Chapter 8
Withdrawal is agony.
Erasing someone you’ve spent ten years with from your life happens in a
numb blur.
But gradually, the tears start to come for no reason in the middle of the night.
A cloudy sky, a rose blooming by the roadside, thick blankets of snow- all of it can suddenly make my throat tighten.
For the first six months, I was drunk more often than not.
Without the haze of alcohol, I couldn’t sleep at all.
Most days, I drifted through a daze, wondering how someone could care for me so tenderly when I was gravely ill, yet betray me so easily once we had everything.
Alone in the vast, dark apartment, the lights off, the silence pressing in, could barely breathe.
Longing gnawed at me.
Almost masochistically, I watched that wedding vlog on repeat.
I deleted photos–terabytes of them–one by one.
On screen, we were laughing.
The first time we saw stardust settle on desert sand.
Chasing whales through Iceland’s deep blue silence.
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ས་གཅིག་གད་ཅིག་ཡོད།ཡོང་འོར་སོགས་ནད་
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Chapter 8
The day we moved into our first apartment.
The day our savings hit 15,000 dollars.
The first gold bracelet he bought me.
The day we bought our own home.
The happiness I once felt now made me sick to my stomach.
Betrayal was like a rusted hatchet, soaked in brine, hacking away at me night after night until I was battered and raw.
I deleted memories all night long, until my eyes were swollen and red, until every tear had run dry.
For days, I didn’t take one step outside. Takeout containers filled the trash can to the brim.
Late at night, staring at my flat stomach, I remembered that day in the hospital- the fragments in the basin.
Now, with no family left, the tears came again, unbidden.
Nicole came by countless times those days.
She’d help tidy the apartment, scolding me as she went.
“Marina, look at you! Pathetic!
“Keep this up and you’ll ruin your eyes.”
I just stared at the floor, silent.
Emmett’s calls couldn’t get through, but his messages kept coming, one after another.
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Chapter 8
“Rina, it was just a fake marriage. Did it really have to end up like this?
“We lost the baby, but we can try again. Even if you can’t have kids, Paulina can.
“She said when we got our marriage license that she wouldn’t mind helping out if you couldn’t have children. She’d be happy to be the kid’s godmother.”
After a long silence, at 3 a.m., Emmett sent a voice message, his voice shaking with tears.
“It’s been ten years. How can you be so heartless? You just like that?”
toss me aside
Just hearing him mention the baby made the bitterness in my throat surge all over again.
In the end, I deleted every message.
I stumbled through three months of days like that, lost in a fog.
Finally, I pulled myself together and went back to work.
But downstairs, I ran into the last person I expected.
Emmett, eyes bloodshot, holding a pot full of rosebuds in his arms.
He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, stubble shadowing his jaw.
“Marina, can you stop avoiding me?
“I went to Texas and got the roses.
“We’ve been together ten years. Mistakes happen. Can’t we at least end things with some dignity?”
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Chapter 8
Emmett stood shivering in the early spring wind, eyes red.
I looked at his new tie–the same one Paulina had shown off on Instagram last night as her latest find.
My heart felt completely still.
“Emmett.”
I looked at the flowers.
“Ten years.
“We’ve tried to get our marriage license 99 times.
“This 100th time–I don’t want it. Is that so hard to understand?”
Emmett stood frozen, clutching the roses tighter.
“No way.
m
“On that plane, you said as long as the roses survived, as long as you were there, we’d make it through anything.”
He chased after me, desperate.
“I bought you a new wedding dress, the ring you always wanted, the house we promised to share–how can you just walk away?
“How can you leave me?”
I walked away without looking back; his final words swept away by the sharp, cold wind of early spring.
