Morning fires doused, dinosaur puppet found and production finally running smoothly, I took the lid off my coffee cup and downed the rest of it. I glanced at my phone. During the rush of the morning, I’d forgotten to call Nate. He was more than likely in a meeting, so I decided to put the call off until lunch.

Nate and I had been dating for six years. We’d both been so busy with our careers, we hadn’t given marriage much thought until the relationship seemed to be growing stale. We’d decided a wedding and a home together were what we needed to bring it back to life. Wedding plans had put some excitement back into our lives, but I wasn’t completely convinced that same spark would last once the vows were said and the massive wedding bills rolled in.

Still, Nate had always brought that piece of stability into my life that I badly needed. My parents had died in a car accident when I was ten. I was an only child. I was quickly popped around from relative to relative as if I was just an unwanted possession that my parents had owned. Thankfully, my wonderful grandfather took me in for good. At that time, he was a widower in his mid-seventies. He knew far more about cattle ranching than raising a teenage girl, but, together, we made it work. He took care of me, and I took care of him.

Grandpa died during my sophomore year at college, and his loss had left me feeling as if the only person who mattered in my life was gone. Then Nate moved into the apartment next door. He was handsome, charming and the catch of the campus. I fell instantly in love.

I moved the mouse on my computer. Oddly enough, a website popped up. It was spam, obviously. Something about a Silk Stocking Inn and that I would soon be in need of a weekend away. I clicked out of it, but it stayed in place, tempting me with pictures of an old, weather-worn Victorian house and scenic grounds that bordered a countryside with white fences and pastures that seemed to stretch on forever. There were even a few horses standing nearby the Silk Stocking Inn. The sight of them sent a couple twinges of bittersweet nostalgia through me. After college, I’d moved to the city to chase down a good job. I’d found one working for a children’s television network. Through hard work and determination I’d managed to land a position as head producer on the studio’s top show. But there had been many times during my climb to the top and my whirlwind life in the city, that I’d felt homesick for the country, the smell of grass and horses and delicious down home country food.

I clicked the website again, deciding I’d wasted enough time daydreaming. The website flashed the words ‘see you soon, Rebecca’ and then disappeared. I could see the stunned look on my face in the monitor.

“Cookies and spam. It’s amazing what these sites can do to personalize their messages,” I muttered to myself. My phone buzzed. It was Nate. It was rare for him to call during the work day. Apparently what he needed to tell me couldn’t wait.

“Hey, Nate, it’s been crazy here this morning, and I just didn’t have time to call you. What’s up?” His silent pause was overrun by many voices and far too much noise for his office building. “Where are you?”

More silence.

I glanced at my phone to see if the connection was lost. “Nate, are you there?”

“Yes, Becca, I’m here. I just wanted to let you know that—” His voice trailed off and the void was filled by a flight announcement over a loudspeaker.

“Are you at the airport?” The long, chaotic morning had left me at the end of my tether. I didn’t give him time to answer and jumped right into a rant. “That darn company you work for has no right to just send you off without a moment’s notice. We’ve got an appointment with the bakery tomorrow to pick cake flavors.” I picked up the empty coffee cup as if Nate could see me through the phone. “I’m leaning toward something with a mocha flavor. You know me and my coffee habit. Seems appropriate.”

“Rebecca, please. I need to talk to you.” He rarely used my full name. His tone was beyond grim, as if something terrible had happened.

“Oh Nate, is it Grandma Nellie in New York?”

“Grandma is fine. I’m not in New York. I’m in Australia.”

“What? Australia. You know I’ve always wanted to go there. What kind of business are you doing down there?”

“I’m not on business.”

For once, I decided not to respond. This conversation was heading somewhere very south, and it had nothing to do with the land down under.

“Becca, I quit my job yesterday, and—” He stopped for a slightly unhinged chuckle. “I just got on a flight to Australia. I met someone.”

I sat back hard on my chair as if someone had thrown a fist into my stomach. “You met someone?”

“It was weird. We ran into each other at the lunch counter at George’s diner. She was here on spring break from college, and we just hit it off.”

“Spring break from college?” It seemed constructing my own responses within my stunned brain was impossible. I found that all I could do was repeat what he was telling me. None of it sounded real. Just like when my uncle had picked me up from school and sat me down to tell me my parents were gone forever. The entire time I’d listened to his words but assured myself it wasn’t real.

“I just needed to find myself. I wasn’t happy anymore. I’ll always love—”

“Don’t.” I snapped out of my trance. “Don’t fucking tell my you’ll always love me because I don’t want to hear it. You needed to find yourself, so you ran straight into the arms of a college coed?” I swallowed hard determined not to cry. Every question from—what the hell did I do to scare him off to how much humiliating gossip will I have to avoid once word gets around that the wedding is off—swam through my head.

A long pause made the whole thing feel as if it wasn’t really happening.

“I hope you find happiness, Rebecca. Truly.”

“Huh?” I asked, hardly able to focus on the conversation. Anger followed quickly. “Hope you find what you’re looking for, Nate, only don’t look too hard because frankly, you’re not all that impressive.”

“You’re upset, Becca, and you’re saying things you don’t really mean. I understand. It’s just that Mindy and I—”

“Mindy and you? Fuck. I just wasted six years on you. Six of my best years too. My tight ass and perky boobs years, you asshole. But I guess you needed a new pair of perky boobs. Mindy’s boobs.”

“Rebecca,” he started, but I was in no mood to hear his simpering tone.

“Fuck off, Nate. Oh, and don’t forget to swim with the jellyfish down there. I hear they have some really deadly ones.” I hung up and stared at my phone as if it was on fire.

I didn’t know what to feel. It should have been devastation, and I considered that it might be coming along soon. Strangely enough, the man I’d spent the last six years of my life with had left me for another woman, and all I could think about were the calls and cancelations I was going to have to make to erase our wedding plans. Of course, I really only had to cancel the dress and the flowers. Everything else was on Nate’s credit card, where it could stay until it was too late for a refund.