“Where was death when you needed it?”
God, I’m in pieces.
Resisting the urge to cyberstalk him over the past five years had been ...challenging—and let’s be real, in the first two years, unsuccessful.But after seeing him tagged in a few too many photos with beautiful women hanging on his arms, I’d found a therapist to help me resist that particular impulse.
It was the right choice.I was struggling to move on, and every time I walked down that particular Internet path, I’d end up wallowing, pouring salt into old wounds, and never letting them heal.
But if I hadn’t given up that little toxic behavior, I wouldn’t have been blindsided today.I would have known.
Furgie fidgeted in the front passenger seat.She’d been itching when I parked in front of the pharmacy to dash into the bone chilling cold just to find the doors to the establishment locked.
I was accustomed to city hours.But I guessed this was the hard way to remember places like this worked on a different schedule.
But then, a middle-aged woman with long dark hair streaked with silver pushed open the door I’d just turned away from.“You here from the vet clinic?”
I must have looked ridiculous blinking at her with my mouth open.“Uh, yeah.”
“Come on in.”
A few minutes later, I paid, and she handed me a paper bag.
“You’re lucky, Remi called in the nick of time, I was just locking up.”
A frantic trill of a laugh fell out of my mouth.
Lucky?
She stared at me a bit more apprehensive than she’d been just a moment before.It was as if she expected something from me, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.
After a few moments she asked, “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Oh.”I shook the bag in my hand rattling the pills inside.“No.Thank you.”
Hurrying back outside, I took hold of my driver’s side door.The hinges creaked and warm air hit my skin as I slid back into my seat.The drive back to my duplex was easy.They had scraped the main roads clear of snow, piling it into frozen waves along the shoulders.
I wanted to be home so badly.Not this new rental.But Chicago.I wanted to grab a basket of fries and a seltzer with Sadie and tell her this wild AF story where I was face-to-face with the man who had been the foundation of my life.How when that foundation had been blasted apart, it wasn’t a rocky mess underneath but a black hole that sucked me through.It rearranged all my molecules, and when I shot out the other side, I was still me, but completely different.
I was a tightly wound bundle of frayed emotions and confusion.
I didn’t want to be alone through this.
There was a painful drilling pressure in my sternum.He was the most familiar stranger, when there had been a time that I knew everything about him.There had been a time when he was my favorite person.There had been a time we’d entwined our futures.
Back before our relationship died a death of a thousand cuts, one petty infraction after another.So many stupid arguments about how I felt ignored and he felt like he couldn’t do enough to make me happy.Mornings of his silent treatment, turned into nights of me out dancing with my friends ignoring his calls and texts.Repeated.Chiseling away at our affection and patience.
Our marriage wasn’t well.Then it was a feeble thing, too weak to stand.
I was so angry and immature.Outraged.
Desperate for his attention.And spiteful.
When I filed for the divorce papers, I wanted him to call my bluff.
But he’d signed them and closed the door in my face.
Seeing him ...Old wounds, new salt.
Patting Furgie’s head, I looked for comfort just as much as I gave it.We’d curl up on the bed my employer had rented and rest.
