CHAPTER 5
“Hey, Wonka!”
Ignoring the nickname he hated but that he’d gotten used to over the years, Will paused on his way to his truck. He turned to see Brody Cassidy heading toward him from across the parking lot. “What’s up?”
“A bunch of us are fixin’ to head to the bar. You coming?”
The only place Will was fixin’ to head to was his sofa, with a quick stop at his fridge for a beer. That had become his standard MO the past few weeks. Barring the team getting called out, he didn’t see that changing anytime soon.
He shook his head. “Nah. I think I’ll just go home.”
Eyes narrowing, Brody studied Will. “You haven’t come out in weeks. What’s going on? Everything okay with you?”
“Yup. Fine.” Will nodded, lying smoothly as he’d been well trained to do.
Brody broke into a grin. “Ah, I get it. You’ve got your girl waiting on you at home. A little Netflix and chill. That it?”
That guess took Will by surprise, breaking his poker face. He feared the emotions he’d been ignoring, or at least hiding, showed through the crack in his carefully erected façade.
If Brody was watching closely enough, he’d no doubt notice. The man was more observant than most. Hopefully, he’d be more concerned about getting to the bar than evaluating Will’s expression.
No use lying about it though. His sudden lack of a girlfriend after all these years was going to come out eventually. Might as well get it over with.
“Um, yeah, no. That’s not it. We uh, broke up actually.”
Brody’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. Man, I’m sorry. You were with her forever.”
“Just four years.” Just. He stifled the bitter laugh at that.
“You need somebody to get drunk with and bitch to?” Brody asked.
Any other time and any other breakup—one where he hadn’t been proven a fool—he would take Brody up on the offer. Not this time. “Nah, I’m good. Thanks, though.”
“Anytime. You change your mind, you got my number.”
“Yup. Thanks.” Will nodded.
“A’ight.” Accepting that answer, Brody finally walked away.
Alone and out from under his squadron mate’s scrutiny, Will drew in a breath and evaluated the damage talking about Sara to Brody had done.
His gut twisted. His chest felt tight. But no more than what had become his new normal for the past month.
All in all, he’d come through that confession fairly unscathed. He figured telling the first person was going to be the hardest. It would only get easier from here.
Although presenting the news to his family was going to suck. His sisters never let anything go without analyzing it to death. And he really didn’t need the end of his relationship to be the topic of the day. That was one reason he’d been avoiding their phone calls.
That couldn’t go on forever. He felt guilty every time he dodged one of his mother’s calls. And he was overdue for a visit home.
He’d get on that—soon, but not now. Not yet.
It had only been a month since Sara’s sudden disappearance. A month where he’d waited every day for a text or call saying she was back. Waited for some excuse for why she’d left—besides the obvious.
Pitiful as he was, he’d even tried her cell number a couple of times to see if it was turned back on. Nothing.
It had become increasingly apparent she’d really gone back to her ex-husband.
Though he wasn’t an ex now, was he? Because in spite of Will giving Sara the eighteen-hundred dollars to retain the divorce lawyer over a year and a half ago, and even though she’d filed for divorce and officially he’d been served with the papers, her husband had never signed them. He’d outright refused to.
They’d been living apart for more than four years and yet he was still holding on.
Not just him, her too, obviously. With no children from the marriage, Sara could have let the judge intervene. Finalize the proceedings and determine how they split the property even without her husband’s signature on the papers. Yet she’d conveniently managed to delay or cancel every court date for one reason or another.
A woman who truly wanted to be divorced didn’t take nearly five years to do it. She obviously hadn’t wanted to be. That was glaringly clear now, as well as the fact he’d been stupid and blind to not see it earlier.
After years of separation and being only a signature away from a finalized divorce, she’d gone back. After telling Will she loved him. After warming his bed for years. She’d gone back and it fucking stung.
No, that was too mild of a word. It brought to mind tiny bee stingers that made you say son of a bitch, put an ice cube on it and then go on with life.
This pain was more like a grenade blast. A month later he still felt the shrapnel. In fact, a shard was jabbing him in the heart at that very moment.
Hell, there’d been nights Will had done just what Brody had suggested and drowned his sorrows in a bottle. Only he’d done his imbibing alone, in the privacy of his own home where he didn’t have to talk about his stupidity or her betrayal.
But he hadn’t drunk himself into oblivion in a good week or so. That was progress.
Yup, he was handling it just fine now. Moving on. Just fine.
Will climbed into his truck and saw the tiny deer antler ornament dangling from his rearview mirror. She’d hung that there last year. The matching one from the pair they’d brought together hung in her car.
Fuck.
He grabbed it and pulled until the string snapped. Staring down at the object, he pondered what to do with it. It shouldn’t be that hard of a decision. He should have no problem tossing it in the trash.
So why couldn’t he?
A man who’d really moved on wouldn’t still be keeping all of his ex-girlfriend’s things. In his truck. At his apartment.
Ghosts of their relationship raised painful memories every time he stumbled upon one, making him feel like crap all over again.
Time to get rid of it all.
Tossing the ornament in the passenger seat, he started the engine, shifted into drive and peeled out of his space.
Determined, he drove home probably faster than he should and strode into the apartment with a purpose. To get rid of her stuff and erase the memories.
He opened the closet to grab a cardboard box and frowned, remembering on a recent semi-intoxicated, heartache-spurred cleaning binge he’d recycled them all.
That figured. Usually he had so many boxes from ordering shit online, they’d fall out of the closet on top of him whenever he went to grab a jacket. Today, when he needed one most, he had none.
That was fine. He’d just use a trash bag. That seemed more fitting anyway.
Pissed at himself for getting rid of the boxes, which would have proven useful, but keeping her stuff, which definitely was not, he stomped to the kitchen and flung open the cabinet beneath the sink.
He yanked a folded trash bag out of the box there and shook it hard to open it.
Time to purge the pain.
Carrying the bag to the bedroom, he started there, pulling open drawers. Her red Alabama football shirt was first to go. Even now, trying not to, he could envision her wearing it. Though just as painful as seeing her shirt was when his hand touched on his own favorite US Navy T-shirt as he pawed through the drawer. She used to like to sleep in that when she stayed over.
Dammit. This clean out wasn’t going to be as clean as he’d hoped.
Drawing in a breath, he decided to start with her stuff only for now. He’d decide later if he needed to get rid of his own stuff that reminded him of her.
Slowly he moved through the apartment and filled the bag, room by room. Her pink toothbrush. Her purple razor. Her orange jacket. Her yellow-wrapped tampons. Her green bottle of shampoo. Her fuzzy blue socks. The multicolored panties he’d bought for her and had removed from her body more times than he could count.
Her stuff spanned the spectrum of colors and, like a rainbow of daggers, encountering each one left a fresh slice on his heart. It all went into the bag. He certainly didn’t need or want the memories that came along with it.
The open bottle of wine that only she drank got tossed in the kitchen garbage along with her blueberry Greek yogurt, now well passed its best by date.
Then there was her coffee mug, the one he’d bought for her that said, There’s Wine in Here. He didn’t need any reminders that Sara’s two favorite drinks were coffee and wine. That went in the bag of things he was casting from his life.
He paused at the sight of the leather-trimmed laptop bag she’d given him last Christmas. Dammit, he liked that bag and his old one was a wreck. He was keeping it. He deserved something out of the shambles of the relationship he’d dedicated nearly half a decade to.
But the memory-laden pen and pad of paper inside his laptop bag, the ones she’d brought home from their room at the Navy Inn where they’d stayed when they’d taken a trip to NAS Pensacola together, those went in the trash bag.
And there were the photos. So many photos. The digital ones saved on his computer and in his cloud storage. The physical ones, though few, secured under magnets on the fridge and in frames scattered around the apartment. Tossing those into the bag hurt more than the rest.
The digital ones he actually took the time to transfer onto a thumb drive, which he tossed into the bag as well.
He nearly succumbed to the urge to keep copies for himself, locked away on a drive somewhere in case there ever came a time he could look back on them and smile.
Finally he dragged the whole folder of pictures into the trash on the computer, then emptied the trash.
Yeah, in the back of his mind he knew he could recover those files. Computers were his life and his work. But at least he’d taken the first step to get rid of them.
This was good. He was making headway and his heart felt lighter as the bag grew heavier until eventually there wasn’t anything immediately visible left to get rid of.
He was sure that when he least expected it something else would pop up, but for now he was fairly confident almost all of the landmines had been discovered and removed.
Now, what the hell to do with it all?
He’d be damned before he took the time to box it all up, find the address and mail it to her. Although it would be amusing to imagine what her husband thought of the box of memories she’d created with another man arriving at his door.
Will stood for a second, trash bag dangling heavy from one hand. He was close to tossing it all in the dumpster when his gaze landed on his cell phone.
He strode to the table where he’d left it when the great purge had begun.
Jessa’s cell number was still in his recent calls. He hit it and pressed the phone to his ear. When she answered, he said, “Are you home?”