, takeaway dinners, a new wallet when his fell apart. He wanted her generosity, her caretaking. But he also wanted stability, and Adelaide Williams couldn’t offer that.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? How easy it is to care for something once it’s no longer ours.

She wanted to be here, on this earth—to squeeze her friends’ hands on their wedding days, to kiss their babies, to send care packages to her family for their birthdays. But she also just wanted to die. To leave. If she felt more secure in her faith—safer in the knowledge that heaven existed, that she was guaranteed entry—she would have done it. She would have left.

There are three things I know for sure: I fell in love, and then I broke, and now I’m trying to piece myself back together.

Sometimes, Meg would remind her, things need to fall apart before they can come together in their rightful place.

Sickness feels different when it takes place inside your head, Adelaide thought. When the illness flows through the chemicals of your mind rather than clogged sinuses or broken bones. No illness is ever really linear. But the thing is, once you’ve gotten so sick you nearly kill yourself, your mind knows where it can go. It knows that no recesses are out of bounds or off-limits.

There was no equation in which she was not overwhelmingly kind. She had been more good than bad, by every measure. She had been enough.