It feels like I haven't shared a teaser with you all in a very long time. I haven't really had anything to share. But now that I'm working hard on Every Wrong Reason, I can finally show you some of it!!! So, like I did with the Five Stages of Falling in Love, I'm going to share the Prologue and First Chapter of Every Wrong Reason!!!!
**This hasn't been edited yet and is subject to change.
Prologue
1. He is the most selfish person I know.
2. I would be happier without him.
3. He can’t take a shower without leaving
water everywhere.
4. If I have to clean up his toothpaste
smears one more time I’m going to go insane.
5. How hard is it to put the milk away?
6. I don’t love him anymore.
7. We were never right for each other.
How did we get here?
Again?
I just wanted to go to bed. I had the most obnoxious
day of my freaking life and all I wanted to do was come home, take the longest,
hottest shower in the history of showers and face plant into my pillows.
Instead, it’s
three o’clock in the morning and I have a migraine the size of Texas.
Goddamn it.
“This isn’t about the water all over the bathroom
floor, Nick. God, honestly! It’s about the principal of the water all over the
bathroom floor!”
“Are you kidding me? What the hell does that even
mean?” His handsome face contorted with frustration. He wouldn’t even look at
me.
I thought back and tried to remember the last time he
looked at me, really looked at me,
and couldn’t remember. When was the last time he saw me? When was the last time
we hadn’t been fighting long enough for his clear blue eyes to look into mine
and make a real connection?
It had been years.
Maybe he had never seen me.
“It means there’s water all over the goddamn floor!
Again! How many times have I asked you to clean up after your shower? I’m not
asking for much! I just want the water cleaned up off the floor so that when I
go in there I don’t soak my socks every
single time!”
“You’re going to take your socks off anyway! Why does
it matter?” His long arms flew to his side as he paced the length of our
bedroom.
I flopped back on the bed and the pillows depressed
with the weight of my head. I felt like crying, but I wouldn’t let something
this stupid bring me to tears. I wouldn’t.
Not again.
This whole argument wasn’t really about the water. He
was right; I had been planning to take my socks off. But I was so sick of
asking him to do something so simple. Why couldn’t he just listen to me? For
once?
“Fine,” I relented. “I don’t care. Let’s just go to
bed.”
“Typical,” I heard him mutter.
I peeled my fingers away from my face and propped
myself up on my elbows. His back was to me as he stared unseeingly at our
closed blinds. I could see the tension taut through his broad shoulders. His
thin t-shirt pulled on the sculpted muscle he was so proud of.
It was so late and both of us had to work in the
morning, which only proved to fuel my frustration. His run had lasted forever
tonight. He left shortly after dinner and hadn’t come home until close to ten.
I had started to think that something had happened to him.
When I asked him where he was, he told me his running
group had gone out for beers afterward. He’d gone out for beers and hadn’t
bothered to text or call or let me know he was alive and not dead in the ditch
somewhere.
I’d had a terrible day and my husband got to go out
for beers at the end of an excessively long run while I did the dishes, cleaned
up the kitchen, started his laundry and graded papers.
And then at the end of all of it, I’d walked into an
inch of standing water on our bathroom floor because he couldn’t be bothered to
clean up after himself.
And he wants to
throw around the word “typical.”
“What was that?” My voice pitched low and measured, in
complete opposition to the pounding of my heart and rushing of blood in my
ears.
This was not the first time we’d had such a lengthy
blow up. In fact, we fought more than we got along. If I were truly honest with
myself, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d enjoyed being around him.
“It’s typical, Kate. Just when I finally get to the
bottom of why you’re so pissed off, you decide to shut down and turn yourself
off. You’re ready for bed and I just finally figured out what crawled up your
ass. So what am I supposed to do with that now? Just forget it? Move on and
pretend you didn’t keep me up all hours of the night yelling about it? God
knows, you will.”
“I’m tired, Nick. It’s three o’clock in the morning.
We both have to work tomorrow! What do you want
me to do? I guess we could sit here and talk in circles until the sun comes up,
but like you said, you finally get it!”
“God, you can be a bitch.”
His words hit me like a slap across the face. “And you
can be a selfish asshole.”
I watched his face fall. It was that perfect kind of
hit that took all of the wind right out of his sails. His entire body deflated
and I knew I hurt him as badly as he hurt me. Except instead of making me feel
better about myself, I realized I had never felt worse.
He slumped down at the edge of our bed and buried his
face in his hands. His tousled, light brown hair fell over the tips of his
fingers and reminded me of the times I used to brush it back, out of his eyes.
Even now, after seven years of marriage, he was still
one of the most gorgeous men I had ever seen. His tall frame was packed with
lean muscle and long limbs. His face was blessed with sharp angles and deep,
soulful blue eyes. His lips had always been dry, for as long as I could
remember, but he had this way of dragging his tongue across them that used to
make my mouth water.
I fell in love with him on our second date. We shared mutual
friends that introduced us. My roommate Fiona was dating his track teammate,
Austin, and one Saturday in October during our senior year of college, she
finally hauled me along to one of their local meets.
We hit it off after he took first place in the
thirty-two hundred and he was in a good enough mood to not stop smiling. I couldn’t stop starting at his lonely
dimple and he had the keen insight to know he’d charmed me.
Our first date was an absolute disaster though. I was
awkward and he was nervous. We didn’t find much to talk about and when he
dropped me back at my dorm, I swore to Fiona that he would never call me again.
I never understood why he asked me out for our second
date, but it was that next time, when he took me to my favorite Italian
restaurant and then out for a drive that ended with trespassing and a moonlit
walk through random fields in the middle of the country, that made me realize I
would never find another man like him.
He had something I decided I couldn’t live without.
His intentional questions and quick sense of humor held my attention and his
big smile made my insides quiver. I had never met anyone that made me feel that
way, that made it seem as if I were the only person alive that had anything
interesting to say.
If every night could be like that second date I would
never doubt what was between us, not even for a second. But after struggling to
put up with each other for all of these years and knowing that whatever
chemistry we had with each other fizzled a long time ago, I was exhausted.
And I was starting to realize, I was also broken. Or
if not broken, then breaking.
I couldn’t keep doing this.
“What are we doing?” he mumbled into his hands.
Hot tears slipped from the corners of my eyes, but I
wiped them away before he could see them. “I don’t know,” I whispered. My hands
fell to rest against my flat stomach. “We hate each other.”
He whipped his head around and glared at me over his
shoulder. “Is that what you think? You think I hate you?”
“I think we’ve grown so far apart, we don’t even know
each other anymore.”
It was his turn to look like I slapped him. “What do
you want, Kate? Tell me what you want to do. Tell me how to fix this?”
I recognized the pleading in his voice. This was how
it always happened. We would start fighting about something mundane that
neither of us would give in to, inevitably it would reveal our bigger issues,
the ones we usually tried to ignore, then finally we would round out the night
by Nick promising to do whatever it took to make this work between us. Only,
the next morning we would wake up and nothing would be changed or fixed or
forgotten and we would start the delusional cycle all over again.
I was sick of it. I was sick of feeling like this and
walking on eggshells every time we weren’t fighting. I was sick of feeling bad
for how I felt and the things that I said. And I was really sick of that look
on his face right now, knowing I was the one that put it there.
I wanted to get out off of this crazy train. I wanted
to wake up in the morning feeling good about myself and I wanted to go to bed
at night knowing I wasn’t a huge disappointment.
My hands clenched into tight fists on my belly and I
squeezed my eyes shut before they tried to leak out more painful memories.
“I don’t think we can.” My words were a shattered
whisper, but they were the first truth that I had spoken in a long time. They
were hurtful, but they were freedom. “I think we’re too broken, Nick. I think
it’s too late for us.”
“What are you saying, Katie?”
I ignored the agonized rasp to his voice. If I started
to feel bad for him now, I would never get this out. “This is over, Nick… We’re over. I think it’s time we were
both honest with ourselves and admitted that.”
His response was immediate, “You’re for real? You
really don’t want to try at this anymore?”
My temper shot up again and my face reddened from the
hot anger pumping through me. “I have been
trying! What do you think I’ve been doing for the past seven years? I’ve
been trying every single day! And it’s not enough! It’s never enough! I cannot
keep doing this day in and day out. I can’t keep pretending that things are
okay and then falling apart every time we start arguing. Nick, I’m exhausted in
my bones. You’re a good person, but it’s like… it’s like I bring out the
absolute worst in you. And the same is true about me! I’m fun. I’m a really fun
person. People like me! All of the
people except you. And I don’t blame you! When we’re together I’m a nag and I’m
ungrateful and I’m just… ugly. And I hate that person. I hate the person that I
am with you. And I hate the person that you are…”
His head snapped up. I hadn’t meant to go that far or
finish that thought, but Nick was too perceptive to miss it. “You hate the
person that I am with you. Is that what you were going to say?”
I shrugged one shoulder, ashamed that I’d let those
words slip out. I shouldn’t have said it, even if it was true. If nothing else,
it drove my point home. I was a terrible person with Nick. To Nick. We’d made each other into horrible people.
Our relationship was toxic. He was slowly poisoning
me.
I was slowly poisoning him.
“So what are you saying?” he demanded on a rasp. “You
want a divorce? Is that what you want? You think we should get a divorce?”
I nodded, unable to get those precise words beyond my
lips. “We aren’t good together. We hate each other.”
“Yeah, you’ve made that abundantly clear tonight.”
“Can you think of any reason that we should stay
together? Give me one good reason that we should keep doing this to ourselves
and I will try. I swear to you, if you can come up with one reason to stay
together, I’ll keep doing this. But, Nick, god,
this is ruining me. I don’t know how much more I can take before I just fall
apart.”
This time when the tears started falling, I didn’t
wipe them away or try to stop them. My chin trembled from the force of my
emotion and a devastating sob racked my chest. It was true. All of it. I hated
myself and I hated him because he was the one that had turned me into this
awful person.
I could not do
this anymore.
If he came up with a valid reason, I didn’t know what
I would do. I knew I told him I would stick it out, but at this point, I
couldn’t do it. I would never really try again at this broken relationship. I
had nothing left inside of me to give.
He watched me for a long time. I could see him
processing everything behind his veiled eyes. I knew he thought he was hiding
his emotions from me, but after seven years of marriage and ten years of being
together, I could read him like an open book.
This was his analytical phase. He had to weigh each
piece of information, emotion against truth, accusation against reality, before
he could come to a logical conclusion.
My husband, the cold-hearted thinker. Logic and reason
outweighed everything else. If it wasn’t a fact, then it didn’t exist to him.
Or at least it didn’t matter.
“If this is what you want, then fine. A divorce, legal
separation… whatever will make you happy.”
Whatever will
make me happy. Is this it? Is this what I want? But I had already told him
it was. Immediately I regretted everything about tonight, everything I had said
and everything I’d accused him of. But I couldn’t keep feeling this way. I
couldn’t go through this again, only to have it happen tomorrow and the next
day and the day after that. It was time to stand up for myself and fight for my
happiness. Nobody else was going to do it for me.
Not even Nick.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
There was a long weighted silence, as if he were
waiting for me to take everything back, to make my final words disappear.
Finally, he said in a hoarse, tortured voice, “I’ll, uh, sleep on the couch
tonight. I can move my things out tomorrow morning.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Was he serious? Were we
really doing this? “Where will you go?”
“I’ll stay with my brother until I can get a place of
my own.”
“Noah won’t care? I mean… what will he think?”
“You can’t have it both ways, Kate. You can’t ask for
a divorce and then hope to keep it a secret. Besides, it’s better than staying
at a hotel.”
“No, you’re right,” I whispered. I rubbed my stomach
and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my gut. I asked for this. I
practically demanded the divorce. So why did I feel such a horrific feeling of
disappointment.
My body felt like it was being pulled apart in every
direction. My heart felt trampled beneath a stampede of bulls. This was
supposed to make me feel better. This was supposed to feel like freedom. I was
finally digging myself out of the wreckage of our marriage and yet, I felt more
wrecked in this moment than any moment leading up to this one.
“We’re really doing this?” My words couldn’t seem to
come out stronger than a weak whisper.
“You tell me. You’re the one that started throwing
around divorce. It’s not the first time you’ve asked for one, Kate. I’m frankly
sick of trying to talk you out of it.”
“I just… I don’t know where else there is for us to
go. Nick, we’ve tried. We gave it our best and now I think it’s better if we
move on… away from each other.”
“Yeah,” he breathed. “Tried and failed, I guess.”
I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to tell him that
he was wrong and that we hadn’t failed, that there were as many good times
between us as there were bad, but I couldn’t bring myself to put up the effort.
He was right. We failed.
We were failures at our marriage.
When I didn’t say anything else, he grabbed his pillow
and stomped downstairs to the living room. I rolled over in bed, pulled the
duvet over my shoulders and cried until I passed out.
When I woke up in the morning, he was already gone.
Chapter One
My life will be better without him.
The bell rang and my stomach growled. I looked at my
classroom, at the kids shoving papers and notebooks into their backpacks and
the energetic chatter that warred with the high-pitched ringing of the fourth
period bell, and wondered if I had some Pavlovian response to that sound.
I had been conditioned to know hunger, but I hadn’t
felt it in months.
I smiled at my students as they filtered from the room
and reminded some of them about homework they owed me, but I barely heard the
words that fell from my lips or acknowledged the concise instructions I was
notorious for.
Behind my smiling mouth and teacher responsibilities,
I was made of brittle glass and emptiness. I was nothing but paper thin
defenses and sifting sand.
I had never known this kind of depression before. I
could hardly tolerate my soon to be ex-husband and yet his absence left me
unexpectedly battered.
Once my tenth grade English class had left me behind,
I let out a long sigh and turned back to my desk. I dropped into my rolling
chair and dug out my lunch from the locked bottom drawer.
I set it on the cold metal and stared at the sad ham
sandwich and bruised apple I’d thrown together last minute this morning. I
couldn’t find the energy to take a bite, let alone finish the whole thing. I’d
lost seven pounds over the last three months, one for each year of my
disastrous marriage. And while I appreciated the smaller size I could fit into,
I knew this was the wrong way to go about it.
My friend, Kara, called this the Divorce Diet. But I
knew the truth. This wasn’t a diet. I’d lost myself somewhere in the ruins of
my marriage and now that my relationship was over, my body had started to
systematically shut down. First my heart broke. Then my spirit fragmented. Now
my appetite was in jeopardy and I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t
know if I would ever feel hungry again.
I didn’t know if I would ever feel again.
I used to eat lunch in the teacher’s lounge, but lately
I couldn’t bring myself in there to face other people, especially my nosey
colleagues.
Everyone had heard about my failed marriage. They
stopped me in the halls to offer their condolences or hitman services with
empathetic expressions or playful smiles. They watched me with pitying eyes and
sympathetic frowns. They whispered behind my back or asked invasive questions.
But none of them cared. Not really.
They liked having someone to talk about that wasn’t
them and a topic that didn’t dive into their personal lives. I was the gossip
martyr. As long as they could tear apart my bad decisions and argue whether it
was my frigidness or Nick’s playboy tendencies that hammered the last nail in
our coffin they shared a macabre sense of community.
They didn’t care that each callous comment shredded me
apart just a little more or that I could hear them cackling from down the hall.
They didn’t take into account their own divorces or
unhappy marriages or faults or hypocrisy or shortcomings. They only saw mine.
And now so did I.
The creaky door swung open and my best friend and
fellow teacher, Kara Chase popped her pretty red head in the room. Her pert
nose wrinkled at the sight of my untouched lunch and she smoothed down some of
her wild frizz with a perfectly manicured hand. She had endless, luscious curls,
but as the day went on and she dealt with more and more apathetic high school
kids, her beautiful hair would expand with her impatience.
“That looks… yummy.” Her stormy gray eyes lifted to
meet mine and I couldn’t help but smile.
I stuck my tongue out at her. “Don’t judge! It’s all I
had.”
She walked all the way in the room and leaned against
the white-washed cement wall with her hands tucked against her back. “You used
to be better at going to the grocery store.”
The small dig cut deeper than it should have. “I’ve
been busy.”
Her lips turned down into a concerned frown that I
mildly resented. “You can’t wallow forever, Kate. Your marriage ended, not the
world.”
But he was my
world. I kept that thought to myself. Now was not the time or the place to
sift through my complicated feelings regarding Nick. I wanted this. I wanted this divorce. I had no right to
be this upset or depressed.
Deep breath.
“You’re right,” I told her. “I just haven’t gotten the hang of cooking for one.
Last time I went to the store, I ended up way over-shopping and then I had to
throw half of it out when it went bad.”
As gently as she could, she said, “You’ll get the hang
of it.”
I pushed off in my chair until the back of it slammed
against the white board behind me. “I hope that’s true.”
Because if it wasn’t…
Had I just made the most colossal mistake of my life?
No. This was right.
But then why did it feel so… unbearable?
“Until then, let’s sneak out and grab something better
than… than whatever is on your desk now.” Her expression brightened until I
felt myself smiling at her. We had been friends since we started at Hamilton
High School eight years ago. We had that kind of natural connection you only
find once or twice your entire life. We were instantly inseparable. Even though
Nick and I were already together we were only dating at the time. Kara had been
my maid of honor at our wedding and my closest confidant over the years. She
knew the lowest lows of my marriage and the hard adjustment I’d faced since I
ended it.
I didn’t want to think about where I would be without
her.
I looked at my wrist and checked the time. “I have
twenty minutes. Can we be back in time?”
“We’ll hurry.” Her kitten heels clicked against the
polished floor as she moved to hold the door open for me.
She was the only teacher at this school that had any
sense of style. Her expensive taste didn’t mesh well with her public high
school teacher’s salary, but thankfully for her, her wealthy parents
supplemented her meager income.
My parents questioned my choices and thought I was a
failure at life.
And yet we both knew what it was like to struggle to
please impossible parents and feel insignificant in the wake of their busy
lives.
I might not have a designer wardrobe, but at least my
parents didn’t try to buy my love.
I grabbed my purse out of the same locked drawer I’d
tucked my lunch into and straightened my pencil skirt as I stood. I felt my
spirits lift immediately.
Kara usually had that effect on me. And it helped that
we were sneaking out of our jobs, to do something forbidden.
I loved breaking rules.
We were halfway down the hall and laughing with each
other when we were found.
“And where are you ladies off to today? I’m certain
Ms. Carter has class in a few minutes.” The deep voice made my skin feel too
tight and my insides warm slowly.
I turned around and met Eli Cohen’s rich brown eyes
and tried not to smile too big. “Checking up on me?” I raised a challenging
eyebrow.
Eli moved closer. “I was just in the lunchroom and
heard a pair of junior boys discussing their hot English teacher.”
That wiped the cocky expression off my face. “Gross.
Don’t tell me which ones. I don’t want to know.”
Eli’s face split into a grin and a rich baritone
rumble of a laugh fell from his full lips. “On one condition.”
“This is blackmail!”
He laughed at me again, but when he raised his dark
eyebrows and gave me a pouting look, I couldn’t help but soften toward him. He
was adorable. “Bring me back something from the deli.”
I couldn’t believe him. “How do you know we’re going
to the deli? We could just be… just be… going to the bathroom together.”
He shook his head slowly at me and grinned. “I see the
determined look in Kara’s eyes. I know that look. She’s hungry. And she’s
enlisted you to help her sneak out.”
“He’s good,” Kara mused. “I think our science teacher
is a little too good.”
“I’m starving,” he admitted. “I’ve been watching the
hall for five minutes hoping to catch a teacher on their way out.” He held out
his empty hands. “I forgot my lunch at home today and I have a meeting in three
minutes.”
I looked at Kara and tried to figure out what she was
thinking. Eli had transferred to our school two years ago and over that time I
had gotten to know him slowly. I could now say I counted him as my friend, but
for a long time I had kept him at a distance. He was too good looking, too
perfect. His skin was nicely bronzed, his hair perfectly quaffed and for a
science teacher, his body was surprisingly filled out. I had found him
intimidating at first and then, because I was married to a handsome man and
supposedly in love with that man, I found it utterly ridiculous to be so
affected.
I was a mess. Even back then.
“I suppose we can take pity on him,” Kara sighed. “He
does look famished.”
I ran my eyes over his broad chest and flat stomach.
“He’s practically starving.”
“Should I get you the cobb salad?” Kara asked
innocently.
Eli pointed a playful finger at her. “Don’t you dare.
I wouldn’t know what to do with something green. I’d probably make my students
dissect it.”
It was my turn to shake my head. “You’re hilarious.”
He smiled at me, wide and carefree. “I’ll owe you
one.”
“Sure you will.” Kara and I started walking again.
“I’ll be sure to collect.”
“I’m counting on it.” His low voice followed us down
the hallway and I had to turn around before he saw my inflamed blush spread
across my cheeks.
I pressed my cold hands against my face and tried to
ignore the burn in my abdomen. It had been a long time since I flirted with
someone, even longer since that someone wasn’t Nick.
Kara’s elbow found my side playfully. “What was that?”
“A favor?” I turned my wide eyes to her and silently
begged her to tell me it wasn’t as forward as I thought it was.
She pressed her lips together to hide her smile. “Sure
it was.”
“We’ve been friends for years.”
“And now you’re single.”
A shuddering breath shook my lungs. “Not really. Not
yet.”
“Soon,” she argued. “When the divorce is finalized,
you’ll officially be back on the market. Obviously, Eli knows that.”
The flirty tingle turned sour in my stomach and
suddenly I’d lost my appetite all over again. The blush drained from my cheeks
and I felt myself turn pale and see-through.
Kara noticed immediately. “I’m sorry, Kate. I didn’t
mean to… to upset you. I just thought… It’s been three months, babe. Nick
hasn’t even reached out to you. Not really, anyway. I thought you might be
ready to move on.”
Ready to move on after three months? Was that all it
took to get over the last ten years of my life? I had been with Nick in some
form or capacity for a decade, but I was supposed to erase him completely from
the important parts of my heart in three months?
How?
I wasn’t against the idea. In fact, I would have loved
to forget about him and the poisonous relationship we’d created. I would love
for this pain in my chest to ease and the sickness that seemed constant and unrelenting
to ebb.
But it wasn’t that easy. I couldn’t shake our
relationship or the hold he had over my heart.
Not everything about him was bad. In fact, most of him
was good and beautiful and right. But with me, he wasn’t those things and I
wasn’t either.
But how was I supposed to let go of him? I loved him.
I loved him for ten years and knew nothing else but loving him.
How could I walk away from him and even entertain the
idea of a man after everything I had been through? I wasn’t sure if I wanted to
date again ever, let alone so quickly after my last relationship failed.
No. Epically failed.
Nick was supposed to be my forever. Nick was supposed
to be my “until death do us part.” And now that the rest of my life had taken a
sharp, life-altering turn, I didn’t know where I was headed anymore.
I was lost.
I was rudderless.
I was floating in a sea of confusion and hurt. I
needed something to tether me, to pull me back to shore. But I knew, more than
anybody else in my life, that I wasn’t going to find that with a new man.
“It’s okay,” I told Kara with a throaty whisper. “I
just wasn’t… I wasn’t expecting that from him.”
She squeezed my forearm and gathered her thoughts. “I
know that what you’re going through with Nick and everything is intense, but
you’re still young. You’re still gorgeous. You still have a lot of life left to
live. I don’t want you to give up, just because the first try wasn’t
successful. You’re a catch, friend. You have to know that Eli isn’t the only
man lining up to take advantage of Nick’s colossal mistake.”
“The divorce was my idea,” I reminded her. “I’m the
reason we ended it.” The words felt like stones on my tongue. I felt their
gritty, dirty wrongness and I wanted to spit them out and wash my mouth out
with something cleansing.
Something like bleach.
“Yeah, maybe,” she sighed. “But he should never have
let you get away with it.”
Something sharp sliced against my chest. I felt the
same way too. If he had really loved me, he wouldn’t have let me go through
with it. Right? If he really wanted things to work out between us, he wouldn’t
have moved out.
He wouldn’t have stopped talking to me.
He wouldn’t have left.
Desperate to change the top, I pushed through a back
door and blinked against the bright fall sunlight. “So, lunch?”
“Yes!” She smiled at me. I could see the concern
floating all over her face, but she held her tongue in an effort to keep me
together. “Garman’s has the freaking best pastrami on the planet.”
I would never understand how Kara could eat so much
and stay so thin. She did what the rest of us did, which was an insane amount
of cardio and limited alcohol. But she could eat whatever she wanted.
I looked at a piece of chocolate and my thighs
expanded.
Well, until recently.
We hurried across the lengthy parking lot and busy downtown
Chicago street until we reached the tiny corner deli that boasted whole pickles
with every purchase and sandwiches the size of my head. It was a favorite spot
for everyone that worked on this block, but especially for the teachers at
Hamilton. When given the choice of bad cafeteria food, a quickly packed lunch
from home or a thickly-meated, moist-breaded, delicious deli sandwich from
Garman’s, the choice was obvious.
But after an incident last spring, in which a group of
students had left school to corner and threaten a teacher off school grounds, our
administrator had banned teachers from leaving campus during the school day and
so technically we were sneaking out and breaking rules.
Hamilton was located in one of the under-privileged
sections of Chicago. We were firmly in the city proper, not skirting the
affluent suburbs or near a wealthier area of downtown. No, Hamilton was
directly in the middle of gang violence, low-income housing and race wars.
I’d been offered jobs at some of the more stable
schools in the city and even one at a prestigious private school in a well-off
suburb. But when I chose Hamilton, it was with my heart. I had examined all of
my options, and I knew that taking this job was a risk professionally, but I
couldn’t deny that I felt something meaningful for these kids.
I wanted to make a difference. Not the kind that you
see on TV or that moves you in a heart-warming movie, but a real difference. I
wanted to empower these kids with knowledge that would never leave them and
tools for a future that was beyond this neighborhood. I wanted to inspire
something inside of these neglected teenagers that had all of the odds stacked
against them and had to fight to just show up on a daily basis.
I fought a losing battle every day and I was
exhausted. But it was worth it.
I could feel it in my bones.
Kara’s heels clicked against broken sidewalk as we
hurried to Garman’s, mingling with the sounds of angry traffic and city melee.
The warm sun heated my exposed arms and face and I lifted my closed eyes to
soak it in.
There was healing in this industrial chaos. There was
a beautiful surrender to the noisy madness that felt cleansing and therapeutic.
It wouldn’t last. I would pay for my sandwich, go back to my desk and the
reality of my broken life would come crashing down on me.
But for a few seconds, I had the flirtatious smile of
an attractive man in my memory and a minute of reprieve from the demands of my
life. I sucked in a full breath, taking in the exhaust and grit from the city.
And yet, my lungs felt full for the first time in as long as I could remember.
“It’s going to get better,” Kara said so softly I
barely heard her.
I opened my eyes to keep from tripping and they
immediately fell to the cracked sidewalk and patchy grass on either side. “I’m
not sure it is,” I told her honestly.
She dropped her hand on my shoulder and squeezed,
pulling me into a side hug. “There’s more to life than Nick, babe. I promise
you. And it won’t take you long to figure it out. You just need to get the
divorce finalized so you can move on.” Her laugh vibrated through her. “And Eli
would be a very good place to start.”
“Maybe,” fell from my lips, but I didn’t feel any
sentiment behind it. More sickness roiled through me and a cold sweat broke out
on my neck. I swallowed against rising nausea and convinced myself not to throw
up.
I was getting a divorce, but even the thought of
another man still felt like adultery. Whatever our faults, Nick and I had
always been faithful to each other. Moving on seemed impossible when I had
dedicated my entire life to one man.
To the one man that had let me down and stomped on whatever
remained of my happiness.
Nick and I were over, I promised myself.
I would move on eventually.
And Nick would too.
We grabbed our sandwiches, but I let Kara drop Eli’s
off. I had lost any desire to communicate with other people. I practically crawled
back to my classroom and sunk into my chair. My deli sandwich went uneaten,
just like my one from home, because I couldn’t bring myself to feel good enough
to eat.
Kara had meant to encourage me, but she’d done the
opposite.
I realized that she was right. That one day I would
move on.
But that I was right too. Nick would move on as well.
I knew I could find someone better for me. I knew my
life would be better off without him.
I just couldn’t swallow the hard pill that his life
would be better off without me too.
That he would find someone better than me.
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Found this on Maryse's Book Blog & was intrigued enough to click over & read the first chapter.....OMG, I can't WAIT for this to come out!!!
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