What If

“No,” she said sternly. “Why do you want to leave me for her anyway? She’s nothing, Arrow. All she’s ever been is an issue between us, can’t you see that?” she argued. She was throwing a fit like a child. I half expected her to stomp her feet and throw herself on the ground.

“Enough.” The word was short, stiff and demanding. “This isn’t some game we’re playing, Lacey. This is our lives we’re talking about.” I marched up to her and looked into her blue eyes. “Aren’t you tired of being unhappy, tired of being married to someone who doesn’t love you like they should? And I can’t, Lace… I can’t, and I never will.” I watched the fat tears well in her eyes and then spill over. “I’m not that person for you.”

“You haven’t given us a chance!” she wailed. She gripped the roots of her hair and yanked. “Why won’t you try to love me? Try to love me like you love her!”

The sadness in my eyes was real. Lacey wanted to be loved; who didn’t? And I did a shoddy job of doing it for her. “That’s the thing. I don’t have to try to love her,” I tried to explain. “I’ve tried to stop loving her… And you know what, babe? I can’t do that either. I can’t stop loving her any easier than I can make myself love you.”

The tears ran like black trails down her face; she wiped them away and stared intensely at me. She eyed me up and down with cruel intention written all over her face. She wasn’t going to make this easy. “I’m not signing the damn papers,” she said firmly, taking a step closer to my body. “And go take a shower. You smell like sex and her.”

“Briar! Her name is Briar! I smell like sex and Briar!” I opened the door, checked my pockets for my keys, and took off in my truck. I had enough; it was time to involve lawyers.





Days went by and I wasn’t any closer to figuring out how to handle this disaster. I went back to my apartment, walked quietly inside, and just prayed that Lacey had left. Luckily she wasn’t there long enough for me to grab a bag full of clean clothes and leave again without being noticed. I stayed in a hotel down the street from the complex. I called a few different lawyers, but nothing could be done without Lacey’s signature.

There was more of a chance of hell freezing over than of Briar giving me another shot as long as I was still married to Lacey. Maybe if I could show Briar a copy of the agreement once it was signed… But before then? No way. But how would I talk a stubborn lady like Lacey into giving it up? I had no clue.

More days went by, more money given to the hotel. The cost added up, and still I was lost on where to go from here. Briar hadn’t called; not that I expected it of her.

Stir crazy: that’s how I felt being held up in this small room with a television that barely worked and a bed that made high pitch squeaking noises every time I sat down on it. Sleep didn’t come easy, if at all. I’d lie across the scratchy, hotel blanket which was probably from the seventies and think about the night I had with Briar. I reminisced about tasting her, being inside of her, finally seeing every inch of her soft skin that felt perfect underneath me. Every day that passed made that time with her seem like a dream, a hallucination, like my psyche wanted it so badly that it made me dream up a fantasy that seemed real. But there’s no way my brain was capable of making me feel how I felt that night in her arms when I was telling her my story, when I was making love to the only women that I’d ever make love to.

For the first time, I showed a woman exactly what I felt by tracing the freckles that were like astrology signs in the sky, running a trail with my tongue to her erogenous zones, tenderly and then passionately kissing her. How could she ever think that what was between us wasn’t real? … She was everything. Damn it. She was everything.

Without much thought as to what I was planning to say to her or how she’d react to me showing up out of nowhere… again… I made my way to Briar. The only way to know what sort of war I was up against was to actually see it with my own eyes. The clock told me she would probably be home from teaching.

I took notice of her car parked closely to the door leading to her apartment. Taking a deep breath, I jogged to her door, knocked, and waited. It took her a minute to get to the door; I could hear her moving around on the other side. I didn’t cover the peephole because I knew she’d know it was me, but I worried she would refuse to open up and let me in.

She didn’t yell at me while the door was closed, she didn’t cuss me out. That’s how I knew that my Briar was even more hurt by all of this than I originally thought. That knowledge burned in my chest like a hot cattle brand smoldering into my sternum.

She opened the door wide. I had a second to take in her disheveled look: bloodshot and dark bags under her eyes, clothes that looked wrinkled and well worn. She wouldn’t look at me. Instead her eyes stayed trained on the ground at my feet. She stepped away, turning her back on me, and walked into the living room. I assumed she wanted me to follow her, so I did, closing the door lightly behind me. She sat on the couch, her elbows resting on her knees and her face hidden in the palms of her hands.

I heard the slight sound of her voice muttered behind her hands.

“What was that?” I asked quietly, feeling like I needed to whisper in the silence of the home.

“Why are you here?” she asked a bit louder, looking up at me. My voice caught in my throat. The swollen puffs that used to be eyelids surprised me. She must’ve cried before I arrived.

“Briar,” I said, pained.

“What did you expect, Arrow? To come here and see me smiling and jumping for joy about you being married and having a baby on the way with another woman?” her voice cracked on a broken laugh. “You came here, okay? So if you want someone to make you feel better about what you did to me, about lying to me, then you came to the wrong place. Now what do you want?”

“I want to talk. I want to explain this…” I inched closer to her. Her hands turned to fists in front of her, and her body went tight. I stilled my movements.

“You’ve touched me enough, don’t you think?” she sneered.

“Don’t you dare make that night less than what it was, Briar Paige,” I snarled.

She tilted her head back and looked up at the ceiling, chuckling in a way that told me she was about to lay it into me. “I don’t think it’s possible to make the other night less than what it was.” I wanted to grab her hair and force her to look me in the eyes and say that to me again. “How can it mean anything except that you’re a cheating son-of-a-bitch who took everything I’ve ever felt for you and used it to get me into bed?”

“Careful,” I warned.

She ignored me and continued. “I’m the idiot. You may be a liar and a cheater, but I’m the stupid one.” Shaking her head in disbelief, she finally met my glare. “I was the one who, even when my gut was telling me to run like hell, my heart got the best of me and told me to give you another chance. I tried to tell myself that history wouldn’t repeat itself, that we’d finally get our chance - and that chance was right now. But that was just wishful thinking wasn’t it?” Her voice was calm, which only served to make me nervous and turn my blood to ice. “The truth is Arrow, our chance was a long time ago on the floor of the guy’s house our freshman year of high school. And that chance was thrown out the door when you left me in that room and chose a different path.”