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  Leaving Me Behind

  A Novel

  Sigal Ehrlich

  For Tom, Bar and Daniel

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LEAVING ME BEHIND

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you’re reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  Copyright © 2015 by Sigal Ehrlich. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Cover designed by Damon of www.Damonza.com

  Cover Art:

  Copyright © Shutterstock 57813955

  Editing by Nicole Hornbaker Langston

  Jenny Sims of www.editing4indies.com

  Formatted by Polgarus Studio http://www.polgarusstudio.com/

  Published by Author Sigal Ehrlich OÜ

  Visit the author website:

  http://www.sigalehrlich.com

  ISBN: 978-0-9914007-6-8 (eBook)

  ISBN: 978-0-9914007-7-5 (print)

  Version 2015.06.05

  “De ilusión también se vive.”

  A Spanish proverb.

  (Also of hope and aspiration do we live)

  Shut down, wait for the screen to blacken.

  Grab purse, shove close to heart, necessary belongings.

  Take one last sip of determination from the lukewarm coffee.

  Stand up, straighten pose.

  Walk out, close door.

  Keep on walking, seal out noises, avoid eye contact.

  Start car, direction: airport.

  Drive. Stay focused on the target.

  Buy ticket. Check-in. Board plane.

  Get the hell away!

  I heave a lengthened, full of missed potential sigh and resume putting together the last details of the kickass presentation for our new client. My escape plan, regretfully yet again, tucked away in my coward mental drawer – the one so packed it’s about to burst.

  The number of times and versions this same scenario has played out in my mind over the last couple of years would be somewhere in the comfortable zone of above a bazillion. Not today…

  “Ready?” Saul’s voice yanks me back from a brief “escape” lapse. I inch up to meet his eyes above my screen. Saul. Saul Cohen, my personal Yoda. Salt and pepper short do, trimmed goatee, red, wire rim glasses, pinstripe suit, as ever an embodiment of style with an old-school touch. Saul, who snatched me and tucked me under his wise wing right after I graduated from college and came to my first intimidating interview at corporate kingdom. From day one, he worked me to the bones, mercilessly. From day one, he started teaching me everything I know. From day one, I worshipped him.

  Quickly, we became a team. He managed and I executed. He taught, and I drank every single word. We remained an inseparable team. Even when a larger firm lured Saul to work for them, he insisted that I be a part of the deal. The same company that a couple of years later was sold to an even larger corporation, leaving us, the employees, with more cushion in our bank accounts than we could have ever dreamed for. Yes, one of those Cinderella story companies. Let’s just say that if I handle my finances wisely, which luckily is my field of expertise, I won’t have to work another day in my life, if I want. Neither would Saul or anyone from the core team who were in the right place at the right cha-ching time.

  “You’re flying solo today,” Saul says, seizing one of the granola bars on my desk.

  “I better be.” I pull out the memory stick from my PC, stand up, and redo my ponytail to make sure no loose ends are going wild.

  “Took the chocolate one.” His lips quirk up in a tease.

  “Put that back this second! No one messes with my chocolate. Ever!” I feign a scowl, tucking my shirt, adjusting it inside my black, knee-length pencil skirt.

  Saul chuckles lightly and gestures with his hand toward the door. We make our way to the boardroom to discuss the strategy we chose just before the show I’m about to put on to bait the new software wonder boy, gazillionaire to go for our financial consulting services.

  Chapter 1

  “Resolution”

  Matt Corby

  “Stop looking at me like I’m some gourmet dish.”

  “Gourmet dish?” I snort. “I’d say maybe the house specialty from a decent, greasy grill joint.” He briefly chuckles and I continue watching Kai put the last items in his carry-on with a mildly heavy heart. His dirty blond strands fall forward to veil his forehead. He combs his fingers through the messy clusters, pushing them back. His gray eyes squint at the gigantic cameras waiting next to the almost packed suitcase. He pivots my way with raised eyebrows sensing my eyes still on him.

  “How long will it be this time?” I ask.

  “Missing me already, Scarlet?”

  I send my eyes to the ceiling and kick my heels to the floor. They land on the bedside rug just below where I’m propped on Kai’s bed.

  “Scarlet, really? We’re back to that? For the millionth time, I only wish I looked even a bit like her. The only resemblance between me and one of the hottest actresses out there is that we're both curvy. Only, she rocks it . . . and I don’t.” The last part comes out with a huff.

  His lips pull at the corner into his trademark cocky smile. “Okay, don’t bite my head off. So you look like her, only you're heavier.” His eyes take a devilish glee.

  “Fuck you, Kai.”

  “Oh, thank you.” He grins. His smile melts into a thin line as he eyes me next. “You know I think you have a killer bod, right?”

  I just twist my mouth in ridicule in place of a response. He twists his in frustration as if to say, “You’re impossible.”

  “So, how long?” I ask again.

  Slowly, cleaning one of the camera lenses with a special cloth, Kai answers, “Indefinitely.” And the bastard has the audacity to smile at me with full-blown excitement. The new assignment, he tells me with way too much annoying zeal for my liking, is for an undefined period of time traveling across South America. This time, the magazine he works for as a freelance travel photographer is sending him to capture the “spirit of South America.”

  “I’m getting drinks,” I say over my shoulder, striding into the kitchen.

  I find Kai cleaning a different lens when I return with our drinks. He sets it aside as I hand him a cold beer.

  “Indefinite sounds like a pretty long time to me,” I say flatly, taking a long sip from my water. I tried hard, very hard, for my reply not to sound as dry and petty as it came out.

  “That it is.” He gulps from the brown bottle, tipping his head back, delight radiating from his features. His eyes with their tiny age signs scan me. “Hey, drop the excitement-killing face. I’m not dying. I’m just going away for a while.”

  I frown, thinking of how I hate it when he is on a shoot. Yep, I’m acting like some whiny girlfriend, which I’m definitely
not. Not a whiner and not his girlfriend. I choose to stop nagging and instead just go with, “You jerk, you are sending me to the lion’s pit alone?” Lion’s pit, as in yet another engagement party we were both invited to. Another engagement party we are both less than inclined to go to. It takes him a moment to follow. His response comes as a mix between a snort and a laugh; he gazes at me amused.

  “You can see it as payback for that disgustingly tacky one I had to go to alone when, you big shot, went to that ‘geeks are us’ convention.”

  “Geeks are us,” I murmur, not letting it rub in. “Financial consulting is the new black.” Instead of continuing our usual banter, I add, “Whatever.” It’s just not in me today. “You know, I just, well, do better when you’re around.”

  He nods, sending me that stare he reserves especially for me. “Well, dear mine, life’s a bitch and we’re all getting screwed from time to time, so just loosen up and enjoy the ride.”

  I eye him for a long moment as he resumes cleaning his state of the art sacred photography equipment and shake my head.

  I’ve known Kai forever.

  When we first met, I was wearing a red corduroy overall, and he was wearing a Star Wars faded shirt and a map of scratches and wounds across his legs. I had puffy pigtails; he sported the wildest dirty blond mane. I was holding a Barbie, and he played with the wheel of a skateboard held tight to his chest.

  It was when my mom brought the traditional welcome-coming-to-check-if-you-fit-our-standards pie when Kai’s family moved to the pale green house next to ours that Kai took “big brother” custody over me. Though there are almost three years between us, throughout childhood and until this very moment we were, and still are, best friends. That is, of course, minus a couple of years in which I had the hugest crush on him and felt awkward every time he was around. When I finally gathered all the courage I had in me and told him how I felt, his playful dismissal slammed me, ending in the most humiliating pat in the history of humiliating pats on the head. It took me almost an additional year to get over that, or it might have just been me finally maturing.

  It was years later, after Kai’s beloved grandma passed away, that we pulled a soul-bearing all-nighter by the pier and discussed that incident among other emotional consuming subjects. More focused and cynical in our early twenties, we agreed to declare ourselves best friends with no benefits, none whatsoever, ever! So help us God and cold showers. And in the same breath made the ultimate opposite gender BFFs pack; that if, by the age of thirty-five, we were both still single, we’d marry each other. If our young souls only knew how we’d both feel by the time we reached our thirties, in terms of commitment and life, in general, they would have been horrified. Maybe even disinclined to grow up at all.

  “Kai, I think it’s time,” I say to some indistinct point I’m fixated on.

  “Time?” he asks, carefully putting his camera in its casing. The idea of Kai leaving for an extended period feels different this time. It spreads fuel inside of me, the fuel that quickly sets my courage and determination on fire. It’s as if he just kicked my passive dream’s ass to start moving.

  “I think I’m finally going to do it.” The registration flashes like lightning on his face. Kai reads me like no one else does. We don’t need many words between us; we never did.

  He stares at me for an assessing beat. “No offense, but I’ll believe it when I see your ass on a plane.”

  I can literally feel it, together with the wild thud of my heart and the sudden edginess. I just know it. I’m going through with it. The plan couldn’t be riper. In fact, it’s so ripe it’s about to decay. It had been building inside of me for the longest time. At first, the idea of giving up my comfortable life was terrifying. For ages, my dull-to-boredom existence has been revolving around my very rewarding job, and well, just that. Everything about my life on paper is just plain perfect, something to strive for, an object of envy. But it is all in great contrast to how I feel inside.

  I am living the successful big city life. But it’s all too much. And it’s all too little.

  The life I’m leading is a pale excuse for the one I really wish for myself. The little simple thing that is missing in my so-called impeccable reality is enjoyment. I’ve envisioned leaving it all countless times in my mind. The idea always felt like it would be taking a leap into a raging waterfall, not knowing where it would take me or how wild the ride would be. Thinking about it now, the fact that I wasn’t complete, truly smiling from within, reached the surface by my twenties. This becoming an adult, doing the right thing suggested by society, the good-bye carefree-liberty era.

  It was hard to ignore that for everyone around but me, the pieces of the adulthood puzzle had started to align. All my friends began to boast engagement rings with winning smiles and that spark in their eyes as if they’d successfully achieved their lifelong goal.

  And me? I just couldn’t relate to that; I didn’t understand what the fuss was all about. I, hand on heart, didn’t and still don’t. Next were those over-the-top, ostentatious weddings, where doves were sent into the air while a string quartet played in celebration and, ugh, fireworks.

  They all looked so happy; all I wanted to do was hurl.

  And then those dreadful words, “ovulation, genetic tests, pregnancy,” sneaked into my world, unwanted, unbidden, and most definitely uninvited. When those actual baby bumps showed up among my acquaintances, I was so freaked I just felt like putting on my running shoes and pulling a Forrest Gump until I was as far away as possible. Frankly, for me, a pet was too much to handle. Who am I kidding? Even a harmless cactus found its doomed death in my care. Somehow, it felt always as if it was me against society’s expectations and life’s natural course. Actually, truth be told, it wasn’t just me; it was Kai and me.

  It was always Kai and me.

  And it’s not a surprise that the actual wake-up call is subconsciously hollered from my partner in crime’s mouth.

  “I’m serious,” I say in a more determined tone.

  Kai keeps watching me for a short moment with knitted brows and the beer bottle’s mouth next to his lips.

  “Well, you know my opinion on the subject. Like I told you just about a gazillion times before, Liv, I think you should do it.”

  I nod and grab his laptop, starting to browse for properties to rent in this place I’ve been obsessively, secretly fantasizing about: a tiny Spanish coastal town by the Mediterranean Sea. As I check out the first few houses, I think about how the idea just became an enlightenment, an illumination to the celestial of where my life should be heading. Now that it finally reached my recognition, I’m so pumped it feels like I can’t spend any additional moment doing what I’ve been doing for a decade, and then some. The same thing that got me entirely withered.

  The core of my burn: I want to wake up somewhere else, somewhere completely new. Explore new places, meet new people, experience life, and experience the joys of life rather than the daily comfortable and reliable, mundane routine. I just can’t wait to get away and completely disconnect from all that’s jadedly familiar.

  “I am doing it!” I say, luminously grinning.

  Kai returns my stare with a rare mixture of pride and skepticism. He touches his glass bottle to my plastic one.

  “It’s about time.”

  Chapter 2

  “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams”

  69 Eyes

  My eyes run over the sign on the heavy door before me. No matter how many times I’ve childishly snickered when I read this sign, it always has the same effect.

  Dr. Schmurtaz.

  Yeah, only I could have a shrink called Dr. Smartass.

  Familiar rituals take place. His same ol’ throat clearing, my same ol’ fidgeting. The same small, cultivated argument about me not willing to dissect the one subject he’s got the hots for . . . My mother.

  I look out the window at the sky that lazily morphs into gray. The good head doc doesn’t have to say much; his piercing eyes alone mak
e me doubt myself and squirm in the luxurious sofa as he stares at my restless fingers molesting a little piece of paper I am ripping to smaller and smaller shreds. “I guess you think I’m running away, huh?” I say, my eyes still glued to my finger’s hard labor, deliberately avoiding the stare I know I would be facing if I lift them an inch.

  “Is that what you think you are doing, escaping?” I hate how he never really answers my questions but rather redirects my words my way, and in the most annoying, condescending manner.

  “No, I’m just taking a break; a well-deserved one, if you ask me,” I say while tightening my grip, maybe a tad too forcefully, around the pile of confetti I’ve crafted.

  “A break,” he says and types something in his black notebook. “In another country? For the foreseeable future? I can’t see how this can be considered a break.” His eyes lift above the thin framed, square glasses resting on his nose to observe me, his features as ever, placid.

  “I am not running away,” I almost scream at the plaid mustard and brown sweater in front of me, again, avoiding the look I’m sure as hell is waiting to trap me in.

  Why can’t I ever stay poised during our sessions? Maybe he is deliberately driving me crazy with his impassive tactic so I’ll never stop treatment? So he can add a little sailboat to his lake house?

  “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned running away, and that is why I can’t refrain from asking you, Liv. Is this what you feel you are doing?” Again, an aggravating, makes-you–want-to-jump-off-your-seat-and-slam-the-door-behind-you question.

  When I stand up to throw my hand’s contents into a leather, brown bin, I murmur, “No.”