Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
As soon as we get back to the hotel for the night, Leah brings up her photos of me on her computer.
“Whoa …” I gawk at them. “They’re ….”
She smirks. “Gorgeous. You look like a work of art. Every curve. The shadowing. You’re showing everything yet oddly nothing all at the same time.”
I nod slowly.
“Can I put a few on my page?” she asks.
“Oh, I do get a choice?”
“Yes,” she says with theatrical exasperation, “you get a choice.”
“You can put any of these on your page.” I point to the ones that are the least revealing. Granted, I’m naked in all of them.
“Cool.” She doesn’t waste a single second before grabbing her phone and airdropping the photos from her computer.
After dinner, we hang out at the hotel bar so Leah can flirt with the bartender and I can stare at my phone. The photos she posted of me already have over two hundred thousand likes and nearly twenty thousand comments, most of them fire or hot pepper emojis.
A message from Zach pops up at the top of my screen, and I quickly click on it. I haven’t talked to him in over a month. It’s not like us. And I’ve missed him, but I’ve also felt like we’ve needed this space. So why am I giddy over a text?
Zach: Um … where are your clothes?
“Oh my god …” I cover my grin, eyes wide as I hold my phone up so Leah can see his message.
“Yeah, baby! Eat it, Zach. The world is looking at your naked wife.”
“Shh …” I laugh. “I’m cutting you off.” I waggle a finger at the bartender, and he just smirks.
“Seriously, like … what do I say?”
She grabs my phone and types: ???
He responds right away.
Zach: I’m not blind or stupid. WTF????
“I think he’s legit mad.”
“Let him be mad,” she says. “He had his chance with you.” Merlot and a few too many shots have made her bold.
Maybe I need a few more drinks before I respond.
“Don’t you dare reply to him.”
My thumbs move over my screen. “I can’t exactly ignore him forever. And I don’t think he really did have his chance with me. He’s still in the past, and I’m racing toward my future. Living in the present is too hard right now, maybe impossible.”
“You can ignore him. Those are just excuses. If you were meant to be together, you would be. Period. But you’re not together, and that’s it. That’s your answer.”
Em: They’re called boudoir photos. Leah needed a model. I’m glad you like them.
Nope. I delete the last line. I don’t want him thinking I care what he thinks.
Zach: I have a beautiful wife.
His stupid reply robs me of all excitement. “Fuck you, Zach,” I whisper.
Leah glances at my screen. “Oh … that’s so sweet.” She flip-flops with one text.
“It’s not sweet. It’s manipulative. Wife … he likes to claim me as his wife when it suits him.”
My thumbs go to work, saying as much.
Em: Your wife died. You don’t have a wife.
Harsh? Yes. But sometimes harsh is necessary.
He doesn’t respond.
I wait.
And wait.
“Welp, you told him.”
I nod, feeling terrible. Truly terrible. “Yeah,” I whisper. “I told him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The problem with saying things out of spite? It’s impossible to take them back. There are not enough “I’m sorry’s” or “I didn’t mean it’s” to erase memories. Forgiveness, at best, is a bandage to cover wounds. Words leave emotional scars. My mom left a lot on me, and I fear I’ve inflicted some on Zach.
Knowing these very basic facts is the reason I haven’t jumped on a plane and headed back to Atlanta, groveling and begging for forgiveness. The collapse of whatever we are or were is far from one-sided. What more can be expected from two people years apart in age, married out of convenience, and emotionally bound to unrealistic expectations and the haunting memories of a woman who unknowingly (or maybe not so unknowingly) brought us together?
Thanksgiving passes and no word from Zach.
Christmas passes and no word from Zach.
Granted, I could make the effort to contact him, but I don’t know if there’s anything left to say.
The new year brings a long list of goals and a new sense of independence. Feeling completely resigned to … fate, I balance my checking account and text Zach.
Send me the divorce papers.
It hurts everywhere. I’m angry, but I don’t know who’s to blame.
Zach?
Me?
Suzie?
I settle on Suzie because she planted the seed in my head. I’ve felt like my being with Zach was, in some small way, her dying wish. In theory, we belong together. But we messed up. We had all the right ingredients but mixed in wrong order—solving a mathematical expression without using the order of operations.
Wrong time.
Wrong place.
Wrong order of events.
Wrong … lifetime.
Just after everyone cheers and finds literally anyone to kiss when the clock strikes midnight, I get an unexpected call. Shouldering my way through the crowd of people in Leah’s favorite Manhattan bar, I look for a tiny corner where I can hear and see the screen of my phone better. I desperately want it to be Zach, but it’s not.