“It took exactly eighteen months for us to decide that neither of us was willing to fight for happiness in a miserable marriage that was headed nowhere. And then… then he started cheating on me. He didn’t even try to hide it. I think he wanted me to know or find out. I think he wanted out but didn’t want to be the one responsible for ending it. Not that he didn’t play his part. But he was like that. He never took responsibility for his mistakes. He couldn’t keep a job for the same reason. I put up with the cheating longer than I should have. I don’t know why. I knew my life had sunk about as low as it could go, but I was afraid of what else could happen if I left him. At least with Marcus I had a roof over my head.”
My heart broke for my friend. I wanted to give her a hug, but I could sense that she did not want to be touched right now. Her back was stiff and her shoulders painfully held back. She was just barely holding herself together. If I did anything to spook her, she would lose it. “What did you do?” I asked carefully.
“The one thing I swore I would never do.” She gave me a sad, defeated smile. “I went back to my parents. I begged them for their forgiveness and for their help.”
“They gave it to you,” I concluded. She spoke to them now and it seemed very much against her will.
“They did,” she confirmed. “They helped me with the divorce, or I should say, annulment. They let me move back in with them. In fact, after I went to them I never saw Marcus again, except for the last time in court. They took care of removing my things from his house and all of the documents that needed to be signed or whatever. They saved me. And then they paid my way through school. They helped me move on with my life as if I never left them.”
Sensing that their help cost her deeply, I whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
She waved off my apology as if it wasn’t necessary. “I got my way in the end, though. They thought they were giving me a practice with my degree, something they could brag to their country club friends about and recommend to all of the miserable trophy wives they know. They never saw the whole guidance counselor at an inner-city school thing coming. It still pisses them off.”
We shared a victorious smile. “I wondered why you were so much older than me.”
She stuck her tongue out. “Only three years. It’s not like I have tenure.”
“Thank you for telling me that.”
She shrugged self-consciously, “I just wanted you to know that I mean it when I say it gets better. It hurts. God, it hurts. But it doesn’t always.”
“I need to hear that. Keep telling me. Don’t stop.”
She gave me a sad smile. “It’s kind of nice, though.”
All of my breath whooshed out of me and I thought for a second I would start choking. “What?”
“Nick. At least he’s putting up a fight for you. Marcus didn’t. Or at least I never heard about it if he did, but I’m almost one-hundred percent positive he just signed whatever papers my parents shoved in front of him and never thought about me again. We weren’t right for each other, don’t get me wrong. And what we did was so completely stupid. But looking back… I don’t know… it would have been nice if he fought for me. It would have somehow soothed my ego after all of this time. I wouldn’t feel so… discarded.”
A million of my own thoughts tumbled around in my head, but I put them aside for now and said, “You’re not discarded, Kara. He was an idiot. You guys were so young. He was too young and immature to realize how amazing he had it.”
She tilted her head to stare out the window. “I haven’t been able to look him up since. Not once. I know he’s on Facebook because I see our mutual high school friends comment on his posts sometimes, but I’m too afraid of what I’ll find. I know what I want to find. I want him to be alone and miserable and working a dead end job or still living in his parents’ basement.” Her pretty lips turned down in a frown. “But I’m too afraid that he’ll be happily married with a yoga instructor for a wife and six perfect kids that model for Gap.”
I let out a surprised laugh, “He’s not married to a yoga instructor and if he has six kids then they’re all from different moms.”
She wrinkled her nose, “I like that.”
“You’re a catch, babe. Any guy would be lucky to have you.”