The Procedure

by Tabatha Vargo

  I nodded slowly and he turned, walking away slowly.

  I felt dazed as I shut the door to Roman’s condo and leaned against the door, trying to understand what had just happened. The door felt cool against my burning forehead, and briefly, confusion swept through me.

  “Are you alright, Samantha?”

  When I looked up, Roman was standing against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed. He wore a blank expression, making it hard for me to read him, and the way he said my name was different. It wasn’t in the same loving manner as before.

  “I’m somewhat surprised, but I’m okay.” I smiled and pushed away from the door.

  I wasn’t sure how much Roman had heard, but I was sure he had heard some of Michael’s testament. I expected Roman to act cool and aloof judging by his mood, but he moved from the counter, meeting me halfway.

  His arms wrapped around my shoulders the same time mine wrapped around his middle. He pulled me into his warmth and I pressed my cheek against his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

  “I’m glad it’s over, and I hope he can move on now that he got to say what he needed to say,” I said against the cotton fabric of his shirt.

  My fingers made random patterns over his back, and I closed my eyes as his fingers massaged my scalp. Being in Roman’s arm like this only assured me that I was doing the right thing for me.

  “You should go back to Michael, Samantha.” His words struck me deep, making me lose my next breath.

  I froze, sure I had heard him wrong. My eyes opened and I frowned, pulling away from him so I could see his eyes.

  “What?”

  He sighed, and pushed my hair back. “You should go back to Michael.”

  “I don’t understand. Why? Why would you say that? Why would you think I’d want to?”

  Hurt lingered in his deep eyes. “For the same reason you came to me in the beginning, Samantha. The reason you started all this. He’s your husband, and he wants to make this work.”

  “But I don’t love him anymore, Roman. I haven’t loved him in a very long time, and I don’t think I could love him again.” My fingers gripped and tightened in his shirt. “I couldn’t go back to him. I love you, Roman. I’m madly in love with you, not him.”

  “I love you too, Samantha.” His eyes moved over my face as if he were seeing me for the first time. “Me saying this now has nothing to do with how I feel about you or how you feel about me. I let myself fall for you when you were still another man’s woman and I wonder, had I not stepped in, would you be with Michael now?”

  His words struck me deep, even though I knew no matter what, I still wouldn’t be with Michael anymore.

  “No,” I said adamantly. “I would have left no matter what.”

  “We’ll never know for sure, and I don’t think I could live happily with you always wondering what if.” His voice broke as if he were about to cry, but his face remained stoic—calm as usual, while tears formed in my eyes.

  “What are you saying, Roman?’ I demanded. “Are you ending things?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stand on end. “I’m saying I’ll wait. Go back to Michael. Give your marriage one last chance and if it works, great. I’d be happy for you, I swear I would, but if it doesn’t, at least we’d both know it wasn’t because of me.”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. He couldn’t actually be asking me to go back to Michael after everything that happened over the past couple of weeks. I understood why he was saying this, but I couldn’t go along with it.

  “I can’t just ignore the way I feel about you and try to make my marriage work when I know I don’t love Michael anymore,” I pleaded.

  “If you had never come to me… if we had never met… would you still be in love with Michael?”

  I opened my mouth to say no. I wanted to say no, but he was right. If I had never met Roman, would I still be in love with Michael?

  The look on his face said he already knew the answer.

  He took my face into his hands, and tears slipped down my cheeks and into his palms. He kissed them away and then kissed me. His lips were salty against my tongue.

  “I swear I’ll wait for you, Samantha. Always.”

  AN HOUR LATER, I found myself sitting outside of the house I had shared with Michael just weeks before. Duke was on his leash, staring up at it as if he were as confused as I was.

  The house just a big and cold as it had before, even though it felt like I’d been gone an eternity. It was never home to me. It would never be home to me, but honestly, I had nowhere else to go.

  I wiped away the tears falling freely down my cheeks and took a deep breath. Then I knew. I knew that no matter what, I couldn’t go back in there. Even if it was just until I found a place of my own, I couldn’t sleep in that house with him. Not with the memories of everything I’d gone through with Michael still fresh in my mind.

  I also couldn’t ignore everything that happened between Roman and me during the last month. Or how he helped me see everything I had been missing the last few years. I couldn’t ignore the fact that I hadn’t loved Michael in a long time. I’d accepted that it was comfort and the fear of being alone that kept me with him for so long.

  But more than anything, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was irrevocably in love with someone else. Someone who moved into my world and brought me back to life. Someone who breathed love into me regardless of everything. Roman showed me the woman I was, and he loved me exactly how I was. I didn’t need to change for him. I never needed to change.

  Stepping away from the house and back toward the cab I’d taken, I let my eyes linger on the brick box that had contained me for so long, and in that moment, I knew what I had to do.

  For as long as I could remember, I had always had someone with me. My parents, Michael, and then Roman. I couldn’t remember the last time it was just me and myself—a time where I focused on what I wanted to do and what I wanted for myself.

  Roman was wrong—I didn’t need to try and make my marriage work anymore. It was over between Michael and me. There was no going back to that life. I was positive of that.

  Spending the last few weeks with Roman was heaven on earth. He was everything I now knew I deserved, but I also knew it couldn’t last the way it was. At some point, our perfect little bubble was going to pop, and it finally had.

  Roman had taught me a lot of things, and I would never be able to repay him for that. No matter how much of my love I gave him, it would never be the equivalent of the life he returned to me. I loved him—so much so that it hurt—but more than anyone else, I needed to love me.

  I’d forgotten who I was and after finding my self-confidence, I needed to find my identity. It was time to start living for myself and until I did that, I couldn’t give myself completely to Roman. He deserved all of me and more. He deserved the real Samantha.

  Now I just needed to figure out who she was and where to find her.

  WATCHING SAMANTHA WALK out of my condo was like watching someone rip my heart from my chest. The hurt burned in my gut, taking my breath away and making me nauseated.

  The second the door shut, I instantly felt like all the air in the room had been vacuumed out. I gripped the back of the couch, holding myself up with both hands until I felt the fragile fabric give way under my demanding grip.

  I wanted to run after her—tell her I made a terrible mistake. I wanted to beg her to forgive me for being stupid, but deep down, I knew I was doing the right thing. She needed to be the one to make the decision that things were really over with Michael without me there to confuse her.

  She said she loved me, and if it were real, she would still love me in a month, two months, or even in a year.

  God, I prayed it didn’t take her that long to return to me.

  I didn’t know how I was going to survive not seeing her every day. I wasn’t sure I could keep my distance from her. Actually, I knew as long as I was on American soil, I’d never be able to stay aw
ay from her. Never.

  Picking my phone up from the counter, I dialed and then it up to my ear.

  “Yes, I’d like to book the first flight to London, please.” The words burned my tongue when they rolled from it.

  Thirty minutes later, I was packing my bags for a red-eye flight out of the country. I hadn’t been to London in a long time, and it felt crazy to think of going home.

  I thought about calling my father, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to even see him while I was there. I only knew I needed to get away. I needed an ocean between me and the woman I loved.

  I STOOD INSIDE Heathrow Airport and stared up at the glass-and-steel framed building surrounding me. The sounds of chatty people and planes taking off filled the space. Once I collected my luggage, I went out to find a car waiting for me.

  I’d booked a hotel while I was in England, but instead of telling the driver to take me there, I called out my old address. Samantha was right. It was time I saw my father again. It was time I forgave him and moved past my old demons.

  It was gloomy out, which matched my mood. Rain spattered on the windshield as we made our way across London to the last place I’d ever expected to be again. Being on the opposite side of the road was messing with my eyes, so I closed them until I felt the car come to a stop.

  Looking out of the window, my eyes took in my childhood home. The house looked just as it had when I left, with the exception of more ivy covering the bricked exterior. And a few of the trees that I remembered being small now emerged over the sidewalks, darkening the land around it.

  The tall, beautiful house loomed over me as I collected my bags from the back of the car. Memories of my childhood danced in the windows of my old room. My eyes skimmed Rachel’s old room before I had to look away.

  Stepping up the brick stairs to the walkway, my luggage bumped against each step, pulling at my arm as if there was a ghost of my old self telling me not to go in. Shaking my head, I moved closer to the front door and before I could lose my nerve, I picked up the knocker and let it hit the door three times.

  There was movement just inside the door, and my heart dropped when I heard the locks coming undone. And then there he was, staring back at me with squinted eyes and white hair.

  “Father.” The word rushed from my lips.

  He continued to stare until his confusion cleared, and I knew he was slowly recognizing me.

  “Roman? Is it really you, son?”

  “It’s me,” I croaked.

  Suddenly, the desire to cry was hard. He was old, much older than I remembered, and he was using a cane. The years had not been kind to him. And while part of me understood, considering how unkind he’d been to my mother, I couldn’t help but feel bad for him.

  “Can I come in?” I asked.

  He stepped to the side, leaning most of his weight against his cane. “This is your home, son. You’re always welcome here.”

  His words warmed me.

  I nodded, stepping into the place I used to call home, and I could practically hear Rachel’s laugher all around me.

  There were happy times. Times when we played and laughed. Times when I could remember both of us lying in mother’s arms while she read to us. As bad as the bad memories were, the good memories were even better.

  I took my things to my old room, coming down just in time for dinner. We sat at the table in silence, nibbling at the food and waiting for the other to speak. When the silence began to sound too loud, I finally spoke. “Father, I forgive you,” I said loudly so he would be able to hear me.

  He looked up from his food, his eyes watering over as they met mine. He understood me. He knew what I was saying. I could see it in his eyes. The relief I had given him in that moment was priceless.

  I planned to leave and go back to America to get Samantha. See my father the way he was let me know I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to live. Samantha loved me. I didn’t give two bloody hells about Michael or anything he stood for. They might have been married, but she was mine.

  However, my father died two days later, halting my departure and crushing me. There was much to do. His estates had to be taken care of, and his practice closed. I knew it would be a while before I was able to return to Samantha, and I could only hope that she would wait for me the way I’d promised to wait for her.

  I BIT MY lip and my heart felt like it was going to explode at any moment. Someone would have thought I was trying to disarm a bomb rather than mail off my signed divorce papers.

  I took a deep breath and let the heavy envelope teeter on the small door to the mailbox. The papers had been signed for a week now, but I’d never had the nerve to actually mail them off.

  I was closing a door on a large part of my life and while I wasn’t having second thoughts about my decision, it was still scary. I didn’t want to keep my marriage, but change was a huge thing to me. And making everything official was marking the beginning of a ton of changes.

  I was moving on, and I could only hope the same for Michael. I’d thought long and hard about letting Michael send the papers off, and just being done with it, but I knew I needed the closure. I needed to see them go into the mailbox myself. I wanted to be certain that it was done.

  Even though he had eventually signed the papers, Michael still held on to the hope that I’d change my mind. Once I started to show, and I came clean about the fact that I was carrying another man’s baby, he let that hope go pretty quickly.

  Thankfully, we ended on decent terms and while he could have, Michael didn’t bring up anything about infidelity on my part, but to speed up the process, he did admit to his. We parted mutually with a nice deposit into my checking account.

  “I don’t want to see you suffer, Sam. Regardless of what you think, I really do want you to be happy. And with a little one on the way, you’ll need all the help you can get,” he had said.

  It was funny being the equivalent of friends with a man that I’d spent so many years married to, but I supposed that was what we had become.

  It had been four months since Michael showed up at Roman’s door and declared his love for me. Two days later, I went to Michael to get the rest of my things and to let him know that I was not coming back. While I would always remember the man he used to be, and a small part of me would always love him, I wasn’t in love with him anymore.

  He was relentless at first, but soon after, he began anger management classes and I was able to see a change in him. I appreciated the gesture, but I didn’t need it. I could only hope that one day he would find a woman that made his heart beat the way Roman made mine, but I was not that woman. I never would be.

  Once he accepted that fact and I came clean about my mind-blowing news, he signed the papers and officially set me free.

  As for me, I was happy being happy with myself. Growing to love myself and finally realizing that I was more than just a backdrop wife to Michael Aldridge. It was exhilarating. I found myself worthy, and it felt amazing.

  I hadn’t seen or spoken to Roman since that day four months ago, and that was the only thing that kept me from being one hundred percent happy. The truth was I missed him more than I could stand. I didn’t really know what to do with myself, but I didn’t regret the last four months.

  I was now a full-time Kindergarten teacher at Johnson’s Elementary, and I loved it. My students were amazing and so smart. I was proud of every one of them and in a way, I was allowed a hand in raising them. It made up for the many years I’d wanted a little one of my own and gave me glimpse of what I’d have to deal with when my miracle baby finally arrived.

  I had a nice apartment in the good part of town that was all mine and my car. My bills were paid, and life was easy. Except for the cloud that loomed over me on a daily basis.

  Roman.

  I didn’t want to go to him and tell him about the baby, even though I knew it was the right thing to do. It was a scary situation because it put me in the same predicament he had been in when he told me to fix my marriage. />
  Going to him now, I’d never know if he was with me because he loved me or if he was with me because of the baby. I’d been waiting and praying every day since the moment I’d found out I was expecting that he would come after me and confess his love, but he hadn’t.

  So instead of going to him, I continued to wait with hopes that I wasn’t pushing around a baby stroller by the time he finally came to me.

  “You still haven’t dropped it yet?” Carol whined behind me.

  She was also a Kindergarten teacher at Johnson’s. We’d grown extremely close. She was the closest thing I had to a girlfriend.

  I smiled at her dramatics and chewed my bottom lip. “Hush, woman. I’m getting there,” I responded.

  “Come on, Samantha. It’s time you do this,” she said with a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  “Oh, whatever. You just want me to hurry so you can flirt with the barista at Starbucks.” I snorted.

  “Truth.” She giggled. “But I mean it. You can do this,” she cheered me on.

  Taking a deep breath, I let the envelope drop and instantly felt the weight of the last few years drop from my shoulders.

  I slowly shut the mailbox door and looked over at Carol.

  “Well?” she questioned. “Better than sex?”

  Memories of being with Roman clouded my vision. The way he looked down at me—eyes full of love—as he took my body and gave his in return. The sounds he made or the way he whispered my name when he was close to releasing his all.

  “Not even close,” I answered. “But it did feel really good.”

  Happiness filled Carol’s eyes, and she laughed. “Yay!” she yelled out. “We need to celebrate. Come on. Celebratory mochas and barista flirting is a must,” she said, taking off across the street toward Starbucks.

  I followed behind her, my smile making my cheeks ache.

  When we reached the door, she held it open for me. I wasn’t paying attention to the people coming out of the store, but I paused when I heard Carol call out to a passerby.