“What are you saying, Mimi?”
“I know that with this separation, your loyalty to Vance will require you to choose a side. I just want you to know that I understand that. I am sorry that we won’t be friends anymore, but there won’t be any hard feelings from me,” I say as we reach my car.
He stops and turns me to face him. “Yes, I will always have a loyalty to Vance, but you are my good friend too, so you also have my loyalty. I won’t choose sides. I am going to figure out what’s going on, Mimi. Maybe it’s too late to fix things for the two of you. It probably is. But I won’t abandon either of you.”
He pulls me in for a long, warm hug that I really, really need. We stay that way for a few minutes, until I pull away, discreetly wiping my eyes. I thank him softly before getting in the car. We drive back to his house silently, and I drop him off with only a short good bye and a promise to talk again soon.
Chapter Fourteen
Friday finally rolls around and I meet the movers at the storage space. Fortunately, all the stuff is mine. Vance and I never blended any of our stuff in here when we made room for some of my belongings at the house. All of his displaced items went into the garage. The movers are efficient and the space is cleared out within an hour. The longest part of the day seems to be the drive to the apartment, because they unload the items in the apartment as fast as they picked them up.
I spend the rest of the weekend organizing the apartment, which is a godsend because it keeps my mind busy. Finally on Sunday evening, with everything put away and the furniture arranged the way I want it, I flop on the sofa, one very tired woman. I realize I haven’t turned on my cell phone since Monday, when I turned it off because Vance was calling. I am loathe to turn it on, but I have to. I can’t stay incommunicado for very long. There are people who will worry about me, especially if they can’t get ahold of me at home. God only knows what Vance has told them if anyone has tried.
I power it up and learn my voicemail is full. Most of the calls are from Vance, although those stop on Tuesday, I assume after he received the TRO. I forward through those messages without listening to them, but for some reason I don’t delete them. There are a couple messages from my mom, one from Grace, two from Laurel, one from Jessica and finally one from Bob. I forward through them all except the one from Bob, thinking I’ll get back to everyone during the week, in my own time. I’m not eager to share the news of my split with Vance with everyone. Bob’s message is sweet, offering me more time off if I need it, and again letting me know if I need money, he’s willing to give me a loan. I’ll be back at work tomorrow, so I’ll thank him then.
I decide to turn in early, so I can get a start on my life post-Vance. It won’t be easy, but I will persevere until I have achieved a new normal and everything is okay once again. A little voice inside my head wonders if my heart will ever recover, but I squash it and push it aside. Who needs a heart, anyway?
I spend the next few weeks getting through by putting one foot in front of the other and making mental to-do lists like I did the day after I left Vance. It’s really the only thing that keeps me sane. If I don’t, I will have time to stop and think about what I have lost, how much I hurt, and I know that will be my undoing. So I continue forth, one step at a time, one task at a time, calling each day completed a victory.
So far, I have avoided telling everyone the news, except for Laurel. I broke down and called her somewhere at the end of the second week and laid it all out for her. It was one giant tear fest on my end, with her vacillating between quietly listening, cursing his name and threatening some very creative bodily harm to particular parts of his anatomy. Mostly though, she was sympathetic and supportive, and even offered to come out for a visit to help me through. I declined, knowing how busy things are at work for her, but promised if things got too rough, I’d tell her right away. She promised to be with me in a flash, bringing along with her sharpest set of kitchen knives.
I’d managed to avoid the rest of the girls at work, which wasn’t terribly difficult since we all worked in different departments and on different floors of our building. I simply avoided the lunchroom and ate at my desk, or took a late lunch if I had forgotten to bring something with me. I’d come in early and leave late in order to avoid any run-ins at the elevator. Somewhere toward the end of the third week however, my luck is up, and I see Grace’s extension flash across the LED display on my office phone one afternoon. She’d left a few messages on my voicemail since I left Vance, and I know she is aware I have moved out by the last message she left. I just haven’t been able to face telling everyone the truth about what happened. This time she calls though, I know I have to answer if I don’t want to damage my relationship with my friend. I take a deep breath and pick up the receiver.
“Hi Grace,” I answer.
“Oh my god!” she practically yells into the phone. “She lives and breathes. I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to hear your voice again. You have a lot of explaining to do, Mimi.”
“I know, but please, go easy on me, okay? This is not the easiest time in my life right now.” I say, my voice cracking, much to my irritation.
“Oh, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I’m just worried. When you didn’t respond to my messages, I called the house and Vance said you didn’t live there anymore, I just didn’t know what to make of it. He wouldn’t tell me anything, just told me to ask you and hung up on me. When did you move out, Mimi, and why?”
“It’s been about three weeks, now. The why of it is a long story that I can’t get into while I’m here at work. Maybe we could meet for drinks or dinner?” I suggest.
“Are you busy tonight? I have to work until six, but I can meet you anywhere after that. You just name the place and I am there.”
I think about it for a minute. I am not eager to relive the last six months for any reason, but she’s one of my closest friends and deserves to know what’s going on. I don’t have anything on my to-do list for the evening. I had only planned to have a date with a frozen chicken pot pie and a cheesy romance novel I’d been trying to read, but that was probably not the best idea for me anyway. It was best to face the music if I was truly going to move forward with my life.
“Alright. How about we meet at The Cantina at eight for margaritas? Will that work for you?” I offer.
“I will be there. Should I bring Jessica and Liz? If you just want it to be us, I’ll understand. I can fill them in for you, or you can tell them individually on your own,” she offers gently.
I consider it for a moment. I don’t want it to become a big gossiping session about my love life, but I also don’t want to have to retell the story over and over. I decide that ripping off the Band-Aid in one pull is probably the best way to go.
“Go ahead and give them a call, see if they can make it,” I say. “Just let them know it’s not going to be a Vance-bashing session, no matter how much they might want to make it one after I tell everything I have to say. Okay?”
“No problem, Mimi. We’re your friends and we’ll support you any way you need it.”
“Thanks, Grace. I’ll see you at eight.”
As usual, I’m the last to arrive at the restaurant. I take a seat at the table, where there is already an enormous margarita waiting for me. I look around at the girls with one eyebrow raised. “Did somebody bother to order a snorkel to go with this?”
Liz pipes up. “We thought you might need some extra fortification to get through tonight. Look, there’s even two straws.” She smiles and gestures toward the kiddie pool of frothy, pale green liquid.
“Just in case you need extra encouragement,” Jessica chimes in.
I smile and shake my head. “Thanks, girls. I can always count on you to have my back.”
Rather than shining the spotlight on me immediately, we order some appetizers and chat about our days for a little while. It gives me a chance to unwind and sip enough to make a dent in my super-sized margarita. Inevitably, the conversation does
turn to me, but by the time it happens, I’m sufficiently lubricated and feel like I can talk about it without falling apart. Too much, anyway.
I explain from the beginning; the small changes in Vance that eventually escalated into his outright hostility and verbally abusive behavior; my continued hope that it was just the stress of his job taking a toll on him, and that he would eventually return to his normal persona, but the night he attacked me being the final straw and with it coming the realization that the person I thought he was—the man that I had married, was a fictitious character. I had rushed into a marriage with a man before truly getting to know him and paid the price.
“You don’t truly believe that, do you, Mimi?” Grace asked. “I know you two married quickly, but you’re not a silly girl. You had to be pretty certain of him to have made such a serious decision. Besides, most people show their true colors within three months. It’s pretty hard to keep up a façade for a whole year. I think if he were a real beast, he would have shown that side of himself long before.”
Liz and Jessica nod in agreement. I look around at the three of them, dumbfounded.
“You can’t possibly be defending him.”
Liz, our wise and thoughtful one, looks at me sympathetically. “Of course not, Mimi. We all think you made the right decision, the only decision you could make under the circumstances. It’s just that something doesn’t add up here, and none of us wants to see you begin to question yourself going forward.”
“That’s right,” Jessica says. “Your judgment was sound. We don’t know Vance like you do, of course, but we’ve all met him. You even mentioned Justin says this is totally out of character for him and he’s known him his whole life. There’s no forgiving what he did, I’m not even coming close to saying that you should. I just feel like there’s got to be more to this.”
I close my eyes to fight back the tears that are threatening, but it’s no use. I open them back up and let them flow. “Nobody wants to believe that more than I do, ladies. I loved this man with my whole being. I hung in there while he was absolutely awful to me because I didn’t want to let go of that love for him, of the dream of the life we were supposed to have together, of the happiness he had brought me when things were good. In the end, I have to. I will go mad if I keep clinging to the idea that someday he will come back to me, that he will be my Vance again and we will have that happily ever after that I believed in when we got married. Not only that, it’s dangerous for me to stay now. He physically hurt me and threatened to kill me. I can’t keep loving a man who would do that to me. I have to put it all behind me, stop thinking that there is some mysterious reason that made him behave the way he did and just accept that it’s part of him. My heart is already broken. It will stay that way forever if I keep looking for a reason to justify what he did.”
Grace digs in her purse for a tissue, finally producing a whole travel pack. I gratefully accept them, and mop the tears from my face. I’m slightly embarrassed for breaking down, but these are my girls. I know they don’t see me as weak.
Everyone seems to understand the subject is closed with what I’ve confessed and the conversation turns to more mundane topics. I switch to water after I finish my margarita, because let’s face it, anything more and I’ll be blowing over the legal limit, if I’m not already.
We wind things up around eleven and I drive home feeling very tired. I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or if it’s because I finally admitted my feelings out loud, but I’m beat. My confession to the girls was more than I’ve even admitted to myself before now. I know I told Justin that I no longer loved Vance, but that’s not true. I will love Vance for a very long time, if not forever. But I see Vance as two very different and distinct people now. There’s the Vance that I met and fell hard for, the man my soul recognized instantly, and Vance, the stranger who entered my life six or so months ago. It hurts my heart and my head to think about it, so I try to push it aside. A little denial goes a long way to surviving a broken heart.
I go back to living with my mental to-do lists, but take time to spend with the girls every other week or so. They keep me from turning into a hermit. Surprisingly, Justin calls to check in on me regularly, too. We don’t talk for too long, and we never talk about Vance, but I can tell he wants to. Whenever he even starts to hint that he might bring him up in the conversation, I cut him off and find a reason to hang up. It’s just too painful to think about him, let alone hear about anything to do with him. I refuse to talk about him from my perspective too. Justin has tried to get me to talk about my feelings, but I won’t. I’m trying to move on, and if Justin wants to be my friend, he has to learn to be one independent of any and all things Vance Ashcroft. Still, I’m grateful that he wants to be a part of my life, because he’s a good man, and a very good friend.
Three months into my post-Vance life, as I have come to think of it, I am walking out of a Starbucks near my office on a beautiful mid-May Wednesday morning, with a latte I sorely need since I dashed out of the house without my coffee. To my utter shock, I run face first into Vance’s chest. Fortunately, I manage to hold onto my coffee and not spill it all over myself or him, but it’s a close call. I’m startled to see him, not only because he’s not supposed to be near me, but because he looks like hell. He has lost at least twenty pounds, his complexion is very pale and the circles that had started to form under his eyes when we were last together are even darker now. His once gloriously thick and wavy hair now hangs lank and dull over his forehead. My instant reaction is concern for him, but then my anger sets in. I don’t even pause to be afraid, because honestly with the state of his physical condition, he doesn’t look like much of a threat to anyone.
“What are you doing here, Vance?” I say as I move out of the doorway to let another patron who is trying to leave pass by. “Are you following me?”
He lets go of the door and follows me as I move away. “I need to talk to you, Mimi. I know I’m not supposed to be near you, but this is important. I need you to hear me out.”
“There is nothing you can say to me that I am interested in hearing, Vance. You need to leave,” I say as I begin to walk down the street toward my office building.
“Mimi, please. I’m begging you. Please, just give me a chance—“
I wheel around and fix him with my most hostile glare. “A chance? A chance to what, Vance? To explain to me why you hurt me? Why you turned into someone I couldn’t even recognize? Oh, wait, maybe how sorry you are? No, Vance. Any time for talking has come and gone. The moment you put your hands on me in violence is the time you lost any right to ask me for anything. I would have given you anything, done anything to make you happy. I tried. I hung in there for months trying find a way to make things better, waiting for you to come back to me.” I point my index finger at his chest and hiss, “You made damned sure I knew that was never going to happen. So, go. Go and don’t come back and bother me again, or I will call the police and have you arrested.”
I turn on my heel and march down the street, leaving him standing in the middle of the sidewalk. I go back to the office, but I can’t concentrate. The image of his hollow face, his gaunt frame, haunt me. Does he look so bad because I left him? Is it because he is so affected by our break up that he is just not taking care of himself? I snort. It’s probably just that damned job of his working him into the ground. He probably doesn’t have time to even miss me. The little voice in my head whispers softly, Then what did he want to talk to you about?
I can’t help but feel confused. Part of me, the part that will always belong to him, feels like I should have stayed and heard him out. The look in his eyes was so desperate. Whatever it was, it was vitally important to him. The other part of me feels I did the right thing. I have to protect myself from him, not so much physically anymore by the look of him, but always mentally and emotionally. His attack may have been effective in breaking that emotional connection I had keeping me tied to him through all the verbal abuse but I know I still have a lot he
aling to do. He still has a lot of power to hurt me that way. If I gave him the opportunity, the access to me, he could easily say something that would shatter the fragile composure I’ve built over the last three months. I ultimately decide I did the right thing, but for the rest of the day, and for several days following, my heart feels heavy.
The following Saturday afternoon, I get a call from Justin. I haven’t heard from him in several weeks, which is unusual. Normally, he calls every week. We have been getting together for lunch regularly, once we even went to see a movie, in an effort to establish a normal friendship.
“Hey stranger,” I answer his call. “Where have you been?”
“Hey, Mimi,” He says, his voice sounding a little rougher than usual. “Sorry I haven’t been around. I’ve just been handling a few personal things.”
“It’s okay, Justin. I’ve been keeping busy. You know, watching paint dry, going to the park and seeing the grass grow. It’s fascinating stuff.” I try for a bit silliness, since he sounds a little off. Justin is a serious kind of guy, but there’s something in his voice that makes him sound almost somber. It doesn’t help.
“Uh, yeah,” he says, ignoring my stupid joke completely. “I was wondering if you wanted to get together for dinner tonight. We haven’t seen each other in a while, and I could really use some company.”
I’m instantly concerned. I’ve always had the sense that these get-togethers of ours have been about keeping me propped up, making sure I don’t fall apart without Vance around. I know we are friends and all, but there’s been a lot more taking on my part than giving. Justin is also the strong, silent type. If he’s reaching out for company, something must be really wrong.
“Sure, Justin. I don’t have anything going on. Whenever, wherever you want to go is fine with me.”
“I’ll pick you up at your place at six. I want to get out kind of early. I’m going a little stir crazy sitting here at home,” he says with an embarrassed chuckle.
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