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I'll let you say goodbye (on another day)
“Ain't that what all us humans want? To stand a little bit taller?”
Jamie Cullum
Minutes, hours, days, weeks and months they all blur in the claws of time. Seasons pass him by, like trains at Grand Central. The kiss of a beautiful stranger fails to arouse, but he fakes it anyway. He kisses them, every pair of strange lips in the darkness of the night. He kisses them with so much urgency and yet so little dedication it almost makes his heart break into halves. Only almost, though, because he remembers then that his heart had already been broken, stomped on and thrown away like trash.
He makes them come before he allows himself the sensation of orgasm. Always the gentleman some people might say, but that is far from the truth. He makes them come first, so once it is over he can roll onto his side, close his eyes and pretend that the person next to him is somebody else, somebody so unreachable that his arms will never be long enough to grab her. He falls asleep thinking of her, the one that got away. He laughs then, at this particular train of thoughts and he adds silently that he never had her in the first place.
He wakes up in the morning to a note, usually, one that says thank you with a cell phone number scribbled on a piece of paper. He doesn't keep them. He never asks anyone home twice, doesn't want the torture of habit, not when he still remembers so vividly what her skin felt like, how her lips tasted, how she moaned and screamed out his name when she came hard with him inside of her, the last time.
He still plays the guitar, but he doesn't play for anyone else anymore. He plays Johnny Cash songs nowadays and sings quietly, feeling relief in the portrayal of pain and suffering. He does never feel sorry for himself. Frankly, he rarely ever feels anything anymore, almost as if the bullet hadn't pierced his shoulder, but rather his soul.
He thinks about her sometimes, but rarely nowadays. Sometimes he sees her on a TV screen in one bar or another, when he's talking to one girl or another and then – sometimes, but not a lot anymore, he can't help but look.
Peter Florrick, Governor of Illinois and his wife, Alicia Florrick, States Attorney of Cook County.
Do you know them, one of the girls would ask and he'd shake his head and say no. On those nights, he'd tell whoever was with him the story about how he almost got shot and how his father almost took his own life and how he almost went to law school. He'd look at the girl then and the lies would almost feel like the truth.
What do you want from life, a pretty blonde he'd taken home the night before had asked him. Irene or Iris, Isabel maybe, he can't quite remember.
What all us humans want, he'd replied, to stand a little bit taller.
He hadn't planned on moving to another city, not then. Finn had asked him to come to New York City with him for a few days. A breath of fresh air, he'd told Will, will do you good – will do us both good. The aftermath of the shooting had bound them together by their scars, by the distinct feeling of terror they shared whenever they came near a court house after that day, after Will had tried to get the gun and got shot. When Finn asked him to come to New York with him after they had both attended Judge Politi's funeral, it seemed like a good idea and so he'd said he would join the younger man on the trip.
He hadn't planned on leaving Chicago, leaving the life he had been leading until he said in a cab somewhere in downtown and David Gray was on the radio. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and silently mumbled the lyrics to a song he knew by heart.
Remember, your soul is the one thing you can't compromise.
He made a decision then, right there stuck in traffic somewhere in FiDi. He could go back, he knew that, he simply didn't want to. He didn't want many things anymore. Mostly he didn't want to settle for part-time commitment and half-truths from her. He didn't want to hold out hope for something he'd kidded himself about for too long, a chance to make it right with Alicia, to go all the way instead of blaming it all on bad timing and missed connections.
So when Diane calls Will to tell him about The Florrick Arrangement and asks him to come home, he declines politely albeit firmly.
Almost is never enough, he says and Diane laughs, despite it all, despite missing her best friend, despite missing their comfortable, steady relationship and their loyalty. She'll never tell him, she's sure of that, but she envies him and his courage to say no more and to hell with it all. Diane had been at that point in her life many times, but so far she hadn't found the courage to act on it, afraid to prove her mother right or rather to fulfill her mother's expectations.
She is at his door on a Sunday morning. It's early and he had been out the night before and it doesn't make sense, so he shakes his head in order to clear his mind. Will's sure he's still fairly drunk, so he blinks and she's still there on the other side of the threshold. She looks older, and he has to remind himself that in fact it had been only eight months since he'd left Chicago. She's got bags under her eyes and she's thinner, so much thinner than he remembers and he remembers her, all of her, even when he doesn't want to. So, he goes out at night, gets drunk and takes women home with him, blondes and redheads, never brunettes.
(He didn't bring anyone home with him last night. He almost had, though. He was talking to this woman the night before. She was nice, Will remembered, and funny and willing to go home with him. He was about to ask her if she wanted a night cap at his place when she'd asked him.
“You're the lawyer from Chicago, aren't you? The one that got shot?”
So, he paid for his drinks, excused himself and went home alone.)
“It's over,” she whispers, leaning against the frame of his door.
Will just shakes his head, never breaking eye-contact with her.
“It is,” Alicia says more firmly this time, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“No,” he replies, but steps to the side to let her in nonetheless.
Later in bed, holding her tightly against his chest, Will tells her he is not coming back, that he is never coming back. She doesn't move, lying on top of him, her head pressed to the skin above his heart. She's quiet, for the briefest of moments Will thinks she might be asleep, so he runs his fingers down her spine to the small of her back.
“My life is in Chicago.”
Will laughs then, before he realizes that he's doing it he's dropping his hands from her back. She turns her head to look at him and when she gets nothing, she shrugs back and sits up on his bed, grabbing his dress shirt from the end of the bed to cover herself.
Alicia wants to ask What's so funny, but she doesn't. Twenty plus years of this odd dance between them have taught them both well, made them not ask the questions they didn't want answered.
“I didn't ask you to stay,” Will finally says.
What he doesn't say is this.
For once I didn't ask you for anything and you still make it sound like I do. I didn't ask you to choose, didn't ask you to sacrifice, didn't ask you to leave it all behind too. I didn't do that, because I know that you never would.
It's a harsh truth, Will knows, but it is the truth nonetheless.
She says I love you then, like that solves everything, like that possesses the ability to fix what they'd help tear down for the last twenty years – a chance at happiness with each other.
Love was never their problem, trust was, trusting each other and themselves.
It doesn't end in that moment, it ended the moment he woke up in the hospital. It ended when he woke up as the hero he never was and never would be. William Paul Gardner, convicted felon and hero of the Cook County courthouse.
“So, what is this?” Alicia asks later.
“Goodbye,” Will shrugs and says. “We just took a long time to say goodbye.”
“No.” Alicia breathes and tears well up in her eyes. “No.”
She leans forward then and presses her lips against his lips, she breathes no against his mouth over and over again until he gives in, until he kisses her back. She moves into his lap and he takes off his dress shirt she'd put on earlier. She moves against his groin and he is hard against the wetness of her sex in a few moments. She lifts her hips and guides him into her as she sinks down she moans and her head rolls back. She moves above him and his mouth closes over her right nipple, biting down on it before letting his tongue soothe the pain he'd inflicted moments before. This version of them is – and always was the one constant in his life, this tumbled mess of unfulfilled desires and needs and urgency. His thumb finds her clit and he starts to rub circles around her bundle of nerves. They come quickly, they always do when they are like this, vulnerable to each other's touch, awkwardly aware of how much they mean to each other. When she comes she moans his name against his ear and it sounds more like I love you. He almost falters then, almost tells her he loves her, that he's probably loved her ever since Georgetown. He doesn't, though, she never got that message and he keeps it his secret, out of spite or caution, he doesn't really know himself.
She doesn't say This is the happiest I've ever been. and he doesn't say To hell with bad timing!. Instead, he sends her home to Chicago, sends her back to Peter, like he's done many times before.
Alicia leaves a note on his nightstand. He reads it and smiles.
I can see it in your eyes. I see it all the time. You've been cheering in the stands all of my life. - A.
Her marriage doesn't last for much longer, publicly that is. Peter is caught with his pants down once again and Will doesn't feel bad for her this time, doesn't feel the rising anger toward Peter like he'd felt it before. Will knows that she's steeled herself against this kind of thing, against Peter's indiscretions and public attention to her private matters. The divorce is a public spectacle and it takes away from Alicia's achievements as State's Attorney and he is angry about that. Despite everything, despite the trust issues they'd shared in anything and everything romantic between them, he's always believed in her as a lawyer.
Life doesn't change for them, not in a big way.
Months pass and she comes to visit him many times. They talk and fuck and make no plans for the future, because maybe they realize that there is none.
What they don't know is that while he was moving on top of her the last time she came to visit, a Glioplastoma was growing in his brain. He's diagnosed with the terminal illness ten days later. He doesn't tell her, instead he books himself a plane ticket around the world. She's in the middle of elections and he's only got a few months to live.
He doesn't call or let her know where he is at any time. On the last day he's spending in a country he writes her a note. He doesn't want to see him like this, dying, he adds in his mind bitterly. He's not bitter about dying itself, he's bitter that he has to go this way, in this torturous, ungraceful way that cancer takes someone. He's bitter about that. The last note he sends her, he's sending from Rio. He doesn't know it's the last, but he knows there won't be many more. The headaches are getting unbearable, the nausea is making getting up in the morning harder and harder to do. He sits down at the desk in his hotel room with a glass of single-malt scotch and writes.
Alicia gets the note a week later, one day after he died in a hotel room in Cancun, Mexico and one day before Diane calls her to let her know their friend had passed from a disease neither women knew about. She grabs the note and stares at it, tears running down her cheeks.
When you're standing on the cross-roads that you cannot comprehend, just remember death is not the end. All your dreams have vanished and you don't know what's up the bend, just remember death is not the end. - W.
He never tells her that she was his last first kiss, that she was she was his last first time, that she was his last first of anything. He doesn't tell her any of it, because he knows he'd have to tell her the reason why, he'd have to tell her that he never felt for anybody the way he loved her, loved her more. He doesn't tell her, because he knows it wouldn't do any good. He's dying and nothing he does or says will change his fate – or hers for that matter. So, he doesn't tell her, but he leaves a note in his will for Alicia and hopes she knows what to do with it.
Alicia,
The hardest part was leaving you.
- W