“I am too young to be a mom. And a child is not the answer to our problems.”
His eyes flashed. “That’s no’ what this is.”
“Oh, that’s exactly what this is.” It was him trying to trap me for life.
The thought made me flinch, like I’d smacked into a pane of glass, not realizing it was there.
It was him trying to trap me for life.
Something must have given the thought away. Jim staggered back, looking pale. “Is it that ye dinnae want kids or ye dinnae want kids with me?”
Feeling nauseated, I lifted a trembling hand to my forehead and focused on my feet. “You sprung this on me. That’s not fair.”
“I want a baby,” he said, toneless. “Ye need tae stop taking the pill.” He walked out of the bathroom as if the discussion were over.
It took me a minute to process what he’d dared to say to me. To demand. And then a fire lit inside me and I rushed out of the bathroom after him. “Don’t you dare dictate to me, especially about my own body!”
He whirled in the doorway of our bedroom, eyes blazing. “Aye, well, ye promised that body tae me when ye married me, so I have some say in it tae. This is the only way we can keep our relationship moving forward.”
His possessiveness felt like a vise around my rib cage and the words were out before I could stop them. “No, it’s a desperate attempt to keep me.”
An awful silence swept into the room, like cold snow suddenly falling upon a hot desert.
We looked at one another, opponents waiting for the other to make the first move.
“Why?” he said, his voice thick, cracking. “Why would I need tae keep ye? That would only be true if I felt like I was losing ye.”
Unable to see the anguish in his eyes, I lowered my eyes back to my feet.
“And if we’re being honest here, Nora, I’ve felt like I’ve been losing ye for a while. Sometimes I wonder if I ever had ye or if ye only used me tae get out that dump of a town back in the States.”
Pain scored across my chest, the guilt, the shame, the fear overwhelming. I stumbled back toward the bed, sensing my legs couldn’t hold me up under the weight of the horrible truth.
“Yet I dinnae care,” Jim whispered, “I dinnae care, Nora, because I love ye that fucking much. I dinnae care that ye stopped saying ‘I love ye’ back tae me months ago. All I care about is waking up next tae ye every morning and falling asleep every night with ye in my bed.
“I don’t want tae be the arsehole who cannae trust his wife tae talk tae other men. I dinnae want tae worry about coming home one day tae find ye’ve packed up and left, like ye packed up and left yer family before me.”
Suddenly, he was on his knees in front of me, his arms around my waist. And he looked up at me with such a terrible love, I felt something crack inside of me. “Ye don’t have tae love me, Nora. Just keep caring about me, like I know ye do, and promise tae stay. For good. Stay with me. Choose me. Choose me. Choose us as a family … including kids.”
This time as we looked at each other in silence. His expression was one of longing and mine was of guilt. Because I’d give anything to be able to return the depth of his love.
Anything.
But you can’t force love.
He stood up, and as he did, he leaned down to kiss me softly. When he pulled back, he whispered, “Otherwise we cannae go on like this. Tonight, I want yer answer.”
Tonight, I want yer answer.
I flinched, almost dropping the cereal box I was stacking on the shelf at work.
I dinnae want tae worry about coming home one day tae find ye’ve packed up and left, like ye packed up and left yer family before me.
“Shit,” I breathed, and then bit my lip, remembering where I was.
I glanced around but there was only one woman down the other end of the aisle, not paying me any attention.
The truth was I hadn’t felt such turmoil since I’d left my parents in the first place. I’d taken a risk running away with Jim, hoping the love I felt for him was enough and that with him, I’d find a better life. Instead, I’d found a not-so-dissimilar life to the one I’d led in Donovan, and a husband who didn’t get me, didn’t know me, and yet loved me all the same. Or whatever version of me he thought he knew. He loved me to the point it was breaking him. Because we both knew now what I’d felt wasn’t love when we met. It was naïve infatuation. And infatuation dies if it isn’t nurtured into love.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
This relationship was making me hate myself.
And I already pretty much hated me before Jim and I got to this point. Because leaving my parents had not been easy at all. I’d emailed my mom a number of times once I’d arrived in Edinburgh, but she never responded. After six months of emailing and no response, an email bounced back because the email address was no longer in use.
Although I was the one in the wrong, I couldn’t help feeling deeply hurt by my mom’s refusal to talk to me. I let that hurt simmer too long. About a year after our marriage, I wrote my mom a letter, but a month later, it was returned to me unopened.
Molly and Dawn, my only contacts, were no longer living in Donovan. Not long after I left, Molly returned my apology email to tell me that I’d inspired her. For a while we exchanged emails but soon we stopped, both busy with our new lives. Last we talked was about eighteen months ago, and Molly was living in San Diego with her boyfriend Jed. He owned a bar, he hired her as a bartender, and they thought they hated each other because they argued so much, but it turned out there was a fine line between love and hate.
I feared staying with Jim would draw him over the line. Right into Hateville.
There was no way you could stay with someone and not have them love you back the way you loved them, and not have that turn to poison.
I’d been selfish enough, surely. I couldn’t let Jim do that to himself. I couldn’t do that to Jim.
Yet I was scared too. Scared to be without him here. Scared I’d lose Seonaid and Roddy and Angie.
But they were his first.
The truth was I didn’t know if I was capable of love. Maybe everything that happened with my dad and Mel had closed me off, made me disconnect. Did that mean I’d be better off staying with Jim if it wasn’t possible for me to love him that way? Or was that even more selfish than staying with Jim out of guilt?
“Excuse me, I’ve been looking all over the place and I can’t seem to find syrup.”
The speaker sounded like a gravelly Ewan McGregor, an accent that was more anglicized and refined than Jim’s. The deep, coarse lilt jolted me out of my thoughts, and I turned around to face the customer.
And my jaw nearly hit the floor.
Recognition lit the stranger’s green eyes. “You.”
“You,” I repeated.
The stranger from the bar. The one who picked me up off the floor and stopped the fight.
“Small world.” He smirked.
“Apparently.”
We stared at one another and I found myself completely arrested by him. Standing this close, he was overwhelming in his masculinity, towering over my five feet three by more than a foot.
The stranger cleared his throat. “Syrup?”
Flushing at my ridiculous staring, I nodded. “Sure. This way.” I passed by him, keeping my distance, but I got a whiff of his great-smelling cologne.
I heard him follow me, and my every nerve zinged with awareness. Why did he have to see me here? In this stupid uniform? I was suddenly very much aware of how unflattering it was on my petite frame.
“So, where in the US are you from?” he asked as he fell into step beside me with his longer strides.
“Indiana,” I replied.
“I like Indiana.”
“You’ve been?” I asked, surprised.
He nodded, giving me a small smile that was far, far, far too sexy. “It’s not in an alternate dimension.”
I laughed, hating how nervous it sounded. I didn’t want this man
to think he intimidated me. Even though he did. “Clearly, you’ve never been to Donovan.”
His tone was amused. “I can’t say I have.”
If he ever visited Donovan, the women there would never let him escape. I bit my lip to stop from laughing at the thought.
“Syrup.” I stopped at a shelf and gestured to it. “All kinds.”
Instead of looking at the shelf, the stranger looked at me. His gaze dropped to my hand. “How’s the wrist?”
He’d noticed that, huh? A little thrill rushed through me again at the thought of having his attention. “It’s okay. Thanks for intervening yesterday.”
“I can only imagine those guys must have crossed the line with you for your husband to react that way.”
Yeah, sure, that was it. I couldn’t tell if he was being passive aggressive or really just assuming what anyone would. It drilled it home even further how badly I was changing my husband and I suddenly felt defensive. I didn’t want to talk about this with a stranger with the fancy watch and lilting, cultured Scottish accent that gave me tingles in my lady places. He probably thought Jim and I were like those melodramatic couples on the Jerry Springer show, so far outside his social sphere it wasn’t funny.
“Can I help you with anything else?”
If he was surprised by my sudden abruptness, he didn’t show it. “No, just the syrup.” He reached by me to grab a bottle off the shelf.
I gave him a tight-lipped smile and turned on my heel to leave him to it.
“You’re awfully young to be someone’s wife, no?”
I stilled at the curiosity in his voice.
It didn’t make sense to me that he would notice me in a bar, let alone be curious enough to quiz me in my workplace. Yet, I was curious about him too. If only for the fact that I’d never had such a visceral reaction to a stranger before. I spun slowly on my heel, and gave him a raised eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
The stranger smirked, apparently enjoying my irritation. “What I meant to say was, you’re awfully smart to have married so young.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, flummoxed. “How do you know I’m smart?”
He gestured to his eyes. “I can see it.”
“You can just see I’m smart?” I was not convinced. I gestured around me. “Really?”
“Many a smart person has worked in a supermarket. And you look too weary for someone your age. I’ve been around, met a lot of people; weariness in youth usually means they’ve been around too and are older than their years.”
That stunned me because the truth was, I felt older than my years. On the defense again, I huffed, “No one can know that about anyone by just looking into their eyes.”
“You have very expressive eyes.”
Nervous of his proximity and the attraction I felt, I took a step back, watching him warily. “You don’t know me. You’re a perfect stranger.”
“I know.” He gave me a wicked smile that made my belly flip low, deep down in that sensual place inside of me. “And unfortunately, as long as that ring stays on your finger,” he pointed to my gold wedding band, “that’s the way I’ll stay.”
Flattered, intimidated, turned on, I covered up my many emotions with snark. “Aren’t I a little young for you?”
“Ouch.” He laughed, grabbing his chest. “Straight to the ego.”
I grinned. “Well?”
He studied me, almost in that same intense way Jim used to. Except back then, Jim’s intensity made a part of me wary. I didn’t feel wary with this stranger. I felt a bizarre, overwhelming need to launch myself at his mouth.
“Yesterday morning,” he mused, rubbing a thumb over the lips that had me so hypnotized, “I would have agreed that twenty…”
“Twenty-one,” I supplied.
“That twenty-one was definitely too young for me.”
My breath caught. “And today?”
“I’d bet everything I owned that this particular twenty-one-year-old isn’t like many her age. Pity,” his hot gaze swept over me, making me shiver with want, “that she’s a little too married.”
Pity, I wanted to reply.
I smirked at him. “You’re smooth, I’ll give you that. Arrogant, but good.”
He tilted his head, green eyes bright with amusement. “Arrogant? How so?”
“Because I get the feeling if I weren’t married, you’d expect me to be in your bed by the end of the day. Expect it like it was your due.”
The stranger seemed to consider that. “Maybe,” he finally murmured. “I guess we’ll never know.”
And just like that, his words caused an unexplainable, crushing sadness to crumble down on top of me.
Even more bizarre, the stranger seemed to sense it, his own regret darkening his expression. With a grim, tight-lipped smile, he took a few steps back. “Good luck with life, girl from the bar.”
Good luck with life, stranger from the bar.
But I couldn’t get the words out. They were stuck.
Finally, his tall figure disappeared around the corner of the aisle, his footsteps slowly fading away.
I exhaled on a gasp.
What the hell was that?
Feeling shaken by the strange encounter, I backed down the aisle, trying to remember what the hell I’d been in the middle of doing.
Then a thought hit me. A decision, really. And I stumbled to a stop in the middle of the international foods aisle. A man, a stranger, had elicited a reaction in me that Jim had never been close to producing. As I’d stared into that man’s eyes, I wanted to know who he was, what he did, what made him tick. Everything about him. I realized that I’d felt about the stranger how Jim must’ve felt about me when we met.
I didn’t know that’s what I was supposed to feel back then.
I hadn’t been able to see past the hope Jim represented.
However, I knew now. And I was an adult. I didn’t have ignorance or childish naïveté to fall back on as an excuse for my mistakes. Jim deserved to find someone who would love him the way he deserved to be loved. He didn’t deserve to be driven crazy by unrequited love, and I didn’t deserve to feel at fault for his possessiveness.
I had to let my husband go.
The decision made me want to throw up.
“Nora.”
Recognizing the voice, I spun around, confused to find Jim’s mother standing in front of me. “Angie?”
She stared at me instead of speaking, and as she did so, the kind of dread I’d experienced when Melanie told me she was dying rushed over me. Angie was pale, her blue eyes filled with devastation.
“Nora?” My name trembled on her lips.
No.
No.
NO!
“He’s gone,” she sobbed suddenly, the noise harsh, sharp, horrifying.
“No.” I shook my head, stumbling away from her.
She silently pleaded with me, begged me.
“Angie …” Nausea rolled up inside of me. “Please.”
She sobbed harder. “He’s gone. My baby’s gone.”
As the bus traveled from Sighthill to Princes Street, I looked out the window, watching people as we slowly moved west toward the city center. I liked to people watch. I liked to imagine what their lives were like beyond the moments I witnessed. The bus stopped in traffic, and I noted an elderly couple walking down the busy street, holding hands, shoulders brushing, murmuring to each other with smiles on their faces.
Were they childhood sweethearts? An example of an epic love that you heard about, but never dreamed of experiencing? Sixty years, and still as in love as ever.
Or were they widowers, divorcees, who stumbled upon one another later in life, finally finding the love of their lives and enjoying it rather than regretting the years that had gone by without the other?
I smiled wistfully as the bus inched along, leaving the older couple behind.
“It’s bloody roastin’!” a woman across the aisle jolted me out of my musings as she shouted to the driver. “What aboot op
ening some windies, eh?”
This wasn’t entirely true. Although Scots and I had a differing opinion on what constituted hot weather, even I knew this month had been mild. And wet.
“Look, just because ye’er menopausal doesnae mean we aw have tae pit up wi’ it, awright?” a guy sitting behind her said.
Groaning inwardly, I hurried to put my earbuds in to block out the coming argument.
I was grateful to get off the bus, happy to walk on the paved sidewalk on Princes Street and follow it alongside Edinburgh Waverley train station. As Hozier’s Take Me to Church blocked out the sounds of the traffic and the bustle and chatter of the people passing me, I felt an ease settle over me. I loved being in the city. I loved escaping to it from my tiny one-bedroom apartment in the ugly gray council building a block from Angie’s house.
I guess that’s why I took the job in Old Town and didn’t get something closer to the apartment. Angie argued I was wasting bus fare. But I needed the escape.
Walking up the steep, curved street that led up onto the Royal Mile, as I passed my place of work I peered inside. Leah, the owner and my boss, was smiling and chatting with a customer. The mannequins in the window displayed vintage-style dresses and sweet cardigans. The boutique clothing store, called Apple Butter, was small but always busy because of its prime position on Cockburn Street (pronounced Co-burn, which is a relief because, seriously, who would name a street after something that happens to a guy when he jerks off for too long?). The road itself was cobblestone, much like the Royal Mile, and sitting on wide, high-heel-friendly sidewalks were independent, boutique-style stores selling jewelry, antiques, and clothes. There were also pubs and cafés, and a tattoo parlor.
I climbed swiftly up the steep hill, following the curve of it away from Apple Butter. Today was my day off and I had somewhere else I needed to be. The truth was I could catch a bus to my actual destination. But I liked the walk through the city, through Old Town.
Not far from the university buildings, I stopped in at my new go-to coffee place and headed straight for the bathroom. Once inside, I changed into dark green leggings, a dark green shirt with frayed short sleeves, and a jagged hem. I folded my jeans and sweater neatly, shoved them into my backpack, and stilled when I looked into the mirror.
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