by Marie Force
Barbara, a petite blonde who was dwarfed by her husband and son, blushed.
Jeremy ordered drinks for his mother and Gary before they all walked over to check out the pavilion where the wedding would take place at sunset the next day.
“It’s beautiful, son,” Barbara said, dabbing at her eyes.
“Oh, jeez, Mom!” Jeremy said with a grin. “You’re already blubbering! What will you be like tomorrow?”
“Leave me alone. My only child is getting married. I can blubber if I want to.”
“That’s right, darlin’.” Gary put his arm around his wife. “You just go right ahead and cry if you want to.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes at his mother and took Juliana’s hand to lead her up the stairs to the pavilion. At the center of the big open area, he put his arm around her and turned her to face the ocean. “What do you think, babe? Will this do the trick?”
“Definitely. It’s just right, Jer, isn’t it?”
He kissed her left hand where the resized engagement ring now resided. “Everything’s just right as long as I have you.”
With their guests whistling, he leaned in for a passionate kiss that had Juliana blushing by the time she finally managed to extricate herself.
“Get a room!” David hollered.
“We’ve got a room,” Jeremy replied, adding just for Juliana, “two of them, in fact.”
She smiled up at him. “One more night. You’re almost there.”
“And hanging by a thread,” he whispered. They went down the stairs to join the others. “Who’s ready for some lunch?”
That afternoon, David announced that he and Gary would be throwing an impromptu bachelor party for Jeremy at the poolside bar while the ladies went to the spa.
“I don’t know about that,” Juliana said with a wary look at Jeremy.
“What do you mean?” David asked with indignation. “It’s a right of passage you can’t deny him. Now go get your nails done, and leave the groom to me.”
“I don’t want you hung over tomorrow,” Juliana said to Jeremy.
He leaned down to kiss her. “Don’t worry, babe. I’ll behave.” Into her ear, he whispered, “There’s no way I’m going to be sick for our wedding night.”
Juliana smiled at him, and he kissed her again. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
“Behave, David,” Pam warned her husband. “I mean it.”
“It’s all right, girls.” Barbara put her arms around Juliana and Pam. “Gary will keep an eye on them.”
With a reluctant last look back at Jeremy, Juliana let Barbara lead her away to the spa where they were pampered for the next three hours. Barbara surprised them by springing for massages on top of the manicure and pedicure.
“Oh my God, this is heavenly,” Juliana groaned as the masseuse worked out all her kinks.
“I thought you might enjoy it,” Barbara said from the next table. Pam had opted for a private room.
“I’m so glad you and Gary could be here for the wedding,” Juliana said.
“We’re delighted to be included, honey. I’m sure it’s no secret that I’ve been urging Jeremy to take this step with you for years. He’s very lucky to have you, and I think he knows now just how lucky he is.”
“So you know about what happened? About the time we spent apart?”
“Yes, he told me. I think it says an awful lot about the love you have between you that you were able to find your way back to each other.”
“I do love him, Barbara, and I’m going to do everything I can to make this marriage work.”
“I have no doubt you’ll make it work, honey. None at all.”
They met Pam in the lobby of the spa.
“I don’t know about you girls, but I’m like a new woman,” Juliana said. She rolled her loose shoulders, feeling rested, refreshed, and ready to take the next step in her life with Jeremy.
“What do you say we crash the bachelor party?” Barbara asked with a twinkle in her eye.
“Sign me up,” Pam said.
They strolled through fragrant gardens on their way to the pool to find the guys. Approaching the bar, Juliana gasped when she heard Jeremy and David singing at the top of their lungs. A row of overturned shot glasses lined the bar in front of them.
Gary greeted the women with a sheepish shrug. “I tried to stop them, but they’re on a roll.”
“There she is!” Jeremy hollered. “There’s my bride! Come on over here, babe, and give me some love.”
Juliana took a step toward him, intending to tell him to pipe down.
He almost knocked her over when he put his arm around her and hauled her to him.
“Jeremy, cut it out. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Do you hear that? She says I’m embarrassing myself!”
Juliana pushed at him in an attempt to break free of his tight embrace.
“You know what’s embarrassing?” he asked in a loud voice that had everyone in the poolside bar listening to him. “I’ll tell you what’s embarrassing. My good buddy Dave here has been telling me quite a story about my bride. Something about her hanging all over a guy she told me was just a friend.”
“David!” Pam gasped. “You did not!”
David took a sudden interest in the floor as his wife glared at him.
“Oh, ho!” Jeremy bellowed. “What do you know? You saw it, too, did you, Pam? What am I? The last asshole on earth to find out what my bride’s been up to?”
“Jeremy, stop this right now,” Barbara hissed.
Everything in the bar came to a halt, and all eyes were on Jeremy and Juliana.
“Come on, son, let’s get you out of here,” Gary said, reaching for Jeremy’s arm.
He shook off his stepfather and tightened his grip on Juliana.
Juliana pushed him as hard as she could, and he stumbled backward into David. She worked the engagement ring off her finger and threw it at him. “We’re done. Don’t call me, don’t write to me, and don’t come back to me begging. I’m through with you. I was a fool to think you deserved another chance.” She turned to walk away. If she allowed herself to think for even one second about what she had given up for him…
“Did you fuck him?” Jeremy screamed at her back.
The others gasped.
Juliana stopped short and spun around to face him. “What did you say to me?”
He took a lurching step toward her. “Did. You. Fuck. Him? It’s a simple yes or no question.”
“Jeremy, I’m telling you to stop this immediately,” his mother said, wiping tears from her cheeks.
“Not until she answers the question.”
Juliana leaned into his face. “You want me to answer the question? Fine, here you go: No, Jer, I didn’t fuck him.” Gratified by the expression of relief that flashed across his face, she added, “But I did make love with him—over and over and over again. And you know what? Not once, in all the nights I spent in his arms, did he ever make me feel like I wasn’t enough for him. Happy now?”
“Jule,” he whispered, the magnitude seeming to register all at once.
“Go to hell, Jeremy.” She turned and left the bar where not a pin drop could be heard except for the sobs Jeremy dissolved into the moment she walked away from him.
“Juliana!” Pam called from behind her. “Wait.” Pam ran to catch up with her. “I’m so sorry. Oh my God, I’m going to kill David for this.”
“Don’t. He did me a favor.”
“Will you be all right?”
“I’m going to be just fine.” Juliana embraced her friend in a quick hug. “Tell Barbara I’ll call her when I can. Go on back there with him. He’s going to need his friends when he sobers up and realizes what he’s done.”
“Are you leaving?”
“As fast as I can.”
“Call me?”
Juliana nodded, and with a last squeeze of Pam’s hand she ran for the lobby to hail a taxi. There was nothing in her room but clothes she bough
t for a wedding that wasn’t going to happen.
Chapter 35
Juliana caught the day’s last flight off St. Thomas. She didn’t take a deep breath until the plane took off, when she was certain Jeremy hadn’t come after her. If she never saw him again it would be too soon. More than anything, she was mortified that Barbara and Gary had been forced to witness the horrific scene in the bar.
As the plane made its way to Miami, the shock wore off, and Juliana began to shake. Her thin sundress offered scant protection against the air-conditioned cabin, so she asked the stewardess for a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Once the trembling subsided, she wept quietly into the blanket.
What a mess she had made of things, and what a stupid fool she’d been to give him a second chance. She should have ended it with him that day on the beach when he said he wanted to see other women. Instead she’d walked away from the best guy she had ever known for someone who wasn’t worth it.
In Miami, she learned she had just missed the last flight to Baltimore, so she booked a flight at six the next morning. Tapping into the wad of cash Jeremy had gotten for their trip, Juliana bought an overpriced sweat suit and sneakers in one of the fancy airport boutiques as well as a toothbrush and hairbrush in the newsstand. With her purchases in hand, she went outside into the warm night to take a taxi to a hotel near the airport.
The room was small and inexpensive, but it was clean. After requesting a four thirty wake-up call, she took a long, hot shower and changed into the sweat suit. She would have ordered some food, but the thought of eating made her sick, so she lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
The wake-up call turned out to be unnecessary because Juliana never fell asleep during that long night. But she did make some decisions. Before she did anything else, she was going to find out if Mrs. Romanello was right when she said Juliana could stand on her own two feet in any situation. One year was ending and another was beginning, and she would spend this year alone.
For the first time in her life, she would live by herself. She would take the time she needed to recover from everything that had happened in the last few months and to figure out what she wanted next. She couldn’t go running back to Michael after what she had done to him. Maybe during this year she would discover that it was over with him, too. Or maybe she would find out that he was what she wanted more than anything. If that was the case and he loved her as much as he said he did, he would still love her in a year.
She got up in the morning satisfied she had a plan to put her life back together, to find some self-respect amid the ruins, and to put her love for Michael to the test of a lifetime.
The skimpy sweat suit was no match for the frigid cold in Baltimore. Shivering her way home in a taxi, she wished for the winter coat she left in Jeremy’s car in the long-term parking lot.
At the Collington Street house, she spent the last day of the year, what was supposed to have been her wedding day, packing four years of her life into three suitcases and six of the boxes Jeremy brought home from Florida. She took only the things that mattered most to her, leaving behind all reminders of their ten years together.
By five o’clock she had loaded the last of the boxes into her car. Climbing the front steps one final time, she peeled the key off her ring and left it on the kitchen counter. She took a last look at the room full of memories that only a few days ago had seemed strong enough to build a lifetime on. Then she set the alarm, pushed in the lock, and closed the door to that life forever.
It was only when she got into her car that she realized she had nowhere to go. She laughed so hard she cried as it settled in on her that she had no idea what to do. Remembering that Michael was right around the corner and would want her to come to him, she wavered in her resolve to be on her own.
But only for a moment.
Wiping her tears, she started the car and drove to the only place in the world she had left to go—home to her mother.
The new and improved Paullina welcomed her daughter with open arms and a closed mouth. She never said “I told you so,” didn’t ask any questions, and, if anything, seemed to appreciate the opportunity to mother her wounded child.
On New Year’s Day they read the notice in the Baltimore Sun about the wedding in St. John that hadn’t happened. Jeremy sent it in before they left, and Juliana had forgotten about it until she saw it in the paper. She hurt when she thought of Michael seeing the article and thinking she had actually gone through with it.
Receiving love from a mother Juliana had long ago given up on was an unexpected gift in the midst of disaster. It was tempting to settle in, put her feet up, and let her mother take care of her for a change. But that went against the promise she made to herself in the Miami hotel room. So within a week, Juliana signed a one-year lease on a furnished studio apartment in Fell’s Point. Even with the rent she could still swing the cost of Allison, the home health aide who had brought about such a miraculous change in Paullina.
Juliana moved her meager belongings into her new apartment and spent the first night wide awake, thinking about Michael and wondering if he’d seen the announcement in the paper. By the time the sun came up in the morning, she knew she had to do something about that. Picturing him in his bedroom getting ready for work, she reached for her cell phone and dialed his number from memory.
“Juliana,” he said, his voice flat with shock.
She closed her eyes tight against the instant rush of tears.
“Baby, what is it? Are you all right?”
“I didn’t marry him,” she said softly.
“But the paper… I saw it…”
She winced. “I’m sorry you had to see that. He sent it in before we left, and it was a holiday weekend. . .”
“What happened?” he asked, incredulous.
“The blowup you predicted occurred about twenty-four hours before the I dos.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m better than I was.”
“God, Juliana, you can’t imagine what’s been going through my mind. The thought of you. . . in bed with him. . . It’s been making me insane.”
“I never slept with him after we got back together. I was making him wait for a wedding that never happened.”
Michael released a tortured groan. “So where’ve you been for the last week?”
She swallowed hard. “I’ve made a few decisions.”
“What kind of decisions?”
“I signed a one-year lease on an apartment in Fell’s Point.”
“Why, Juliana? You could’ve come here! You know that!”
“I need some time to figure things out. To decide how I feel…”
“About me?”
She hated the despair she heard in his voice—again. “No,” she whispered. “About me. I need to be by myself, Michael. I have some things I need to prove to myself.”
“Baby, please… Don’t do this. I love you. No matter what’s happened, that’ll never change. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. The biggest mistake you made was being loyal to someone who didn’t deserve it. Don’t punish yourself—and me—for that.”
That he still could be so forgiving astounded her. “I need to do this for me. I know it’s hard for you to understand, and I don’t expect you to wait for me. I just didn’t want you to think I’d married him.”
“I appreciate that—more than you’ll ever know—but don’t tell me not to wait for you. Did you hear anything I said to you the last time we were together?”
The lump lodged in her throat made it difficult to speak. “I heard every word,” she said softly.
“You promised me, Juliana.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“You’re really going to do this? You’re going to put us both through this?”
“I’m sorry.”
Sounding resigned, he said, “Can I call you?”
“It would be better if you didn’t.”
“Better for whom?” When she didn�
��t answer him, he said, “What happens at the end of the year?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come find me, Juliana,” he said urgently. “You know where to look.”
“I’m so sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you.”
“You’ve caused me more happiness than anything in my life. I’d wait forever for you.”
“Bye, Michael.” Her heart aching, she ended the call while wondering—and not for the first time—if she was taking too big a risk with the most precious thing anyone had ever given her.
She ate alone, slept alone, shopped alone, watched television alone. It took a while to get used to the quiet, but after a month she had grown accustomed to it. By then she had also managed to set the record straight with just about everyone in her life—she hadn’t married Jeremy despite what the paper said. The salon had been abuzz about it for three or four days until someone else’s drama took center stage and Juliana’s was mercifully forgotten.
In the second month, she decided to try something else she had always wondered if she could do—she signed up for a class at Johns Hopkins University. The introduction to architecture class met twice a week for three hours, and Juliana loved it. Between work, school, and visiting with her mother and Mrs. R, she began to feel human again as February inched toward March.
She received a heartfelt letter from Jeremy’s mother in April, apologizing for the horrific way her son had behaved and expressing her undying love and affection for Juliana, who wrote back to say the same things. Barbara had always been lovely to Juliana, and it wasn’t her fault that her son had acted like such an ass.
Her class ended in May, and Juliana was delighted to receive an A. She danced around the small apartment when she received her grade in the mail, and it took all her willpower not to pick up the phone to share the news with Michael. She knew he would be so proud of her.
In June, he made news of his own when he resigned from his job. The Baltimore Sun ran a front-page article that recapped his role in the Benedetti trial and contained glowing quotes from Tom Houlihan, Judge Stein, and others in the criminal justice system who worked with him during his five-year tenure. Juliana read and re-read the article, looking for any clue to his plans, but he said only that he was moving into the private sector. She cut out the article and the large photo that ran next to it. As she hung the photo on the wall next to her bed, she was startled to realize it was the only picture of him she had.