My stomach hasn’t stopped turning since I left Jared in the hotel yesterday. Guilt has followed me around like a little black cloud, floating over my head. I’m so damn confused because if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I should even feel guilty. But here I am, being dragged under anyway. I thought being with Jared would help, that it might wake me up a little from the bad dream that’s become my marriage. But it’s just made me feel worse.
And Jared …
Christ. I feel fucking terrible, not to mention embarrassed. What must he think of me? This wife, who has everything but is still miserable, and cries her woes into his lovely chest? Oh, dear God.
But I can’t deny that any and all guilt disappeared the moment he made me feel important and cared for again. It’s crazy how much you miss something you didn’t even pay much attention to beforehand. Leo would always find excuses to touch me, kiss me, and show me in little ways how much he loved me. So having just a tiny bit of that back? Yeah, I can’t stop thinking about it. About how much I took it for granted before.
I’d been starving, and Jared fed my weary heart in a way that I hadn’t expected him to.
I lift the now finished cardigan up in the air to study it. It’s tiny and peach in color, and it’s going to look adorable on an infant. Rising from the couch, I lay it down on the coffee table to snap a quick photo with my phone. I’ll upload it to my Etsy store later tonight.
I pull the lasagna out of the oven, serving some up onto the kids’ plates after calling out to them. If Leo comes home while we’re eating in the kitchen, so be it. He didn’t come home for dinner last night, which I was thankful for. When he did get home afterward, I ignored him and barely mustered up a hello with how tumultuous I was feeling inside. I was scared my guilt would be written all over my face. Like a blazing yellow flashing sign above my head read ‘guilty’ with an arrow pointing down at me. I shake my head, laughing darkly to myself. I have no idea why I’m letting this tear me into even more pieces when he’s made it very clear that he doesn’t even give a shit.
Charlie comes in and takes a seat on a stool at the island, dragging his plate toward him and digging in right away. “Where’s your sister?” I ask, placing a glass of water in front of him.
He shrugs, mumbling around a mouth full of food, “I dunno.”
I wipe my hands on a dish towel before going to find her.
“Greta, dinner’s ready!” I call out as I walk up the stairs.
“One minute!” she hollers, sounding a little panicked.
Frowning, I walk down the hallway, checking her room and finding it empty when I hear a, “Crap. Oh, no …” come from our spare bedroom.
I walk in to find her in my silk and lace ivory wedding dress. The long gown pools on the floor around her small frame. My heart plummets painfully into my stomach when I see her staring down at the tattered, frayed skirt.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to see how I’d look if I one day grew up and got married.” She bites her trembling bottom lip. “I was trying to take it off, and I accidentally stepped on it, in your beautiful wedding shoes.” She winces.
I grab the doorjamb and try to think, try to calm my emotions. It’s not entirely her fault. I should’ve known that keeping it in the closet in here—and with her penchant for dressing up—that she’d one day find it.
“It’s okay,” I finally whisper, but I don’t know if I’m trying to reassure her or myself.
She nods, her chin wobbling. “Can you fix it?”
I walk over to her, gently pulling her arms from the fabric and letting it fall to the floor as I pick her up and lift her over it.
“Maybe. I’ll see what I can do.” Though like many other things, I know it’s ruined, and I shouldn’t even bother trying. But she doesn’t need to know that.
I help her out of my jeweled ivory peep-toe wedding shoes.
“Go wash up. Your dinner is in the kitchen waiting for you,” I say quietly.
She goes to leave, pausing in the doorway as she watches me stare at the puddle of material on the floor.
“Are you coming, Mommy?” Her voice is hesitant, unsure.
“Yep. I’ll just look at this and be right down.” I give her what I hope is a reassuring smile then hear her run down the stairs to the kitchen.
Sighing, I sit down in front of my wedding dress and just stare at it for a minute. Looking at it, I can’t help but think it’s kind of symbolic, really. After everything that’s happened, something that was once so perfect now sits ruined before me. When I think back to that day, where the sun seemed to bless us as it showered us in rays of warm light, I never would’ve pictured we’d be where we are now. But then again, my eighteen-year-old self never would have dreamed that the notorious player and captain of our college swim team would have set his sights on me for anything other than a one-night stand either.
“Go out with me,” he says over the loud thumping bass of the music that blares from the frat house behind us.
I start to laugh, feeling a little lightheaded from the three beers I’ve already had. “For the third time, no.”
He frowns down at me, and I feel kind of bad. He’s determined; I’ll give him that much. “Look, there are a ton of girls here who’d give you what you want in a heartbeat. And I’m sorry, but I’m not one of them.” I watch Samantha Hall give me the stink eye before giving Leo a flirtatious smile when he glances over to see what I’m looking at.
He turns back to me. “I don’t get it; I’m not trying to steal your virtue and bail—”
I start coughing, choking on the sip of beer I just took.
“Holy shit, you’re”—he looks around and lowers his voice—“you’re a virgin?” he asks as if he’s never met one before.
And cue the eye roll because yes, I’m still a virgin. I’ve never had a boyfriend for longer than a few months, so I never got around to trusting them fully and giving it up.
“What does it matter?” I try to sound bored.
“Look, I’m not interested—okay no, that’s a lie, I’m totally interested in fucking you.” His honesty has me laughing again.
“Seriously, though, I just want to take you out, and keep taking you out until I devise a plan to make you mine. Permanently.”
I guffaw. “A little presumptuous, aren’t you?”
He shrugs, leaning in to tuck some of my blond hair behind my ear. “You can call me whatever you like. Just say yes.”
Butterflies swoop violently in my stomach and cause my heart to flutter alongside them. The way he looks at me and the sincerity in his blue eyes is getting harder and harder to ignore.
He’s a junior, the captain of the swim team and one of the most popular guys on campus. He and his friends stink of money and have no issue flashing it in people’s faces. I came here on a scholarship, and I work two jobs, one as a tutor and the other a barista just to get by. Worse than all that, he could crush me and make me wish I’d never laid eyes on him.
But when he leans in to softly press his lips to mine, I don’t move away, and I’m rewarded with a feeling I’ve never felt before. It feels like I’ve been sleepwalking for the past eighteen years, and I’m finally starting to wake up. It’s a feeling so addictive that I surprise myself by rising onto my toes to wrap my arm around his neck and tilt my head, parting my lips to deepen the kiss.
He groans when I hesitantly skim my tongue along his, causing delicious shivers to rake their way over my entire body. We get lost in the slow exploration of the heat and curves of each other’s mouths as if they’re old friends who’ve finally reunited once again and have all the time in the world to catch up.
Until someone calls out, “Woo! Get it, Vandellen!”
I pull back slightly; our chests heave with our ragged breaths.
He gives me a crooked smile that I feel all the way down to the soles of my feet and tightens his arm around me. “You’re mine now, Dahlia.”
And I was. Despite courting me as he promised, from that night on, I was irreversibly his. I’d like to say that I wish I could turn back and shake my eighteen-year-old self and warn her of what’s to come for us, but I can’t bring myself to regret a thing. Not our years together and most definitely not our children.
We’ve had our ups and downs, as most couples do. We’ve never been much for bickering, no, we’d usually let it all out heatedly because we both knew what came after. That amazing, passionate, angry make-up sex. In the months after he started to slowly pull away from me, I tried to bait him. Tried anything to get that heated look back in his eyes. The one he’d get right before he’d lock us in a room and cover my mouth while he fucked the shit out of me.
But it didn’t work. Nothing has worked.
I’ve often wondered what he’d do if I left; if I just walked out. But the kids … This is their home. Leo is their father, and despite breaking my heart, he’s still good to them for the most part, just more absent than he used to be.
I pick the dress up, running my fingers over the smooth silk and spreading the skirt over my lap. I have no idea how much time has passed, but I feel him, standing in the doorway behind me. He doesn’t say a word, just watches silently as I continuously run my finger over the fraying tear in the fabric. I feel his eyes on me for another minute before I hear him quietly walk away.