“Yes. How could I forget my first buildings? I remember being on your property by the stream and getting branches and making forts. Creative building, I would say. But honestly, Bellini, that is where my love of designing and building started.”
“We made that two-level house in fourth grade out of cardboard with a secret room and a secret staircase.”
“And in sixth grade, we designed that house on wheels.”
“And in seventh grade, we designed a school with a pool and a long library and a kids’ hang-out zone.”
“And in ninth grade, we built a space city.”
“And in tenth grade, we designed a space house.”
“And my senior project was a modern farm within a city.”
“It was incredible. You did an amazing job.”
“Because you worked with me.”
“It was ninety percent you.”
“It was fifty-fifty. And I remember your senior project. Writing and illustrating stories for kids, and you ended up writing and illustrating stories for kids. Funny how what we both loved to do as kids ended up being our careers as adults. Your drawings in your Roxy Belle books are clever, and cute, and happy. It’s all very impressive, Bellini. You’ve become who you wanted to become.”
I wished I believed that. I became someone who had made a terrible decision in marrying my first husband, which made me lose myself entirely. Then I became a hermit, who was isolated too much and wrote one story after another about a nine-year-old named Roxy Belle. I loved Roxy Belle and her family and her farm, but mostly I liked to disappear into her world so I wouldn’t have to live in my own world because of how lonely it always was without Logan.
“Your turn, Bellini. You tried to avoid answering, but now you get to tell me. How was college?”
This was gonna be an emotional maze I would have to navigate carefully. “I liked majoring in writing and art. I ran a lot. I worked at a pancake house when I was there.” I told him a few more details, skipping over almost everything.
“What did you do after college, before you published your first Roxy Belle book? I heard you got married.”
“I did.”
“Broke my heart.” He grabbed his chest. He was joking, but I knew he was serious, too.
“Broke mine, too.”
A heavy silence fell between us. Heavy, as in,Bellini, are you going to tell the truth now or avoid my question?He waited me out.
“I was married, and we got divorced.”
“Would you like to tell me about it?”
The candle flickered, and the dim lighting cast shadows on Mr. Handsome’s face.
We were best friends for so long. Logan was the best friend of my life. I knew I would never have a best friend like him again. I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want to go back to that tar pit, but I did.
“Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s a mess. I was a mess.” I gave him the somewhat sanitized version, the short version, even though the long version played out in my head like a marital virus, a shellacking of a whole bunch of debilitating memories that I wanted to chop up and not think of again.
Those years knotted up in my mind… Soon, I was talking before I had given myself permission to talk. I left out the parts about how my mind and body ached for Logan, and I constantly had to put him out of my mind when I was married because it wasn’t fair to my husband. Pushing Logan out of my mind was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
The thought of my first marriage makes me want to sit down, put my head between my knees, and hum a little tune like “Jingle Bells” or “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” inorder to calm myself down.
Even the wordmarriedcan make my head fill and throb, as if anxiety has been transformed into smoke, and it’s snaking around my cerebellum and amygdala and causing all sorts of electrical problems.
I met my ex-husband, Martin, when I was twenty-two, my senior year of college. I was majoring in both art and creative writing because I knew I wanted to become a writer and illustrator. I was also working toward a minor in graphic design, as I knew with that degree I could be employed in the future and wouldn’t starve while I tried to make it as a writer. I took eighteen credits a term and worked as a waitress at a twenty-four-hour pancake house all four years. I liked the tips, the regulars, and the people I worked with.
Martin, named after his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather, who all lived in the same dusty, dry, small town in Eastern Oregon, sauntered in one night at midnight with his friends. They were loud, a little drunk. They did not leave me a tip. That should have been my first clue. Apparently, it didn’t sink in.
Martin flirted with me. I don’t flirt. I find it annoying and confusing.
