He’s been by my side through so much. Even when he was struggling with his family, his religion, and who he wanted to be outside of those things. When his parents cut him off and forced him out for leaving the faith. He has always supported me.
Through the worst days of our lives, he was always right there.
He stifled his own pain to let me feel mine and he handled everything that I couldn’t. He’s the only reason that I made it through.
And tonight, I betrayed him.
Everything that we’ve survived and all that we’ve built together, I put it under my heel and I snuffed it out.
Chapter 6
TRIPP
The feeling of sandpaper scratching against my temple pulls me from my sleep and the actually-pleasant dream that came with it.
Opening my eyes with a quiet groan, I turn to find Drumstick perched on the back of the couch, not-so-patiently waiting for his breakfast. He greets me with a meow and I reach over to scratch him between the ears.
I’m sitting up on the couch, with Julia asleep with her head in my lap and her arms wrapped tightly around my hips. I’m not sure how long the screensaver on the TV has been filtering through its selection of nature photos, or what time we fell asleep after I brought Jules downstairs last night.
This is the first time that we’ve slept in the same place since Connor last crashed on our couch, and I’m not sure that she’ll even remember it when she wakes up.
As Drumstick’s teeth angrily take hold of my ear, I carefully move my wife’s arms and slide out from underneath her, pulling the blanket at her feet to cover the rest of her body before I move to the kitchen to feed the cat.
While he devours a can of his special high protein wet food that smells like a pile of dead fish and crushed dreams, I get to work throwing a few English muffins and strips of bacon into the oven before dropping a pan onto the stove to fry some eggs.
My eyes flick between the pan in front of me and the couch while I flip the eggs, and the corner of my mouth quirks into a smile at the small sounds that Julia makes while she sleeps. She’s not normally a noisy sleeper, only when she’s been drinking. The first few times she’d done it, I’d almost expected her to start snoring, but it never happened.
Just those little squeaks and hums.
I quickly plate up our food, topping the English muffins with the eggs – Julia’s nearly burnt, the way that she likes them, and mine perfectly runny – and I set the plates onto our small dining table before filling two glasses with orange juice.
I don’t really like the stuff, but Jules told me once that orange juice and a few aspirin were the perfect hangover cure, and damn it if she wasn’t right.
Crouching between the couch and the coffee table, I gently brush her hair away from her face, my own pulling into a wistful smile as I look at her. She’s so peaceful like this, even with her eyes puffy from all the crying that she did last night.
“Breakfast’s on the table,” I whisper to her.
She stirs, pulling the blanket closer to her chin with a quiet groan, her face pinching.
“Aspirin, too,” I add with a kiss to her forehead.
It takes five more minutes of groaning and stretching before she eventually makes her way to the table and plops down into a chair, with me joining her on the opposite side.
When did that start?
We’d always sat next to each other before.
I guess there are a lot of things that we used to do differently.
“You made Monty muffins,” Julia comments with a satisfied hum as she bites into her sandwich.
“Patent pending.”
“That patent has been pending since high school,” she laughs quietly.
She’s barely halfway done with her English muffin sandwich by the time that I finish my first and stand at the stove to put together another.
I can’t stop watching her. Studying. Waiting for a shoe to drop, an axe to fall.
