Tear Stained Beaches (8 page)

I smiled if only at the simple fact that the last group of women, those who I considered my friends, suggested I brush it all under the rug and continue to live a lie. Here was this girl I barely knew, who knew nothing about me, my marriage, or where I came from, and she was standing up for me.

“You’re only responsible for your own actions. You can hold yourself accountable for the mistakes YOU made, but you can’t blame yourself for the choices HE made.”

She had a point. I knew I wasn’t perfect. I knew there were days even I didn’t want to be around me, but you can bet just as much there were plenty of times Chase was not pleasant to be around either. I started, in my mind, to go off on a tangent. The anger built up again.

Marriage is not easy, I thought to myself. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s two different people, from two different backgrounds, trying to build a life together for better or worse.  It’s something you have to work at every single day. There are going to be hard times and those are the times you are supposed to fight like hell. How hard are you willing to fight? The truth is, if you truly love someone, you’ll use every ounce of energy you have until you have nothing left.  That’s what love is. The good times, those are the easy parts. Those are the parts of your relationship you get through the bad times for. You don’t use the bad times as an excuse to jump into bed with some trashy whore who doesn’t have enough respect for herself to say no to a married man!

I stopped myself from going any further into thought, sighed and rolled over onto my back. I refused to let him get the best of me. It was a gorgeous day and I was going to enjoy it. I had cried enough and felt enough hurt for years to come. I just wanted one day; one day of peace. I owed myself that much; he owed me that much. So I shut out all the happy families on beach with my music, and relaxed.

Chapter 15

Meghan and I lay on the beach for most of the morning and afternoon. It was nice having someone there. She didn’t judge me, she didn’t badger or lecture me; she just listened. And when I stopped talking, she’d lay back down and soak up as much sun as she could, before she had to leave to get ready for her shift at The Pier Shack.

By 2:00pm it was time for Meghan to start packing up. I decided to follow her lead and call it a day as well. My stomach gurgled ravenously as we were gathering out things that Meghan must have heard it too. 

“You know where I think you should go?” She asked.

“Where?”

“The Sandbox Café. They have the best sandwiches in town.”

I laughed. “He’s that obvious huh?” I said looking down and patting my stomach.

“Just a little.” She pressed her fingers together to gesture. “But for real, you should go. All their food is made fresh to order and the ingredients come from local farms.”

“That sounds delicious. How far is it from here?”

“About ten minutes down that way. Just turn left when you see the sign for the east end pier.  I think it’s the third traffic light. You can’t miss it; it’s a big green sign. The café is right on the pier so you can sit outside and look at the ocean.”

              “Perfect. I’m gonna head home first to rinse off and freshen up.”

              “Let me know how you like it. I’ll be at the Pier Shack all night, so stop by if you need anything.”

              “Will do. Thanks Meg.”

              We waved goodbye and headed in opposite directions.

Meghan was right—you couldn’t miss the big green sign to the pier. As I made my way up the steps, I could see the line to the café was out the door and around the corner. She must not have been exaggerating about it being the best in town. I thought about all the other places I passed on the way that I could go to get something to eat faster, but really, what kind of hurry was I in? Where did I need to be that I couldn’t wait in line for a measly 15 minutes for a sandwich? The answer to that was nowhere. There was absolutely nowhere I needed to be. Today, this week, and maybe even the week after that, it was all about me. I was going to do what I wanted to do; as I figured out what the hell I was going to do with the mess I called my life. So damn it: if I wanted to try the best sandwiches on Kettlewood Island, and I had wait 15 minutes to do it, then so be it, I would.

While waiting in line I checked my cell phone. I hadn’t looked at it since that morning and wondered if Katie had anything else to say about Chase showing up at her house. I could see the blue light flashing—a gentle reminder that life was still revolving outside the bubble I had retreated into.

There were four text messages and three voicemails. I saw that the only missed calls I had were from Chase. A lump grew slowly in my throat. My hands started to shake as I hit the delete button without even listening to the voicemails.  I tried to do the same for his messages too, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to see what he had to say. I wondered if he knew why I left, was ready to confess what had been going on, or if he was going to continue to lie about it all. I guess I wasn’t surprised that each one of them didn’t allude to anything.

The first one read:
Can you at least tell me where you are? I need to know that you’re ok

I clicked to the next one:
I love you Haylie. Please come home and talk to me

And the next:
I’m going crazy here Haylie, please say something. What’s wrong?

I whispered,
“What is bothering me Chase is that you know EXACTLY what is wrong with me and you are too much of a coward to admit it!”

Mad, once again, at the ridiculous way he was handling this situation; I pounded the keys on my phone as I scrolled to the final text. It was Katie.
Glad you’re ok. Call if you need anything. Be strong.
She was such a sweet girl. I remember the day she came over to bring us that apple pie. Her dark brown, shoulder length hair was damp from the shower she must’ve taken right before. Her one shoulder, navy blue Gucci dress hugged her figure perfectly. Her personality did not fit the image she tried to portray. She was sweet, bubbly, and level headed. Just the kind of person I needed to be on my side at a time like this.

It took a lot longer than 15 minutes to reach the front of the line, but I found myself so engrossed in people-watching that the time went quickly. I watched a father hold an ice cream cone up to his little girl. She couldn’t have been more than two. She fought real hard to try and hold it herself, but he stood his ground. Good thing he did, or he may have ended up like the poor mom who watched her son lick his chocolate yogurt right off his cone. He started crying before it hit the ground. She grabbed him and walked away before they became that afternoon’s entertainment.

What really caught my eye was the young couple at a table just off the boardwalk. They couldn’t take their eyes off one another. They held each other’s hands from across the table. I smiled—thinking about how happy they seemed and remembering those days with Chase. How in love we were, how we wanted to spend every waking minute together. How we couldn’t even get through a meal without wanting to put our hands on each other.

I wondered if it happened in every relationship. If the honeymoon phase really is just a phase. I wondered at this point how couples lasted fifty years. Maybe it was because my heart was broken and the pain was still raw, but it seemed to me that forever was really just a word in a song. All my friends back home existed in their marriages to keep their socialite status. Chase’s parents divorced when he was young, and hell, every time I turn on E! another celebrity couple is heading for divorce.

My smile for that young couple faded. I wanted the happiness I saw in them. I wanted to be in love with someone who was truly in love with me. I wanted someone to want to come home to me after work, and miss me when I wasn’t around. Could Chase and I get past this? Did I even want to try and work it out? Would he ever be able to tell me why? I just shook my head. By the time I looked up, it was my turn to order.

It was the biggest grilled chicken on flatbread I’d ever seen and the taste didn’t disappoint. It was just after four o’clock by the time I finished, and there was plenty of daylight left to explore. I knew a few hours of retail therapy wasn’t going to fix all that had been broken, but it seemed a good place to start. I needed some time to step away from my thoughts and regroup, hoping I would be able to come back to them later and delve every angle of the situation. I had cried enough the last few months—shopping followed by a scenic stroll on the boardwalk, might do me some good.

It was late evening by the time I returned to my cottage, but like many nights before, I wasn’t ready to go to sleep. I grabbed a wine glass from the cupboard and poured myself some of the Moscato I had picked up on my way home. Since the sun had gone down long ago, I sat on one of the Adirondack chairs on the back deck and watched the waves ascend upon the shore, creating a ripple effect each time they disappeared back into the ocean. The moonlight glistened off the water, and distant shadows sauntered the far end of the beach.

I sat there for a long time, just thinking. The gentle hissing as the waves drove up to shore was the only sound that echoed. You would have thought I’d get sick of thinking about the same things over and over again, but I couldn’t help it. I played every scenario in my head. Where they met, what she looked like, could I have prevented this? There was just so much to worry about, to wonder about. Did he love her? That would have broken my heart the most. I might have been able to deal with an infatuation, lust, inner struggles to find himself: but not love. I don’t think I could’ve handled it if he really had fallen in love with her.

Two heavy eyes and an empty bottle of wine later it was time to call it a night. I wiped the tears that had unknowingly fallen upon my face, took one last look at the moonlit sky, and headed inside. It was the first night I could remember that I actually slept soundly. Thankful for the miracle a bottle of wine could bestow, I was free of thoughts until the morning.

Chapter 16

The next morning I had trouble getting out of bed. My head was spinning, and when I lifted it from the pillow it seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. I was never a fan of the consequences of a night of drinking, and it was even more pathetic that it was a night of drinking alone. As I’d learned from the few nights in college that I had partied too hard, the best cure for me was to sweat it out. After procrastinating for a half hour, I dragged myself out of bed, dressed in my running gear, and hit the beach.

It was the most painful workout I had endured in a long time. Not because I had worked myself past my comfort zone, but because it took everything I had not to stop and throw up. I kept telling myself it’d be better once all the toxins were sweated out of me, so I continued to run. I was far into my run, and was about to turn around, when I saw Meghan waving at me from what must have been her beach bungalow. I jogged up to her, hoping she wouldn’t notice the fragile state I was in, but no such luck.

“You look like shit.”

“Ha! Gee, thanks.”

“A little too much partying last night?”

“You know it. Me, a big blue chair on the deck, and a bottle of wine.”

“Pity party for one, huh?”

I nodded. She placed her hand on my shoulder, and then disappeared inside for a minute. She returned with a bottle of water and handed it to me. After guzzling almost the entire bottle in one breath, I sat down on the wood bench on her deck, as she leaned against the railing staring out towards the water.

“I’ve been there you know.”

“Been where?”

“Where you are right now. I mean, I was never married, never had a ring on my finger, but I was expecting one at any minute.”

“Do tell.”

“I started dating this guy, Rick, in high school. Four years after graduation we were still together. I thought he was the one. My family did too.  Everyone talked about us getting married all the time. The two of us included. Just a few months before we finished college we were talking about the best time of year for a wedding. He even took me to look for engagement rings. Told me he didn’t want to put something on my finger for the rest of my life without me having some sort of say in it.” Her eyes looked to the ground.

“Sounds like it was pretty serious.”

“Leading up to Christmas of that year that’s all my mom could talk about. She even took me to the nail salon a few days before Christmas Eve just to make sure my nails were prepped and ready to show off the ring.”  We both laughed at how crazy that sounded. “Christmas came and went, and still no ring. He cancelled our plans for New Year’s and a few days later asked me to meet him in town.  He ended it right then and there with no explanation at all. He kissed my forehead as I cried in the street, got in his car and drove away.”

I could feel the tears welling in my eyes. “That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Did you ever hear from him after that?”

“Not a word. I cried for days wondering what it was I did wrong. A few weeks later I saw him walking out of a restaurant on the other side of town, hand in hand with another girl. They looked like they knew each other pretty well.”

“What a jerk. Seriously,” I placed my hand upon hers and tried to blink back my unshed tears.

“That’s not even the last of it. A few months after I saw him with that girl, he called me and asked to meet for dinner. Trying to stay strong, I told him I already had plans. That excuse only worked for so long though. Eventually I gave in. He begged for me to take him back and told me how big of a mistake he had made.”