Damn, I knew there was a story there.
From what I could gather, he and Grands were lovers. No…soul mates. They were madly in love for generations. But they let life’s domino effect fall around them, leading both their lives in two total different directions.
He married another.
She married another.
Both built and made lives without each other. Both lived lives neither wanted to live.
And both died utterly alone.
I couldn’t let that shit seep in too deep or think about how sad, how terrible it would feel to live a life like that.
Honestly, I think I would rather die than live if I ever found myself in their shoes.
After Gramps passed, I easily stepped into his position per his wishes, and as the main shareholder, six months ago, I became CEO of Phillips Fireplace, Fencing, & Pools.
I could do this shit in my sleep I’d been doing it for so long.
My secretary, Allison, buzzes in on the intercom. “Mr. Phillips, I canceled all your afternoon and evening meetings as you requested. Your afternoon meetings were rescheduled for tomorrow, and your evening meetings were pushed back until the day after. I hope you and Mrs. Phillips have a wonderful time in Natchitoches at the Christmas light festival.”
“Thank you, Allison. Can I bring you back a caramel apple or funnel cake from the festival?” I know she won’t accept the offer, but I ask anyway.
“Umm…thank you, Mr. Phillips, but no thank you.” I hear her chuckle before disconnecting.
After work, I head home and shower then trade my suit and tie for a t-shirt and some blue jeans. An hour or so later, ‘Lise comes through the front door, flustered and pissed as hell. All the while, she’s cursing electronics and stripping her clothes from her body on her way to our master bathroom.
“‘Lise? What’s up, babe? Hard day?”
“No…not hard.” Her head peeks out from behind the frosted shower stall glass when I walk into the bathroom. “Hey,” she whispers, kissing me quickly before closing the door behind her. “Not hard, more odd. I mean, work was fine. We weren’t busy. No traumas or fatalities, just colds and bumps.”
I’ve just finished shaving and am drying my face with a towel when ‘Lise steps out of the shower. I glance at her through the mirror’s reflection. “Okay, so odd how? What happened that was odd?”
She’s wrapped in a towel, going through her clothes in her closet as she tells me over her shoulder, “Well, last week I got several emails but didn’t know the email address so I just skipped over them or deleted them.” She stops to shimmy her denim jeans up her ass and then slips a dark turtleneck over her head before coming back in to the bathroom. “Then today while I was on break, I got another email but the subject of the email read: This is Shelton. It’s very important—contact me as soon as you can. I’ve been trying to respond to his email since and I can’t tell if it’s sending or not.”
“You want me to take a look?” I shove my feet into my boots and lace them up.
“Sure. When we get back though, I don’t want to miss the parade. I love the parades.” She leans in and kisses me before she turns around and starts blow drying her hair.
I laugh, muttering to myself, “I know you love the parades, ‘Lise.”
We’re pulling onto the interstate, headed towards Natchitoches, when she starts back up about the email. “I hope everything with Adam is okay. I haven’t spoken to Shelton in I don’t know how long, but he still lets Adam call me on his birthdays and holidays.” She turns in her seat and leans into me. “Leo, what will I do if something’s wrong with Adam?”
I shake my head, quickly locking eyes with her before bringing them back on the road. “No, Annalise, you will not do that shit. Don’t start worrying until there is something to be worried about. Did you think about maybe trying to call Shelton?”
Her head shakes no before she says, “I don’t have their number. He always has Adam call me from a calling card number.”
“Did you read the emails from last week?”
“Yes, after the one I got this morning. They were all pretty much the same.” She sighs, leaning her head back against the headrest. “We’ll figure it out later, okay? I don’t want to think about it right now.”
“Okay,” I grab her knee with my right hand. “Let’s just go look at some lights and parades then and maybe eat some meat pies.” I smile over at her and she wrinkles her nose up.
We make it in time for ‘Lise to see the parades. Afterwards, we walk up and down the river, looking at all the Christmas lights and snacking on a bunch of greasy food.
“You ready to head home? We’ve been here almost three hours. I gotta go to work in the morning.”
‘Lise looks up at me with a smile. “No. Let’s stay a little longer and watch the fireworks. Then we’ll head home.”
I laugh before telling her, “You don’t even like loud noises. How do you expect to make it through the fireworks?”
“Damn, I forgot about that part.” Her brows furrow for a second. Then she grins back up at me. “You can keep your hands over my ears! Come on, Leo… Please?”
Laughing at her again, I shake my head before I concede. “Fine. Fireworks then home. Deal?”
She nods. “Okay. Let’s go find a good spot to sit.”
I raise my arm slightly with my palm up. “Lead the way, ‘Lise.”
She practically skips in front of me.
I walk behind her and look down for a second, shaking my head again at her silliness.
When I glance back up, everything I’ve lived for over the last five years crashes into absolute nothingness.
I’m stopped, frozen in place and unable to breathe the second I see her. The words ‘time wasted’ and ‘regret’ resound on a continuous loop inside my fracturing mind.
How the fuck did I forget her? How the fuck could I not remember her?
And who the fuck is she with?
I’m hauling my ass in their direction, shoving people out of my way, but I’m stopped when I’m less than five feet away by small hands grabbing and pulling at my shirt at the same time Annalise’s voice whimpers, “Don’t, Leo. Please don’t. I can’t lose you. I won’t lose you to her again.” Her arms circle my waist from behind. “Please, baby. Please just… Please don’t.”
My eyes haven’t moved from Lil holding hands with a beautiful, tiny blond replica of herself. I want to know the little girl’s name. I want to drag Lil away. I want to fucking kill myself for forgetting her, for letting so much goddamn time be wasted.
Lil’s my soul mate.
She’s my other half.
“What in the fuck is she doing with that motherfucker if she’s my other damn half?” I don’t realize that I’m saying the words running through my head until I hear Annalise answer.
“That’s her other half, Leo. That’s her husband, the father of her child.” She tries to pull me in the opposite direction again. “Come on, Leo. Let’s just go home.”
She is my home. Lil’s my home. She always has been.
I look down at Annalise in confusion. All of a sudden, it feels like everything and everyone that isn’t Lil is weighing me down.
I know immediately that I can’t live like this any longer than I already have. I know I’m done, and judging by the look of resignation and defeat on Annalise’s face, she knows I’m done too.
I look back up to see Lil and her husband arguing before he storms off, leaving Lil and their little girl on their blanket laid out on a hill beside the river. The little girl starts crying and fighting her momma, trying to go after her dad.
My heart breaks for both mother and daughter. Lil is rocking the screaming child back and forth, brushing her hands through her daughter’s hair.
When she leans in to whisper into her daughter’s ear, I’m suddenly striking a deal with either God or Satan. I’ll sell my soul for eternity to either…desperate to know what Lil just whispered to her little girl.
Because if whatever she s
aid is magical enough to have her daughter go from screaming, crying, and reaching for her dad to tossing her head back, laughing, smiling through her tears, and nuzzling into her momma’s hair, as far as I’m concerned, if it’s that magical, it’s more than worth my soul.
“Leo, please. I can’t just let you stand here and stare. I won’t.” She pulls my hand, jarring me from my thoughts. “She’s still married. You can’t just run off and leave me for her. I’m sorry but—”
“I know, Annalise. Come on. Let’s go.” I brush past her, walking briskly towards the parking lot. I don’t even check to see if ‘Lise is following me, afraid if I slow down I’ll do exactly what Annalise said I couldn’t—run off with Lil even though she’s still married.
I’m in my truck and it’s cranked before ‘Lise opens the passenger door. She slides into the car without saying a word.
The fucking silence in the cab of my truck is deafening. Neither of us speaks the entire drive home. Neither of us speaks when we pull into the driveway. And neither of us speaks as we lie in bed side by side while both of us stare up at the ceiling.
I know I can’t blame this on Annalise. However, now that I lie here still staring at the ceiling well after her soft sleeping breaths began, I slide the puzzle pieces around in my head, and they start to come together, I realize that it isn’t Annalise’s fault…
But she for damn sure wasn’t trying to fix it before she built on it either.
I can’t stop the betrayal I feel from swelling and twisting anything beautiful we ever had into something cloaked in deceit and malicious intent.
My thoughts and emotions are running amuck. I can’t even get a grip on one emotion before another one crashes into me and pulls me under.
Sometime right before dawn, I remember every time I chased the lingering ghosts of my lost memories. It pisses me off more than anything when it hits me that while I let ‘Lise lead me unknowingly into our life together, through our life together, Annalise was constantly trying to get pregnant as well as looking over her shoulder, waiting for today to happen.
And she fucking always knew that it would.
Over the following week, Annalise and I don’t talk about what happened. We keep to neutral conversation and base most of our interaction on day-to-day topics. It makes the entire situation seem surreal, almost as if the Christmas light festival never even happened.
However, it did happen and we both know that our lives are on the brink of intense change because of it. I know I’ll be the one to jump first, and it kills me to think she’ll hold on after I’m gone. I love Annalise. Hell how could I not? She’s been the only vital part of my life for years.
I know that months before I overdosed I’d planned to marry her. I know that in my sick and pill-dependant mind, I’d somehow talked myself into believing that ‘Lise was the one for me if I couldn’t have Lil. But, fuck… I was so damn high all the time that I thought ‘Lise was Lil.
When you’re where I was mentally and emotionally, you don’t need to be trying to talk yourself into loving someone enough to spend your life with them.
Annalise was perfect. Shit, she still is. Goddamn, look at her. She’s even more beautiful than the day she knocked on my apartment door asking for water.
She has a heart of pure gold. She’s smart as a whip, funny, and fuck, she’s so damn hot. Even now, after five years of marriage, when I’m buried in her, she is still fucking sexy and hot as hell.
However, I know now that, after all the therapy and meetings AND knowing the truth, Annalise was also an enabler to both my alcohol and narcotic addiction. And during our entire marriage, she’s continued to enable me by letting me go through my life thinking I was married to the woman who was my one and only, that there had never been anyone but her.
I know that, had I not overdosed and had a seizure that wiped my memory of Lil, I wouldn’t have ended up marrying ‘Lise.
I would have ended up dead at twenty-two years old.
All I’ve done this entire week is run every different scenario through my mind watching them play out over and over.
It looks like I’m paying attention in the morning board meetings. It looks like I’m watching the Saints beat Tampa Bay’s ass. But I haven’t a fucking clue what’s going on around me because I’m too busy stuck inside my own head.
I’m trying to find a way to sever myself from the only friend, the only lover—hell, the only person—I’ve had at my side for years. I’m not trying to find a way to do this so it’s easy on me though. Don’t think that shit for one second.
Yeah, I’m a fucking asshole, but I’m not a selfish asshole.
I’m trying to do this in a way that won’t leave ‘Lise completely devastated. I fucking love her. I don’t want to hurt her. But I know I can’t stay married to her…because she isn’t Lil.
Yes, I might have only had Lil for three months the summer I was eighteen years old. However, what you’re not fucking grasping here if it hasn’t clicked yet is that Lil has had me, every goddamn part of me, from the moment I first laid eyes on her, and even to this fucking day, she still does.
So I’m sorry if you don’t like it, if you think I should stay with Annalise because of everything that she has done for me. But this ain’t your life and it ain’t your fucking story being told.
I can’t and I won’t stay married to someone who isn’t my soul mate. We only get one life, and I refuse to live mine married to the wrong woman or keeping Annalise stuck living her life with a man she thinks is the one.
She deserves better than that. Shit, she fucking deserves better than me.
Even though it hurt like hell for us both, three months later, I filed for divorce. Annalise fought me tooth and nail over it until Shelton called a month after we finalized the divorce.
His wife had been in and out of chemo for breast cancer for almost two years. Six months ago, she stopped all treatment, deciding she wanted to live out the rest of her life enjoying Adam and watching him play in the sand on the beach from their back porch in the Hamptons.
Shelton called Annalise the month after our divorce, begging her to come back to New York, to take care of Adam, saying that he couldn’t do it any longer without Pamela.
I took the first flight out with ‘Lise that I could find, and for the first time, I got to meet Mr. Adam Daniel Parker. I know Annalise always carried the guilt and pain of leaving her only son with the man she’d had an affair with and his wife. I listened to her cry herself to sleep after every phone call with Adam ended. A part of me has always wondered if that pain and guilt had more to do with her desperately trying to have another child.
Either way, Adam Daniel Parker is the best fucking kid I’ve met in my life. He is so much like Annalise. He has all of her good qualities—smart as hell, kindest little heart, always quick to try and lighten the subject, and constantly willing to put himself out there even if it ends up getting him hurt.
I love the little guy and I’ve only been in town helping him and ‘Lise get settled for a little over a week. It’s insane how much his mannerisms are a carbon copy of ‘Lise’s. Even though he only spent a handful of days with her when he was just a baby, there is no denying that he is Annalise’s son.
The last of our furniture is being delivered to Annalise’s new apartment today. I told her to take everything in the house. She has a son to take care of and she’d need it. I knew I wouldn’t need any of it.
“Well, that was the delivery company. The truck just left so they’ll be here pretty soon.” She sighs before collapsing onto the couch beside me, and out of habit, I wrap my arm around her and pull her close to me.
“What did Shelton say about Adam’s school? I know he doesn’t want to leave his friends,” I ask with my lips against the crown of ‘Lise’s head before kissing her hair.
“Adam said he doesn’t care, but with all this change he’s going through, I think anything we—I—can keep the same for him will be best. Shelton hasn’t really said shit to me
.”
“MOM! You’re not supposed to say the s-h-i-t word! It’s illegal.”
I nudge ‘Lise in the ribs and laugh. “Yeah, Mom, gahh… Don’t you know it’s illegal?”
“Adam, it’s just as illegal to spell it out like you’re participating in the dirty word spelling bee.” She wrinkles her nose and looks up at me. “Is it sad or cool that my kid can spell shit?” she whispers.
“I’d say it’s pretty bad a-s-s, but that’s coming from a guy who just met the kid for the first time almost two weeks ago.” I shrug.
“Yeah, that’s true. But we’ll still say it’s bad a-s-s though.”
The buzzer goes off and I stand up, pulling ‘Lise with me. “Come on, slave driver. Just a little bit more of moving furniture and you two will be all settled.”
Istantly she has her arms around my neck and her face buried against it. “Thank you. For everything, Leo… Thank you so much.”
I pull away from her and cup her face. Staring into her navy blue eyes, I tell her, “Not now, ‘Lise. ‘Kay, babe? It’s not time for goodbyes yet.”
“Okay.” She wipes her tears away quickly before walking to the front door.
Her hand is on the knob, and she gathers a deep breath before opening it. We walk downstairs to the delivery truck and start getting everything unloaded onto the service elevator.
It’s past one in the morning when we finish and it’s time to say goodbye.
“‘Lise, let me know if you need help, and if Shelton doesn’t want to talk about Adam’s school, don’t push him. I can afford it. Hell, I’d be honored to invest a little bit into that genius’s future.” I’m trying to joke around, keep this goodbye as light as I can, but I’m failing.
My throat and chest are squeezing so tight that pain lances through me. I realize that my heart isn’t in this like I thought it was, that my pain is a side effect of what we’re doing—ending things. My eyes flood with tears and I try to blink them away.
“I’ll never be sorry for what I did, Leo. It was selfish and childish, but if I were given a chance to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a single thing. I know you think it led you further away from her, led to more time being wasted, and I can’t say for certain if it did or didn’t. Truthfully, Leo, I don’t fucking care either way, because it did give me what I wanted. It gave me everything I’ll ever want out of life. It gave me five beautiful years of being your wife and having you love me and me alone. And I’ll never be sorry for that. I can’t—” Annalise’s sobs cut off her words.
Holding Her in Madness Page 16