Chapter Three
I realized in an instant that something was wrong. I was in my car when my phone rang. I noticed that it was Ethan and instantly my heart started thrumming in my chest. It was the day before our wedding and I was supposed to be on my way to my best friend’s house for my bachelorette party. But Ethan seemed urgent; he couldn’t tell me over the phone and had asked to meet in person.
“Just meet me by our tree!” he’d said when I tried to ask him for further information.
“Okay, Ethan…I’ll be there,” I had said before he hung up the conversation. As I drove on towards our favorite little spot, my mind kept racing. I could not for the life of me keep my thoughts quiet, nor could I keep them positive.
I wanted to think romantically; here Ethan was on the night of his bachelor party and he wanted to see me. But on the other hand I couldn’t. He seemed so anxious, so…frustrated with me, and I hadn’t even done anything.
Nearing the corner, I slowed down just before the road ended and the gravel path started. Parking my car off to the side, I carefully got out, and proceeded down the half-lit trail. Making my way further towards my destination, I took off my heels and let my bare feet touch the dew-soaked grass.
I could barely make out a tall, dark figure in the distance, but I knew that it was Ethan. As I came closer, he noticed me, but didn’t come towards me. The only light that guided my path now, was from the full moon. Though there were no other lights, I could still see pretty clearly. I could see clearly enough to notice that Ethan was troubled. I stopped a few paces in front of him.
He hadn’t looked up at me since I neared him. I knew him too well to think positively at this moment. There was something wrong, something terribly wrong. The wrinkles he was creating in his forehead were so prominent that I felt they were permanent. As I looked closer, I couldn’t believe my eyes. His face was tired, over tired, like he hadn’t gotten any sleep. I noticed the bags that I had never seen before had moved in under his eyes.
“You’ve been stewing over whatever this is for a long time,” I stated simply.
“I don’t know how to tell you this. Jaida…I still love you…” he said, though he still hadn’t looked at me.
“Ethan, look at me…”
“Jaida! Just let me think!” he said cutting me off.
Though they were only words, they cut like a knife. It wasn’t the words that hurt, it was the inflection. The tone that he threw at me. The volume of his voice.
“I’ve been thinking about this for about two weeks now…Jaida…I don’t want to marry you.”
“What…” my voice broke off, and came out as a pained gasp.
“I’m sorry Jaida,” he said, his eyes on his feet.
“Look at me,” I demanded softly.
“Jaida…”
“Look at me!!” I screamed.
He flinched at the sound of my voice, but he did as I asked. He looked at me. That’s when I saw it. That’s when I saw the guilt, the pain, and most importantly…I saw that he was not as upset by this as I was.
“Ethan why? Why are you doing this to me the night before our wedding?” I asked; the tears were pouring down and creating mascara lines in their wake.
“I don’t think that’s important…”
“I deserve to know why the love of my life is calling off our wedding! Ethan tell me now!”
“Come on Jaida, I’m just not ready! Why do you need to know so badly?”
“Damn it Ethan! We have been in a relationship since high school, there is no way you’re not ready!” I said becoming exasperated with the conversation. He was jerking me around, and I knew it. It pissed me off so much that all I could think about was hitting him across the mouth.
“I cheated on you…twice.”
I wanted to hit him, but he beat me to the punch. His words were so harsh that they knocked the wind out of me. I took a step backward and nearly stumbled; the shock from his words made me clumsy. My hand came up to wipe at the stains of my tears as I turned around. I couldn’t look at him; I couldn’t even bare to be around him at that moment.
“It was a mistake, but once I did it I couldn’t take it back. It was with two different women,” he said quietly behind me, causing me to sob.
“Two…” was all I could muster.
“Jaida, I didn’t want to hurt you.”
I wiped at my tears once more before turning around to face that man who I’d never hated so much in my life. He went from high school sweetheart, to piece of garbage in two seconds flat.
“When did you do this?” I asked him.
“Back in college, and then the night of our engagement” he said causing me to moan as if he’d hit me again.
I turned around to leave; I couldn’t stand there any longer. I couldn’t bear to hear any more from him. I made it only a few steps however; he’d grabbed my arm to stop me. I tried to jerk free, but he wouldn’t let me go.
“Let go!” I screamed before turning around with all of my strength, and punching him in the face.
Normally I wasn’t violent. But I’d had part of my childhood and the beginning of my adult life spit in my face as if it meant nothing to him. His head jerked back from the impact of the hit, and he stumbled backward while holding his jaw. I didn’t want to hurt him, but at least he let me go.
“We are done! Do you understand me? We’re done! I never want to see your face, hear your voice, or read your sorry ass messages! You will not call my phone, you will not come to my home, and you definitely will not be a part of my life anymore!” I said as he stood there watching me in shock.
He wasn’t expecting the hit, although he’s the one who threw the first punch. His lip was bleeding a little amount of blood, but he’d heal. The wound he left on my heart was something that I would never recover from. As I walked away from him, I heard him say that he still loved me before I picked up my pace until I was running towards my car. My shoes were knocking together violently in my hand as I ran faster and faster towards my vehicle. My breath was ragged as I reached the car.
Unlocking my door was harder than it should’ve been as I fought to see through the blinding tears. When I finally got the door open, I got in my car, cranked the ignition and shot off down the road. I heard a ring on my phone that I’d left in the car. I thought it might have been him so I hesitated. It finally went to voicemail but then picked up once again. Reaching over into the passenger seat, I grabbed the phone and answered it without looking.
“Hello?” I answered with my voice full of emotion.
“Jaida, honey what’s wrong?” I heard my best friend ask in a worried tone.
“Nothing, I’m fine,” I lied.
“Girl! You better tell me what’s wrong right now!”
“I’ll tell you when I get there,” I said, turning off the exit to change direction. I was already halfway home when I remembered that I still had my bachelorette party to attend. I knew that I wouldn’t be up for the party, but my best friend was who I really needed right now.
“Okay girl, I wish you would tell me now, but I can wait. I’ll let the girls know too, all right?”
“Ok, thank you, goodbye.”
My best friend’s house wasn’t too far from me, actually the exit I took put me right next to her neighborhood. Coming up on her neighborhood, I drove a few yards down before I came to her house. There were a lot of cars, but I could see some of the girls were leaving.
I drove past them, hoping they wouldn’t recognize my car. I didn’t want anybody to see me like this except my best friend. I decided to pull up on the grass at a neighbor’s house and waited for the rest of the girls to leave. Once they were gone, I pulled up and parked in her driveway.
She knew right away when she saw me. She knew those tears, she’d felt that same pain. When we were in high school she too had a sweetheart, but he cheated on her with her sister. She’d remarried since, but she had severe trust issues. Her husband was quite the man to put up with it, but that�
�s why we all admired him so much. The most awkward part about it was that my now ex fiancé and my best friend Josie’s husband, were best friends in college. He was actually at the bachelor party, or he was supposed to be. I wondered, as I walked into her living room and sat down on her couch with a glass of red wine, if Ethan had called off his bachelor party as I did.
“When did it happen?” Josie inquired.
“The first time or the second time?” I asked in response. Josie rolled her hazel eyes and sucked her teeth.
“I should’ve known his big black ass was cheating. All those muscles and those straight white teeth!” Josie could always make me laugh.
“Josie! I am trying to be mad,” I said after a chuckle.
“I'm for real, Jaida, that man has always had hungry eyes,” she said seriously.
“Yeah but I thought they were all for me. At least I got to hit him once,” I said massaging my knuckles.
“Shut up! No you didn’t!” she said genuinely surprised.
“It just came out of me, I feel bad about it…but at the same time I don’t. I felt hit when he told me, it was like a punch to the kidneys,” I said leaning back as I reached down to touch my sore feet. I hadn’t put my shoes back on, and rode all the way to Josie’s house barefooted.
“Girl, you let him off easy! You remember what happened with my break-up after I caught Daryl cheating on me?” she stated rather than asking the question. God knows I would never forget that day.
It was on a Saturday afternoon, and Josie and I had just gotten our nails done. Ethan was still at school, and I was off that day. At the time, I was actually living with Josie while I scraped by through college.
We hadn’t planned on going back to the apartment; we were supposed to go straight to a movie. Josie had forgotten her movie card, and decided that since we were going to pass our place on the way there, we might as well stop.
“These neighbors always have people over; they never heard of guest parking?” I remember Josie saying as we passed her taken parking spot.
“Ugh, I live here and I never would park in your spot,” I said as Josie unbuckled her seat belt.
“Exactly. I’ll be right back, girl,” Josie had said before jumping out of the car to go into the house.
I remember admiring my nails and relaxing against the car seat as I waited. The sun was bright and sunny, the wind was blowing softly, and the birds were singing my favorite melodies. And then out of nowhere, I heard a scream that ripped through my serenity and straight into my heart.
Jumping out of the car as fast as I could, I ran up the stairs leading to the door, and slammed through it. The entry way was connected to the living room, which eventually led to the kitchen/dining room area. Turning left, I found the stairs that lead to the master bedroom where I heard the scream come from.
As soon as I was in the room, I too couldn’t help a little shout of my own. There Daryl lay naked in the bed, holding the sheets to cover his manhood, while non-other than Josie’s own sister stood covering her breasts in the corner of the room.
“Are you serious? My sister?!” Josie screamed through furious tears as she took a step further in the bedroom.
“Jo, just hear me out okay?” Daryl said while he still clutched their sheets.
“Shut up! You’re a lying cheating bastard! I can’t believe you would do this with my sister!” she said as she took another step.
By that moment, I knew that no one else knew I was even there. It was almost as if I were only visible for that one shocked scream I let out, and then no more as the situation escalated. I didn’t realize it before, but Josie was walking purposely towards the closet. I didn’t understand why at first, but then I suddenly remembered.
And by then, so had Daryl, but by the time she pulled out what she was aiming for, it was too late. Daryl shot up from the bed and stood in front of Josie’s sister Amelia. It was something so simple, yet so stupid. This fool had just been caught cheating, and just as his distraught girlfriend pulled out a gun, he goes to protect the woman he was cheating with? I still couldn’t understand to this day how he could be so stupid.
“Are you protecting her? You love her Daryl, is that it? You love this little conniving bitch!” Josie had spit that last word out like it was poison.
“Josie, put the gun down,” he’d said as he began to walk closer.
“Wrong answer Daryl.”
“It was like they knew you were about to shoot,” I said to Josie in the present. She smiled and tossed her light brown hair back over her shoulder.
“Come on now. Daryl was stupid but not that dumb,” she said as she raked her fingers through her hair at the crown. I noticed that she did this when she felt proud of herself.
“I am though. I should have known.”
“Hey, I should’ve known, it had been going on as long as the relationship of two years. I didn’t though, and it is not my fault that he cheated on me. It’s him; he’s the one that’s wrong,” she pointed out with such compassion.
“Thanks, Josie.”
“Listen girl, you can stay here tonight, I’ll run you a nice bubble bath, we’ll drink some wine, and then stay up all night eating ice cream and watching chick flicks.”
“That sounds good, but I need to go home. Since there’s no wedding tomorrow, I’ll be going to work. I need to drown myself in it so that I don’t think too hard about Ethan,” I said.
“I understand. Just call me if you need anything okay? And be safe driving,” she said as she walked me to the door.
“I love you Josie,” I said giving her a hug. She hugged me back in a way that only she could.
“I love you too Jaida, I’ll see you soon, bye hon.”
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