by Claire Adams
“Thank you so much, Alissa, for being so wonderful about this,” he said sadly. “I want you to know that I won’t give up on this. And if you are there when she is ready, I will be knocking down your door to beg you to take me back.”
“There won’t be any begging necessary,” I said, faking a laugh. “But I have to get going. I have a lot of work to do.”
“All right,” he said. “Talk to you soon.”
I hung up the phone and set it down on the table, pulling myself from the couch and walking toward the living room door. As soon as I reached the archway, I grabbed onto the doorframe and burst into tears, grabbing myself around the waist and sitting down right there on the floor. My heart felt like it was going to burst from my chest, and the sobs just kept coming, one after another, without control. I let myself have that moment, that moment of release that I didn’t even know that I would need to have. I leaned my head back against the doorframe, feeling the tears rolling down and splattering against my silk button-up dress shirt. I took in a deep breath and shook my head, closing my eyes. The emotions were so intense, worse than I had experienced before, and I knew that it was because I had fallen in love with Ryan, and I didn’t even realize it until that moment.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ryan
It was already creeping into early June, and it was brutally hot outside. Time was really starting to fly by. After I broke it off with Alissa, I kind of just put my head down and bulldozed forward, trying to ignore the nagging pain in my chest every morning when I woke up and every night before I went to bed.
Kayla was back to being relatively happy again, although she clearly didn’t understand the situation because she kept asking for Alissa to babysit her. Every time someone brought up Alissa’s name, I cringed, not because I disliked her, but because the memory of her was still burning strongly in my chest. That night, I was more than glad to be getting off a long day at work and heading over to the local bar to have a few drinks with Juan.
Life had been busy with the summer schedule kicking into full gear a week or so early, since the hot weather crept in without warning. Both my company and Juan’s were in crazy mode, and neither of us were getting much time to breathe, much less hang out to discuss life over a beer. It had been the first time I had seen him since I told him I was interested in someone, long before Alissa and I finally realized our feelings for each other. I had thought about calling him when I broke it off with her, but I knew he was happy with his new girlfriend, and I didn’t want to unload anymore of my tragic love life onto him. He had endured enough of that during the whole Christina thing.
When I got to the bar, I found Juan sitting in his normal spot on the left side of the bar, facing the door. He was eating what looked to be some sort of sandwich from the bar kitchen and sipping on his beer. I walked over, laughing and shaking my head.
“You know, eating food like that is what causes most of the health issues in the country today,” I said, patting him on the back.
“Hey,” he said with a jolly tone, looking down at his plate. “Yeah, well, Maria has me on this diet to lower my cholesterol, and I am seriously starving, man. Don’t tell her.”
“Your secret is safe with me, until you have a stroke,” I said, pretending to lock my mouth and put the key in my pocket. “How’s work?”
“Hell,” he said, laughing. “You?”
“Same,” I replied, wiping the sweat from my brow and ordering a beer. “It’s going to be a long next few months for me and my men working outside.”
“I know what you mean,” he said, looking up at the television playing the weather forecast. “It’s already in the triple digits out there, and it is just the beginning of June. I can’t even imagine what August is going to feel like. It’s a good thing I’m from Mexico, man. I have heat in my blood. You? I assume you’ll burst into flames.”
“I’ll be sure to keep the hose nearby.” I chuckled, swallowing a big gulp of my beer and letting the cold brew wash into my chest. “So, how are things? I mean, beyond Maria controlling your diet.”
“Good, man,” he said, smiling. “My sister is getting married soon.”
“Really? That is awesome. Please tell her congrats from Kayla and me,” I said, smiling. “She deserves to be happy.”
“You’ll be getting an invitation, though you might be the only white boy there.” He laughed. “Maria and I are still going strong. She really keeps me straight, you know? She makes sure that I am healthy, happy, and it’s probably the best I’ve felt for a really long time. She has opened up a whole new world for me, and I love going home and seeing her smiling face.”
“You two live together now?”
“Yeah,” he said, laughing. “She was at my place all the time, and it just made sense. Now, I get to come home to this beautiful woman wrapped in an apron, cooking something delicious, and giving me some major love. I really don’t know how I’ve survived all of these years without her.”
“By eating terrible bar food and playing a game of luck with your health.” I laughed. “She might have come right in the nick of time.”
“You’re telling me.” He laughed. “How is the munchkin?”
“She’s doing better,” I said. “She is smiling again, laughing, playing with her friends, and all the stuff a normal 7-year-old is supposed to do. She turns 8 on the Fourth of July, so make sure you leave your calendar open for her party during the day.”
“I will, and you can meet Maria,” he said. “She’s starting to think I made you up.”
“Maybe you did,” I said, raising my eyebrows over my mug of beer and laughing.
“How about you? How is your love life?”
Immediately, my heart dropped, and my face cringed, Alissa immediately flowing back through my mind. I wasn’t bitter. I had been the one to make the decision, but I thought about her every day. Talking about it only seemed to make it worse, though I hadn’t really talked about it with anyone. Juan and I had been so busy that the conversation hadn’t come up at all. I was hoping I would get through the time at the bar without it coming up as well, but I should have known that wasn’t going to happen. I gulped my beer down and ordered another, instantly wanting to stop the aching in my belly. Juan sighed and patted me on the back.
“That bad, huh?” He shook his head and took in a deep breath. “I don’t know a lot, but the last I heard was that you had hired Alissa to redecorate your house and you guys ended up turning it into a real relationship. I was really happy for you. I knew that if you got yourself in a real relationship, that meant you really cared about the girl. I’m sorry that it didn’t go the way that you wanted it to. These things can be tough after going through the situation that you went through.”
I didn’t want to talk about this, even though I thought it would make me feel better. I wanted to pretend like it never happened, and that my heart wasn’t broken all over again. To be honest, I was really shocked at how sad I was when things ended. I didn’t realize how much I had cared for Alissa. At the time, I chalked it up to the fact that my heart was already in a sensitive position, and I had gone headfirst into it without thought or worry that it wouldn’t work out in the end. I was so sure of myself and of my feelings for Alissa. I really thought that Kayla would be okay with it in the end, but her crazy outburst made me realize I was thinking with my chest and not with my head. I was living in a dream world, thinking that life was going to be that kind and that simple for me.
“I tell you, man, I don’t even know where to start with all of that,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not really sure whether we are on a pause or completely broken up. Everything happened so fast, and I was forced to make a split-second decision that I wasn’t prepared to make. I walked into things headfirst with Alissa and was so damn sure that there was nothing that would end how happy we really were. I blinded myself, I think.”
“So, what happened? Did you freak out? Did she?”
“No, man, nothing like that.” I sighe
d. “Everything had been perfect. I mean, we’d spent weeks dating on the down low, not ready to tell Kayla yet. We really got to know each other on a whole other level. It was really special. Then, one night at dinner with Kayla, I just felt like I couldn’t lie to her anymore. She deserved the truth. Well, the truth seemed to be a bit more than she was ready to handle, and she broke down. She screamed at me about Mother’s Day, and then just started sobbing uncontrollably, blaming me for not trying hard enough with her mother. I asked her if it was too soon, and she said yes, so I let Alissa down gently.”
“You know,” he said with a deep breath. “I highly respect the fact that you care so much about your daughter that you would make your decisions based on her happiness. That being said, you have to remember something. You are never going to be the best father you can be if you, yourself, aren’t happy.”
“I know.” I sighed. “Well, I thought I knew. It just broke me that she thought I was the reason her mother hadn’t come back yet. I don’t want her to think that way about me.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But breaking up with Alissa may have given Kayla the belief that getting back with her mother was an option. Letting her believe that is going to hurt her a lot more in the long run than letting her understand now, and grow in that understanding as she matures. It is a hard thing to swallow, breaking your child’s heart, but life is tough, and one day, she will appreciate that you told her the truth. Every day that her mother doesn’t walk back through those doors is another day her heart aches. If she doesn’t expect it, she might be able to move forward.”
“She just started feeling better,” I said, rubbing my face. “To turn around and break that all over again is unthinkable.”
“It’s going to happen sooner or later, whether it comes from you, or she figures it out on her own,” he said. “It’s much better to come from a gentle hand that is there to catch her when that world collapses on top of her. On top of that, you can’t stay single forever. You will be miserable. Whether it’s Alissa or some other woman, if you start dating and she still believes her mother is coming back, you will put your significant other in a terrible place with your daughter. She will hate your new love interest, and knowing Kayla’s sass, she will make her feel really bad about herself.”
“This sucks,” I said, drinking my second beer. “I feel trapped in my own life. I still feel trapped under the weight of Christina and her decisions. She put me in a position where moving on like she did a long time ago made it impossible for me to do so without hurting my daughter, and all after I had to take the brunt of the blame from Kayla when Christina first left. It’s not fucking fair, man.”
“Very true,” he said. “But you have to make the best of what you have. Kayla will come around, and she will learn to love whoever you love, but only if she understands that your ex is not coming back. She needs to understand that she is not coming back because she chose long ago that she didn’t want to be there. It’s a lot for a little girl, but it will be even heavier if she gets older and finds out she was lied to. She will be angry at you for lying, angry and hurt with her mother, and she will feel guilty for the way she treated you as a child. That, my friend, is the really unfair part of it all. Unfortunately, Christina did this to her own child, and now, it has to be brought to a head so she can really start healing.”
“I understand,” I said with a sigh.
“Good,” Juan said, drinking the last of his beer, throwing some money on the counter, and slapping me on the back. “I gotta get home, or Maria will start questioning what I ate.”
“All right.” I laughed. “Thanks, man. It’s always helpful to talk.”
“You got this,” he said, smiling. “I have faith in you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alissa
I straightened my skirt and walked carefully across the parking lot to the front doors of the restaurant. It was the first time I had put on clothes outside of work that weren’t sweats or yoga pants since Ryan broke our relationship off. Tonight, though, Bella called me out to our favorite Italian joint to have dinner and get me out of the house. I didn’t tell her, but I knew she knew I was moping around, feeling like absolute shit for the last few weeks. I hadn’t even had the balls to really talk about how I was feeling about anything.
“Hey, beautiful,” Bella said, standing up and kissing my cheek. “Guess what I got in the mail today? A postcard from Mom.”
“Oh, yeah? Where are they now?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Somewhere in the tropics, but that isn’t the best part. Mom is coming home in July. I’m so happy to have her come home.”
“Aww, that’s fantastic,” I said, trying to muster a real, genuine smile. “That gives me another month to pull my head out of my ass so Mom doesn’t see me and instantly know that I have a broken heart. You know how she is. It’s like she can peer into my soul or something.”
“She can.” Bella laughed. “It’s some sort of mother voodoo. I won’t lie. It’s kept me alive quite a few times and through quite a few heartbreaks. She takes one look, and bam, she knows exactly what happened.”
“Yes, well, I don’t want her to know exactly what happened, so I need to get it together,” I said.
With Ryan and I still keeping our relationship a secret before he broke up with me, I hadn’t made any attempt to tell my mom about what was going on. Besides, it wasn’t really an appropriate conversation to have via a postcard delivered halfway across the world. I wish they would have added the international plan to their phones before they left. What would I say anyway? “Hey, Mom. Glad you are having a good honeymoon, and by the way, I am secretly dating your new stepson. Love, Alissa.”
No, that was not at all what I wanted to do to the poor woman while she was absorbed in her blissful honeymoon nest. I was sure that she would be fine with it, but still, that conversation was definitely reserved for a night with Bella and two bottles of wine. Hell, probably a night with Bella and Mom and six bottles of wine. I knew how that conversation would quickly turn into a description of his romantic ways, and the women would swoon around the room, never looking at poor Ryan the same ever again.
No, I had kept it to myself, assuming we would talk to our parents together when they returned. Instead, the relationship was cut off before it could really even begin, and I was left holding the bag. I wasn’t angry. I was brokenhearted, and I was actually glad that my mother didn’t know. I didn’t want pity at that moment. Well, I guessed self-pity didn’t count because I was bathing in that every night, that and about three pints of Ben & Jerry’s and at least three glasses of whiskey to top it off.
I motioned to the waitress for a bottle of wine and then decided to go with two, feeling the need for alcohol more than ever. I thought that being out and about, dressing up, doing my hair, and seeing my sister would make me feel better, but all it did was make the emotions even rawer than before. I decided that if I was going to be there, and I was going to have to eventually talk about Ryan and how I was feeling, I would need to drown my sorrows in more than just a little bit of wine. I knew alcohol wasn’t going to help in the long run, but soberly talking about Ryan in public was not going to happen without some serious ugly crying and having the attention of the whole restaurant drawn to our table.
“Seriously, I don’t understand you,” Bella said with a sigh. “You really care about this guy. You need to seriously put up way more of a fight than what you’re doing. I don’t mean fight yourself about one more glass of wine, either. I mean fight for love, girl. What would be the point of all of it if you weren’t willing to push for what you wanted?”
“But what about Kayla?” I asked. “The last thing I want to do is hurt that little girl. She has been through hell, and I don’t need to add to it.”
“No, see, you’re turning yourself into the villain here,” she said, shaking her head. “The real villain is her good-for-nothing mother. She has taken this happy-go-lucky, easy life and ruined her daughter and her
ex-husband’s chance at happiness, and now, she is ruining your chance at happiness. She is a selfish bitch, and Kayla needs to understand that her father is not getting back together with her.”
“I understand what you’re saying,” I said. “But that decision is not mine to make. That is Ryan’s decision, and it is obvious that he’s doing everything he can to save her from any more harm.”
“No, what he is doing is saving her from hurt in the moment, not thinking about what it will be like when she gets older and realizes that everyone lied to her and she spent her whole youth watching out the window, waiting for a woman to come driving up that had no intention of coming back,” Bella replied. “You’re the one having to sacrifice here, and I am all about sacrificing for love, Alissa, but not when you’re the only one left out in the dust.”
“I’m not the only one,” I said. “Ryan didn’t want to break up with me. He just thought he was making the best decision.”
“I know, honey,” she said, leaning forward and grabbing my hand. “But every once in a while, it’s okay for the both of you to be a little selfish. Right now, the both of you are allowing someone else to take complete advantage of this situation. Christina knew that this would be hard on Kayla, and she knew Ryan would do anything to protect her. She doesn’t want him, but she doesn’t want anyone to have him. That is not fair to him or Kayla because that means she will never experience the amazingness of you in her life. God knows she needs all the caring and compassionate women she can get right now.”
“Ugh,” I said, leaning my head back. “I know. I just don’t know what to do about it. If I press him, he may think that I don’t care about Kayla at all and push me away. If I don’t press, he may forget all about me.”