The Five Stages of Falling in Love

by Rachel Higginson

  “That’s true,” he whispered against my skin. “Now they’re family nights.”

  “I need a break, Grady. I’m exhausted.”

  “I’m here to help, Babe. Tonight will be easy.”

  I yawned in defiance. He squeezed me tighter and pressed a hot kiss against my skin. “If you say so.”

  “We’ll spend some time with the kids, put them to bed together and then I’ll spend the rest of the night helping you relax.” His gruff words vibrated over my skin and sent tingles spiraling low in my belly. I loved how he did this to me, how his voice could put me at ease and he could soften my perspective. “We’ll watch something later, just the two of us. You pick it out. I’ll rub your feet.”

  “Mmm,” I moaned when his kisses trailed up my neck to taste my earlobe. “You’ve wooed me.”

  His chuckle brushed his five o’clock shadow over my ear. “That’s usually the goal.”

  I spun around in his arms and let him continue to woo me. We kissed long and desperately until Blake wandered in the kitchen looking for us.

  “Ew!” he groaned. “That’s gross!”

  Grady pulled back from me and looked at his oldest son, “Take notes, Blake. This will come in handy someday.”

  I swatted his chest but laughed, unable to find my frustration from earlier. Grady wiped it clean and filled in all of my flaws with the best parts of him.

  “Mom, can I have one?”

  I looked up to see Blake reaching for a bowl of popcorn. The jolt from the memory of Grady and the reality of an older Blake in front of me felt like a physical shock. My chest seized in agony and my stomach flipped with heartsick nausea.

  “Please?” I reminded Blake with a broken voice.

  “Please,” he whispered back. Instead of grabbing the bowl of popcorn, he walked around the island and wrapped his arms around me. I kissed the top of his head and inhaled his little boy smell.

  He was growing up so fast. He was taller than ever and his body had started to fill out with muscle. He wasn’t my baby anymore. While that made some part of me cry out with protest, most of me was just so proud of the young man he was becoming.

  “Family movie night is hard for me too, Mom,” he sniffled into my shirt.

  I blanched with new grief. I had never stopped to think about how family movie night might hurt my children. I had wanted to keep their routine and help maintain Grady’s memory. I had waded through my own heartache and forced myself to endure a night that I dreaded all week long.

  And why?

  So we could all be sad together?

  That just didn’t seem worth it.

  I pulled back so I could look Blake in the eyes. He blinked rapidly and tried to avoid my gaze. My heart shattered into a million pieces.

  “Let’s do something different then.”

  “What?” He finally looked up at me and the sadness started to chip away. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, it just seems like if this movie night thing is making all of us sad, we should try something different, something that might make us happy.”

  “Mom, are you coming?” Abby bounced into the kitchen with Lucy on her heels. Jace toddled in after them and hugged me too. His little arms wrapped around my leg and he looked up at me, babbling about juicy.

  “I don’t know, Abs. Blake and I were just talking about changing up the Friday night line up.”

  She tilted her head, “What does that mean?”

  “What if instead of watching a movie tonight, we played games instead.”

  “Like Candy Land?” Abby asked.

  “Not Candy Land!” Blake whined.

  I smiled at him again. “How about we play a couple games? You can both pick one.”

  “And me too!” Lucy demanded.

  “Sure, Luce. You too.”

  “Me! Me! Me!” Jace joined in.

  I moved the kids to the kitchen table and set them up with popcorn and juice. I ran down to the basement and pulled out some games that had sat on a shelf for too long.

  An hour and a half later, we had laughed our way through Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, UNO and Old Maid.

  The night hadn’t been easy. Jace had been a handful and destroyed more than one of our attempts at playing. Abby had plenty of attitude to throw around and wasn’t always satisfied with the outcome of the game. Okay, honestly, she was a terrible loser. I would have to work with her on that.

  The night tried my patience and made me question if getting out all of these games was really better than just cuddling on the couch during a movie. Movies were so much easier, but infinitely more painful.

  By the time I had them tucked in, I’d decided that I would make this our new tradition. I had been waffling up until bedtime. I was exhausted from the evening, but so were the kids. They went to bed happily. They brushed their teeth calmly and jumped into bed, ready to end the day.

  I knew their better behavior was more than their level of exhaustion. They felt fulfilled for the first time in a long time. I wouldn’t always be able to fill the role of both parents, but tonight I’d given them the attention they needed and the focus they craved. I hadn’t punished them for their unruly behavior by taking away the games; I’d worked to refocus their energy on some friendly competition instead. And they needed that.

  The sharp burn of humiliation seared over my skin. I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to realize how hard our movie night tradition was for them. I’d been too busy wallowing in my own grief to notice theirs. What a selfish mom I could be.

  I walked back downstairs in my pajamas, wanting to clean up the games and the kitchen and then collapse face first in bed. And I knew I looked as tired as I felt.

  The holidays were coming up. We’d somehow waded through the first few months of school and now had Thanksgiving to look forward to next week.

  I looked down at scattered UNO cards and knew I had to do something like this for us during the upcoming holidays. We would not survive Thanksgiving and Christmas if we had to relive every tradition Grady had helped us build.

  Last year at this time, Grady had been admitted to the hospital. We’d spent our holiday season piled onto his narrow bed, promising each other that he would get better and be with us next year. Those memories cut like a knife, digging into my sternum and flaying me open. I couldn’t even think about those final days without an overflow of tears and instant heartache.

  We still had hope then. We still believed the treatment would work and that we would get Grady back as he used to be. We trusted that the children would have their father home with them again, that I would have my husband back.

  Maybe it was because that hope now felt like an awful betrayal or maybe because I still desperately longed for that hope again, but those weeks, when we still believed he could get better, made me furious.

  My hands shook as I pulled the piles of scattered cards to me and tried to straighten them. Wet tears plopped onto my hands and the table as the well of grief and frustration bubbled over. My chest hurt, my bones hurt… my soul hurt.

  How could he leave me? How could he let me believe he would pull through? How could I have thought that there was enough hope and prayer and determination in the world to make my husband better again?

  I was impotent then and just as helpless now.

  I sunk down into a chair before my legs gave out and I collapsed to the ground. I dropped the cards back onto the table and buried my face in my hands. A strangled hiccup of a sob exploded from my chest and I gave in to the agony.

  I poured myself onto the games as if they were an offering for healing my soul. I let myself bleed out onto that table and embraced the anger that now tainted every thought and emotion. I shook from the rage that seemed to boil up inside of me and threaten to take over.

  I had never felt so utterly alone before. So abandoned.

  The rational side of my brain argued that Grady didn’t abandon me, that he would never have done that. He had fought as hard as he
could to survive his illness. Unfortunately, my emotions weren’t ruled by logic and understanding. They could only feel. They could only project what my heart felt.

  And right now I was more pissed off than I had ever been.

  I didn’t know if this anger would ever deplete. It consumed me. I sat there, still and unmoving, while it burned away at my insides and spilled acid eating at my soul, inch by slow inch.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was probably Emma texting at the end of her date.

  The last thing I wanted to do was face someone else’s happiness, but that’s why I forced my fingers to pull the phone out of my pocket and read it. I needed to climb out of the pit of despair I’d sunk into and let some light into my shattered world.

  I had to get some perspective and fast or this might never end.

  I sniffled and had to wipe at my eyes several times before I could read the words on my screen. The text wasn’t from Emma after all. It was from Ben.

  I know you’re dying of curiosity. Emma is a fun girl.

  How did he know that about me? It was obviously true, but I didn’t think I was that obvious.

  I thought about not answering him, but he was right, curiosity was killing me. Best date of your life? You better have treated her well.

  He replied right away, I took her to a live sex show and then we stole a car. Is that good enough?

  My face heated when I read, “sex.” It was stupid of me. But I hadn’t had this kind of relationship with a man since Grady. Most men were more serious around me. I had a husband of ten years and four children. I was kept at a distance.

  Well, with everyone except Ben Tyler. He apparently didn’t feel the need to handle me with kid gloves.

  It took a couple of minutes to finally decide on the right response, but eventually I said, Emma probably loved it.

  Don’t lie- you would have loved it too.

  I blinked at the text with no idea how to interpret that. It almost seemed like flirting… but he wouldn’t flirt with me, right after he got home from his date with my sister. Besides, he just got finished telling me what a good time they had.

  I didn’t want to answer him, in case he thought I was flirting with him. But I didn’t want him to think he made me uncomfortable enough not to answer either.

  Why was texting other people so hard?

  My personality felt rusty and misused when I finally tapped out my reply. Something awakened in my chest and spread its muscle-sore wings. I couldn’t define the feeling or say exactly what it was, but I knew it felt liberating. It felt relaxing.

  That’s the best you can do? Kind of boring if you ask me. I swiped off my screen and finished cleaning up the games.

  I shut down the first floor of my beautiful, hand-crafted house that represented Grady almost as much as his children and walked upstairs with slow feet.

  Crawling into my bed was something I dreaded every single night.

  By the time I brushed my teeth and washed my face, my phone had buzzed twice. I didn’t check it again until I was in bed and snuggled under warm quilts.

  You, Liz Carlson, are a surprise.

  When I hadn’t answered after several minutes, he had texted one more time to say, Goodnight.

  “Goodnight, Ben,” I whispered to my phone as I shut it off and turned around. After my earlier breakdown, I had dreaded going to sleep tonight.

  I could never seem to fall asleep after that kind of emotional trauma. There was a bottle of sleeping pills in my medicine cabinet that had been given to me right after Grady had died. I’d taken them a few times when my parents stayed with us because I felt safer with them here to watch over the kids.

  I kept them just in case I was desperate. And during my breakdown I had contemplated using them. Just for tonight.

  But Ben’s text message had helped calm my frantic spirit. He’d managed to pull me out of my darkness and shine a bit of light on me. I closed my eyes and drifted easily to sleep, thankful for my sister that indulged me and for my next door neighbor that could make me smile when I thought I would never smile again.

  Chapter Eleven

  Thanksgiving.

  Had there ever been a more awful holiday?

  In fact the entire day set me on edge.

  I didn’t want to wake up grateful for the things I still had or spend time counting my blessings. I didn’t want to remember why I was so blessed or teach my children to count every little thing as a gift.

  I wanted to stay in my three-day-old pajamas and wallow in self-pity. I wanted to drink myself through the day and eat my weight in Ben and Jerry’s. I wanted to pull all of my children into my big bed and fill it up for a change, and then I wanted to hold them close and weep.

  I hadn’t cried since last Friday night. The week had passed quickly and the kids had been out of school yesterday. I enlisted them to help bake some holiday goodies and we’d turned on Top Forty and danced around the kitchen- anything to keep the shadow of our first major holiday without Grady out of their heads.

  This morning I’d woken up early to Abby having a terrible nightmare. She’d screamed at the top of her lungs. I rushed to her, terrified something was wrong. She hadn’t even woken up when I crawled into bed with her and wrapped my arms around her tiny waist. She nuzzled against me and immediately quieted down.

  I whispered soothing words for another hour before she woke up for good.

  “Mommy?” She was so sleepily confused that I couldn’t help but smile. Her curly hair was riotous around her freckled face and her green eyes had trouble focusing. She could be a handful, but she was my handful. I loved this little thing.

  “You had a nightmare,” I told her.

  “I know,” she whispered back.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head and hugged me tighter. “It will make you sad.”

  I hadn’t pressed her. Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have encouraged her to talk about it, get it out of her head and help her process. But I was afraid she was right. I didn’t want to be more depressed than I already was. The idea that Abby had a nightmare about losing her daddy paralyzed me with grief. I couldn’t do anything but hug her and promise her that it was going to be okay, even if I didn’t believe that ugly, empty promise.

  I couldn’t lie to her about anything else though. So I didn’t bother telling her she wouldn’t have another nightmare or that she would feel better soon. I just made sure she knew that I was there for her, that she could come sleep with me anytime she was scared and that I would always be here for her if she couldn’t sleep.

  I didn’t know if my words helped or hurt her in the long term, but frankly I didn’t care. This was the best I could do.

  Abby and I stayed in bed a long time, just holding on to each other for dear life. Eventually the other kids trickled in as they woke up and we added them to our pile.

  We didn’t have to be at lunch until eleven and so it wasn’t until Jace couldn’t stand being hungry anymore that we dragged ourselves from the warmth of the bed to the sustenance in the kitchen.

  Now we stood on the stoop to Katherine’s quaint, all-brick house and I had started to contemplate throwing the kids back in the car and driving to the nearest Denny’s.

  “Why are we just standing here?” Blake reached for the doorbell.

  “I just want to make sure we’re ready,” I sighed. My children looked at me like the crazy woman that I was. Jace tried to jump out of my arms and dive for his nana’s house. Blake pushed the doorbell to get us out of the cold.

  Trevor opened the door and mayhem ensued. The children attacked him and he wrestled them into the living room.

  I set my purse down and went back to the car for the pies the kids had helped me make. I balanced the apple in one hand and the cherry in the other as I stepped over kicking little feet and Trevor’s arm as he played dead for the kids.

  Katherine stood at the stove, checking the various casseroles in the oven. She looked over her shoul
der when I greeted her and gave me a soft smile.

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” she said.

  “Happy Thanksgiving to you too.”

  She examined my pies and immediately my hackles rose, maybe unfairly, but it didn’t matter. “Did the kids help you make those?”

  “Yes.”

  “I admire you for baking with so many children. I only had the two boys, but I couldn’t seem to manage them in the kitchen.”

  I gave her a tight smile while irrational anger burned low in my stomach. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have two kids and I didn’t have the luxury of help. She knew this. I didn’t know why she felt the need to point it out.

  I decided changing the subject would be better for both of us. “Do you need any help?”

  “Thank you, Liz. You could fill the water glasses on the table; we’re just about ready to eat.”

  And eat we did. Katherine was an excellent cook and she served a spectacular meal. Usually she invited cousins and aunts and uncles to celebrate the holiday as well, but she’d offered to keep it small for this Thanksgiving.

  It was the only reason I agreed to come over.

  Honestly, the idea of facing all of Grady’s extended family without him by my side sounded like the inner circle of hell. They were overwhelming to begin with, but after Grady’s death the day would consist of nonstop questions about how I was doing or how the kids were doing or how we were managing or how I thought Trevor was handling the business.

  I would have dragged Emma along, but she had flown to Florida to spend the holiday with our retired parents. She had been hesitant to go, but I had encouraged her, thinking I would be fine at my in-laws.

  Dinner was as chaotic as it always was with four children to serve and maintain, but relatively low key since there were so many adults to help out.

  “Should we all say something we’re thankful for?” Katherine’s cheery voice grated on my nerves. I tried to smile at Abby, encouraging her with my expression, but I couldn’t make it believable.