Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Always more on the outside, always less on the inside.
I know that. I know no amount of safety is ever going to change the past. Sabotaging my future won’t change what has already happened.
So why can’t I stop?
“The divorce was already settled, but the custody schedule wasn’t. Marlene was incredibly bitter over the fact that she’d put in so much time and effort into me, she’d sacrificed so much, and then I made it big when she wouldn’t get a payout. I offered to buy her a house and get her a new car. All for Mika, my daughter, of course, although it was for her too. I hadn’t stopped loving her, not really. But she didn’t want that. She wanted to make me pay. It wasn’t logical. It was mean. It was bitter. She got full custody of Mika, and I threw myself into work. It was a lose-lose situation for me. Because I was working so much, she told me our daughter didn’t need an absentee father. That it would only confuse her. Then, she started asking me for things, and I gave her what she wanted. Mika had the best of everything, which I’m glad. But it was at the expense of our relationship.”
Bellatrix won’t look up. She doesn’t say anything. I just dropped my life history at her feet, but toneless, bleeding the emotion out of it. What could anyone say to that?
“I could have done things differently,” I continue. “I didn’t want to hurt my daughter by going through messy custody battles and bantering between lawyers around her. I didn’t want her to hear her parents constantly fighting or have her mother poison her against me, though I’m sure plenty of that was done. I know I should have fought harder. But I was scared. I was scared of doing it all wrong and really, really messing Mika up.”
One finger goes back to tracing the red writing. “Is she okay?” Bellatrix’s voice is so soft that I barely hear her.
“Yeah. I…she’s okay. She shocked the hell out of me by setting up our first-ever coffee date and telling me flat out that I could not go through with this wedding.”
“But you are.”
Have three words ever hit so hard? It’s like the storm has blown back in here with all its vengeance, pelting me with hail. My stomach clenches, and even though I’m no longer hungry, I’m going to force myself to finish that sandwich so Bellatrix doesn’t worry.
“We talked, and she understood. She said if I was going to do it, I had to do it right, and she recommended a place her friend used to plan her wedding. Your place.”
Something weighted hangs in the air, dense, like the humidity after the rain. I don’t know where I’m going with it, but I think we both know I just dropped those words like it was fated. Like it means something. Like I haven’t spent the last two decades cutting myself off from hope.
You were the first person who made me feel a spark again. You’re the fire that I can’t allow to burn because it will burn us both right down to ashes.
Dramatic but true.
Also? My brain needs more calories. It’s dredging all the sludge from the darkest corners of me, and sludge sucks. It hurts, and it’s goopy and terrible. It’s a bad side to a really good sandwich. Partnered with the sludge is the truth about what I felt, and what I still feel, about this woman. I can’t allow it to have any bearing on my decisions, even if the last remaining wild vestiges of me that have sprung back to life like a seed emerging strangely unscathed from a sheet of ice want to call off the wedding and go on a crazy mission to reclaim my joy.
Go back to doing what I love.
Mend my relationship with Mika.
Ask Bellatrix if she’d ever consider going on a real date with me.
The first two are doable. I should have done them a long time ago, but the last option? I just…can’t. Mostly, it’s about me. I have issues. I’ll own that any day. But also, it’s the age gap. She’s not doing this out of a romantic inclination. It’s because she has a pure heart, and she’s basically screaming you have to be saved from throwing your life away.
At least she hasn’t looked at me with pity. Yet.
I might be soaked to the skin, and I might nearly have had a pass out after gagging about tacos, but all of that is just a drop in the big old bucket when it comes to the lake of mortification I’m swimming in. This is the most honest I’ve been with anyone in a long time, including my own family and friends.
My parents have never fully understood what happened, and after a while, they stopped pressing on it. It was a relief at the time, but it was probably the worst thing they could have done.