Midsummer's Eve (20 page)

Just another day? In my estimation it was the most romantic day of the year and meant to be spent with the person you loved most in the world. Evidently that was
Adam
’
s intent as well.            

Inching ever closer to my breaki
ng point, I heade
d
into the kitchen for a refill. “If it’
s just another day,
Adam
, th
en why did you send Chia roses?”
I needed to end this charade once and for all, before
Adam
succeeded in his vicious plot to see me institutionalized, or in the grave.

A long silence ensued and then he asked
, “How did you find out?”
He sounded vastly annoyed that someone had gone behind his back and informed
me of the floral delivery, while the pain
in my voice didn’t seem to bother
him
at all
. “
What makes yo
u think the roses were from me?”

“
I know about the roses,
Adam
! How could yo
u do this to me? Again?”
I hadn’
t meant for him to hear me cry, but I was about to choke on the words.

“
It wasn’
t my intention to hurt you,
Eve
. It just
…
happened.”

I had to have some answers or give up my slippery grasp on the pretense of sanity and he was going to give them to me before he hung up the
damn
phone.
             

“
What’s in the box in your car,
Adam
?” I struggled to breath, decided not to bother with a glass and drank the vodka straight from the bottle. “
The one from the jewelry store?”

“
An engagement ring,” he
finally said
.

“
When you bought it, wh
o did you intend to give it to?”
If we never spoke again I had to know the awful truth to this one burning question.

“
Well… you. I a
ctually bought it for you. T
hen Chia called
begging for my forgiveness and
reassuring me of how much she loved me and
telling me what a horrible,
horrible mistake she
had made
with some guy named Eric
.”
He didn't think he had hurt
me quite enough, so he added, “
She was on my mind when I picked the ring out. It would have
been too small for you anyway.”

“Is she pregnant?”

“She was,
but she had a… miscarriage.”

“Don’t you mean abortion,
Adam
?”

“Whatever!
It does
n’t really matter now. We
have plenty of time
to make more babies
.”

I could
hear the anguish in his voice. N
ot
from hurting me. Oh no! F
rom the betrayal he felt from
Chia having had the abortion.

He took a long shaky brea
th and exhaled slowly. “
Okay, I’m just going to be honest with you,
Eve
. I love her. I can’
t help it. I know I could settle down wit
h you and be content, but I don’
t want to settle for
mere
contentment.
Chia is like a drug that I can’
t get enough of! When we are together is the only time I really feel alive and deliriously happy. You might find this hard to believe, but I have actually cried myself to sleep over her, especially the last couple of nights knowing she was with another man.
I thought I would lose my mind!”

Join the club. “
I bet yo
u never cried over me, did you?”

He gave a harsh little chuckle designed to let me know exactly where I stoo
d. “
I would never cry over an American girl.
You are all so…
ordinary
. There’s nothing exciting or exotic or special about you. Now, you take an Asian girl, or a Mexican girl, or a
n
exotic
girl from one
of the Islands and you see wh
a
t
a
real woman looks like.
”

I had lost
Adam
, again. On Valentine
’
s Day! It
looked like Valentine
’
s Day 2012
was shaping up to be every bit
as hellacious as Christmas 2011
had been. Screw holidays! I hung up the phone, threw the empty vodka bottle into the trash and staggered down the hall toward my bed and my beloved bottle of Valium.

It didn’t take
long to discover that life without
Adam
hurt like the eternal fires of hell. Sinking deeper and deeper into
a
dark
, suffocating
depression, within a few weeks
I was questioning my reasons for even getting out of
bed.
Getting dressed? Brushing teeth?
What
exactly
was the point again
?

I worked, went home, ate and slept. Emotion of any kind was something I rarely felt anymore. In an attempt to convince myself that the pain would pass, my mind had stepped in and began to block the pain
. I had erected a large concrete
invisible
barrier
between myself and
my friends, my family and anythi
ng outside
the shelter of my bedroom
.
Blessed numbness had settled over me like a warm blanket.

I had los
t about fifteen pounds. It didn’
t seem like a big deal to me, but Teri,
Tammy
,
Mallory
, and my family harped on my gaunt appearance as if I were a candidate for an intervention. Admittedly
,
my clothes were beginning to hang loosely and I would benefit from an entire new,
two sizes smaller, wardrobe. However
,
I had absolutely no desire to go
traipsing around a mall.
I found it an almost insurmountable challenge to go food shopping.

Wi
thout fail one of the girls was
calling every hour on the hour with some ridiculous and boring anecdote, when the
ir sole intention was
to obtain a progress report on my sanity. I was sorely tempted to have my phone disconnected.

I hadn’
t been to a
girl’s night in three
months and unless some drastic changes occurred in my life, would probably never
attend another one. Why couldn’
t they just pretend
I had moved
to
Alabama
to my
son
’s current construction site
and stop constantly harassing me? On cue the phone rang and with extreme irritation I wondered which of the Tiresome Trio it could be.

“It’
s time for you to snap out
of it, Eve,” Teri droned in a
seriously
annoying
tone.

“Okay. I will.”
I held my fin
gers to the phone and snapped. “
Done! Gee thanks, now I feel much better
. You should have demanded
I do that months ago, before I had personally tripled the quarterly profits for the Kleenex Tissue Company
.”

“
Thank God you never lost your sarcasm. Anyway, have your bags packed
Friday.”

“Why? I’
m not going anywhere
,”
I was beyond
bored with her monotonous
and redundant
get out of the house
routine.

As was usually the case, she totally ignored my comment. I was beginning to be
lieve I might have to
piss the girl off to get her to leave me the hell alone.

“
Yes, you are.”

Much to my dismay, I could tell by the lilt in her voice that she was in one of those argumentative moods where she resisted taking no for an answer. She was convinced that if she yammered enough about a subject she could bend anyone to her way of thinking.
Not this time
!

“
The girls and I are taking you to the beach for your birthday.” This was uttered as if she expected me to flip out of bed and do cartwheels around the room at the mere thought of a fun filled weekend getaway.

“
My birthday is May 30.” I tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn.

“
Duh.”

Was it May alread
y? Good grief! I guess it was. “I’
m not going.” I was grateful they had thought to include me in their plans, althou
gh I truly wished they hadn’
t, b
ut I wasn’
t in the mood to join in the fun of an exciting beach excursion. “Y’all go and have a good time. If you happen to stop at one of those souvenir shops along the way bring me back a pecan log for my birthday.
”

“
Please do us both a favor, Eve, and spare me the wearisome li
tany of why you can’
t go, because come hail or high water you are going to get out of that damn house for your birthday
!”

“No, I’
m not! I
am turning fifty, Teri! W
hat about t
hat is cause for
celebration?”
I hoped she missed the slight edge of hysteria that drifted into my voice.

She didn’
t.

“
I’m coming to spend the night
with you Thursday night and we’
re leaving first thing Friday morning for Myrtle Beach, whether you like it or not. So you might as well go ahead and start shaving the furrier parts of your body, the ones that probably
haven’t seen a razor since Valentine’s Day
. You know how you tend to ignore even the most basic hygiene when you are depressed.”

“Screw
you, Teri. Bathing is basic hygiene, which I do daily, thank you. Hair removal is not a prerequisite to cleanliness, regardless of what you think.”

“Well, if I were
you I’
d
go ahead and
call a plumber ahead of time, because you know damn well all that hair is going to stop up the bathtub drain and I will have to bathe
come
Friday morning.”

I started to give her a piece of my mind, but instead I burst
out laughing. “You are a
bitch from the depths of hell, Teri.”

“I know. Don’t think you are the first to insult me. Kids started doing that in elementary school and by high school I was getting my head slammed in lockers and shoved in toilets daily, just because I was different.”

It was true. Teri
didn’t remember her childhood or teen years fondly. Her homosexuality had made her a prime target for the cruelest bullies in school, causing her to suffer terribly at the hands of fellow classmates.

“Y
ou’
re more than welcome to come and spend the night Thursday. But I can assure you that
I am not going on a beach trip.”

“I’
ll see you Thursday night and pack your suitcase when I get
there. Gotta go, love you, bye.”

Good luck with that! Like I had anything to pack that would actually fit.

Well
,
she was pissed. Good. Maybe she would delete my number from
her phone. But honestly I didn’
t really give a flying flip. No one was going to make me get out of bed, cover my atrophied body in something other than pajamas, unplug my Kindle
Fire
, turn off the Lifetime Movie Network, and close my bag of Reeses Pieces when I didn’t want to. So there!

Now, if I could just think of a way to piss off
Thelma and Louise
. The phone was ringing and I could only guess that Teri had called the two remaining
Musketeers
for backup. She had wasted her breath, for
Tammy
or
Mallory
weren’
t going to convince me to go someplace I didn’t want to go either.

But it wasn’
t
Tammy
or
Mallory
on the phone. I shivered involuntarily when I recognized the deep Southern drawl. It was Justin
.
This couldn’t be good. Thinking back, it sud
denly occurred to
me that Justin had never once called me with good news. I held m
y breath as he casually asked, “
Hey Eve, did you see the diamond
Adam
gave Chia
?”