Chapter 5
By the end of the week the romantic bubble we had been living under popped. My heart felted broken for both of us and me. He had someone either way. I would have to go back to shitty twentysomethings and pray someday I would get over him.
“This whole time you have been saying goodbye.” Max hollered that last morning. “We could try really be happy.”
I knew he just wanted to prolong packing up and ending the perfect trip.
“I am happy.” I said so stubbornly we both cracked a smile. “Kinda.”
“If you really want to part ways. Fine. I’ll deal with that. I’d like to be happy. Happy again with you. I’m done being this unhappy.”
“I don’t want to be the reason your family breaks up, Max.” I said, stubbornly. “I’ll lose my best friend for the worst reason.”
I knew this hurt him because I wasn’t choosing him. He fumed and paced.
“We are just supposed to go back to our lives now?”
“Yeah.” I said with a lump in my throat.
“What if it wasn’t you at all?”
I closed my eyes for patience.
“What if I get divorced either way?” Max asked. His desperation to make this last longer made it all the more painful.
“Be honest. You were happily married till now?”
“Doesn’t matter if I thought I was or that I was living a life at all.” Max uttered more to himself.
We stared at each other for a long time before the painful process of packing up. The road home was subdued. Maybe the worst thing was we got a chance to look under the rock this week. No other time would we get that chance.
The trip home was just painful and dead silent. It was hard to believe all the fun we had. Especially in light of such a bitter ending, we couldn’t be more changed.
“Why are you so hell bent in ruining what we have?” Max thundered, making my ears ring in the cab. I knew then he had been brewing on this the whole drive.
“Because I know what this was. Just a fling. A lapse in judgement and time caused by covid, never ever gonna happen again.”
“So, you’re sorry about this?” Max asked, incredulously.
“Never.” I spat climbing out of the truck.
Max followed into the house, despite the fury. My parents weren’t home yet but they were due any moment.
“Why are you so unwilling to give this a real shot?” Max demanded, tittering on insanity, maybe even pathetic puppy love.
“Go home to your wife, Max.” I said, firmly.
Max left just in time, missing my parents for only a few minutes. I didn’t tell them the whole truth, that I went fishing with Max and his friend. Thankfully, they had too much to share about their second honeymoon to notice I wasn’t the same girl that went camping.
Alone in my room, I finally fell apart. The one image I could not let go of was his utter disappointment in me. I knew I was breaking his heart. Once of us had to be realistic and shut the door to impossible dreams. I focused on training, trying to not think about him. Him with his wife. Him making love, that body that should be only mine but was never mine to ever have in the first place. Yet how he was doing and coping never strayed from me.
Jealousy was consuming me, just the idea of his wife in the same room even kissing his cheek. I loathed that I could never be that girl. I was never supposed to be.
Not that he wanted to choose me even if it was just for a week didn’t make me any less heart sick about it all. He would forget me and go back to their life. I expected to hear from Mia. I imagined she somehow knew what I did and kept her distance until she didn’t.
Two weeks to the day she called distraught.
“My parents broke up last night.” Mia declared. “Dad has been so weird lately, talking about how life is too short and how important it was to be happy. It’s like he’s terrified he is gonna die from covid. But the baby has never even had it. Mom wouldn’t believe him at first when he said he was unhappy. I mean they even talked about having another kid, even at their age just a few weeks ago. He moved out, out of our house! Dad has completely lost it.”
Mia gave me every excruciating detail. I wanted to run to him, yell at him for being an idiot. If only that would work. I couldn’t imagine it. His perfect wife was stunned that their perfect life was now in pieces. I felt like the lowest human being.
I didn’t know what was worse, knowing a perfectly fine lady had gotten her heart destroyed because of me. Then there was the flip side, that her husband finally felt alive because of me.
Because of me.
Thanks to chatterbox Mia, who truly vented, going into detail over the next few weeks about how her mother was burning his things. Every time Max came back to get more of his stuff they warred like cats and dogs.
Apparently, his resolve never wavered, despite his wife’s hysterics, including lining the children up and trying to shame him into staying.
The battle just to remind them how he loved him and wasn’t leaving them only spurred her dramatics. The divorce was only getting bitter by the time I was puking every morning. Exactly eight weeks after the trip I was staring at a positive pregnancy test in my bathroom.
The next morning, they had their first of many court hearings about custody. I burned with guilt and shame, because I knew I would be entering the messy fray soon; it was only a matter of time.
