The Wife (7 page)

Loss.

Love.

They all swirl through me like a black hole of sadness that he has caused. I take a step back from him, knowing that anything that feels this wrong shouldn’t be happening. He has already taken so much from me that I can’t give him the little piece I have left.

“Alexa, don’t,” he protests.

“If you really do love me, then you wouldn’t think this was ok. It’s not ok.
We
are not ok. You need to be a part of our lives again and show me I can trust you before this…” I say pointing my naked, shaking body, “will ever be yours again.”

Mike stares at me in disbelief when I turn and grab my clothes from the bed, and walk out the door feeling more proud and more myself than I have in years.

“Y
ou’re my forever.” No three words meant more to me than those when Mike whispered them in my ear as we sat in the sand and watched the sun set on the horizon of the Jersey Shore. The three words
I love you
no longer held truth in them to me. Jamie destroyed that phrase for me when he left NYU to return to Ireland two years ago.
You’re my forever
held promise and truth in them that I didn’t think I’d find again.

It’d been a little over two years since Jamie left abruptly when he got word his dad had cancer and needed him home. I understood he had to leave. It reminded me of the time I wasted away from my mom when she was dying of cancer, and I didn’t want him to have the same regrets. I wanted him to be with his dad, especially because that was the only family he had left. Our relationship was better than ever after spending a year and a half in New York City together, and I would have never imagined he was capable of treating me like a piece of trash like he wound up doing, so easily discarded.

I knew something had changed in Jamie when he left me to go back to Ireland. I saw it in his eyes that night when he left. At first, Jamie called every night, and I thought he’d keep his promise and come back to me. But after only a month apart, Jamie’s phone calls became less frequent. By the time his father passed away after only a little over two months, I could tell he was completely shutting me out of his life, and would snap at me every time we talked on the phone. One night when I returned home from working at the coffee shop, Jamie left a message on my answering machine to tell me he wasn’t ever coming back and I needed to move on. He didn’t even have the guts to tell me over the phone.

He left me a message to break my heart.

I know he didn’t want to hear my tears or listen to me try to convince him to let me come to him. I told him over and over when I sensed him pulling away and stopped telling me he loved me that I’d move to Ireland for him. I wanted to be by his side. Isn’t that what we promised each other?

I’ll never forget the coldness and disconnect in his voice on the answering machine that night. I must have listened to it a million times, crying each time. It didn’t sound like Jamie at all. The life in his voice was gone, replaced by emotionlessness and indifference to never seeing me again. My heart broke into a million pieces that night and I never thought it would ever be healed again. I tried to call him several times and convince him to let me visit and talk things out. He never answered, and soon, his number was disconnected and he had moved, leaving him lost to me forever.

I wondered night after night what I could have done to him to make him treat me that way, but there was nothing I could imagine, other than he’d found someone else. Perhaps it was self-preservation, imagining him being the bad person in the situation rather than believe I did something so horrible to turn him against me so suddenly. I never thought I’d be able to trust another man after he broke me. The man who once promised to never hurt me and to always love me was gone and had been gone for too long for me to mourn any longer. I couldn’t save the little part of my heart he left behind for him anymore. I needed to open my heart to someone who deserved it.

Mike was that man.

I met Mike in a business management class in the second semester my junior year at NYU when we were paired for a project a year ago. After Jamie left, I submerged myself in working at the local pizza parlor as a waitress and hanging out with my best friend, Lee, and some of my friends from home. Being paired with Mike on the project was the first time I spent any amount of time with another person other than my tight circle of friends, and was also the first time I was actually looking forward to any type of socialization with a man who wasn’t an old friend.

Mike was the first guy to strike my attention since Jamie left me last year, and how couldn’t he? He was tall, much like Jamie was, but had short, spiky black hair and equally dark eyes that were hypnotic to look at. Physically, he was very different than Jamie, with a sleeker, fit build, rather than a broad, muscular rugby boy body. He seemed like a bad boy to me because of the Celtic knot tribal band around his bicep and he had an air of confidence about himself that I found sexy as hell.

We worked together almost nightly for a month to complete the project, and he always made time each day to talk with me and get to know me in a subtle way, asking questions about my family life, my hometown, my interest in design, and of course he finally got to Jamie. Over time, I gave him bits and pieces about my relationship with Jamie, and its inevitable demise. I told him how Jamie was my first love—my first everything. The more I talked to Mike about Jamie, the better I felt about my current situation. I realized our relationship was doomed to fail at the start. Not only because his home was Ireland, but also because the deep, all-consuming love we both had for each other could have never stood the test of time. I only wished my heart was the one to have lost the love first, instead of his. I wished I didn’t still love Jamie, and perhaps I always would, but the more time I spent with Mike, the more I was sure that I would never let what Jamie did to me hurt me again.

The last night of our project, Mike pushed our books aside and looked at me with his fiercely protective brown eyes in a way that left no doubt he cared about me. I couldn’t imagine what was making him act so seriously then, when our conversations were usually laced with sarcasm and jokes, even when talking about Jamie. But that night, I knew something was different. He took my hands in his and brushed his thumb over my knuckles, shocking me with the tenderness in his touch. The only other times we ever had physical contact was when we hugged hello or good-bye—like friends do. But the intimate way he stroked my hand felt as if he was able to reach the small piece of my heart that remained.

Mike used his other hand to direct my gaze toward his so I could see the honesty he was imploring from me with his dark eyes. Mike was honest, almost to a fault at times, but it was all part of his confidence that I found attractive. His eyes burned into mine when he traced his hand across my chin; shocks of pleasure tingled through me.

“I need to ask you something, Alexa, because it’s been eating me apart for weeks now, and I can’t take it anymore.” He squeezed my hand gently, as if he was trying to conjure courage. It made me smile to myself, to think of a guy like Mike being nervous to ask me a simple question, especially after some of the intimate conversations we’ve had. When he began again, I realized the reason behind his nerves. “Do you still have feelings for Jamie?”

I smiled up at him, finding his vulnerability endearing. “Mike—”

Before I could get out my answer, he interrupted, “I mean, I’m sure you still care about him in some way, but I guess what I’m really asking is what would you do if he walked through those doors right now and apologized for everything and wanted you back? Would you do it?” He winked at me, looking more like the confident man I had come to know. “Or would you stay with me?”

He was such a mix of sweet and salty that I found him hard to resist. I didn’t break my gaze from his and felt safe enough with him to be honest, like he wanted me to be. It’s something I had thought of many times over the past year, and with him in front of me, eyes full of hope, I admitted the truth that I knew was in my heart—Jamie was never coming back for me. If he tried, I wouldn’t go back to him. I was too strong of a person and had too much pride to let someone possess my heart the way he did again. The one thing that I gained from the careless way he treated my heart was I was able to see just how strong and independent I really was. I didn’t give up on anything in my life when he left. I didn’t hide in a hole and let him make me feel worthless. I knew I couldn’t give up on my dreams because he took such a huge part of them away from me.

Did I hurt? Hell yeah. There were times I didn’t think I could get out of bed. But I did, and every day things got easier. As I sat there with Mike, watching his cocky smile reappear at the corner of his full lips, I realized that perhaps the pain I went through with Jamie was to get me to where I was now.

“If Jamie walked through the door, I would stay right here with you.” I looked down shyly. “That is, if you’d want me to stay here with you.”

“I’ve never wanted anyone to be with me more than I do you, Alexa.” He lifted my hand and placed a kiss on my knuckles. “I want all of you. Your heart, your body. Everything,” Mike said, with his confidence beaming. “I know I’ll have to work for it. All you need to do is give me a chance to show you how good love can really be.”

“What are you asking me?”

“I’m asking you to be my girl.” He didn’t wait for my answer. He leaned in and took my face in his hands and whispered, “I won’t ever hurt you the way he did.” He placed a soft kiss on my lips, making my heart feel alive again.