Page 9 of Cross To Bear

“I won’t,” I promised him belatedly. “I will never ask you to make salad again.”

But it was more than that and everyone knew it. I got super uncomfortable in awkward situations, and right now I was creating a situation that sailed past awkward and straight into dire territory, and I couldn’t seem to stop. All the feelings I’d been stuffing down all damn morning came rushing up like hot, acidic bile, filling my mouth with a metallic taste that burned my tongue.

Because I wanted to say it, scream it, rail at him for the fucking chaos he created then so blithely assigned the consequences to me. I wanted to drag him out of this party by the scruff of his neck and order him through the clean up process like a drill sergeant. No, actually scratch all of that, because that just put me in the role of adult again and him as child.

I wanted him to fucking grow up.

We were in our late-twenties now. Surely now was the time. For me, couldn’t he do that for me? As I mutely pleaded with him to do just that, to save himself, to save us, Jake, one of Jesse’s dads, came bustling over.

“Food’s up!”

To my horror, I realised tears had welled in my eyes. I blinked them away then and smiled.

“Awesome,” I said. “It smells amazing.”

But I knew that even with the dads’ legendary grilling skills, anything I ate would sit like lead in my stomach.

Chapter 6

“So we’re all here today to celebrate another year of this amazing woman’s life,” Jake said, he and the three other dads standing around Nelly.

The entire party was clustered around Nelly to wish her happy birthday.

It was shit, to envy your own mother-in-law, right? How could I not? One man went and piled her plate up with every little titbit she might like, another refreshed her wine glass, and the other two pulled her into the space between them, gazing down at her like she was the most precious thing on earth.

Because to them, she was.

My jealousy sprang mostly from the fact that Jesse had sidled up beside me, shooting me a wounded look with his big blue eyes, his hand reaching for mine.

And I’d pulled mine away.

I couldn’t bear his touch right now, because as soon as his fingertips grazed against mine, I felt ice, ice cold, not the usual warmth. I wanted to slap it away, slap him away and then…

“Every year we’re together, love, is the best year of our lives,” Taz said.

“Here’s to many more!” one of the uncles shouted from the small crowd.

“As many as the bear gods will give us,” Knackers, one of the other dads said. “It’ll never be enough. Happy birthday, love.”

“We’ll be like that one day, Maddie,” Jesse whispered, staring into my eyes. “That’ll be us.”

“Happy birthday, Nelly!”

I mouthed the words as I stared into my boyfriend’s eyes, willing him to understand.

But he didn’t.

He was all in his feelings, like he usually was when the chips were down, because right now it was his misery that mattered, not mine. It wasn’t that he was especially selfish. That implied a conscious act of putting your own needs above everyone else’s and that wasn’t Jesse. He was just the sun that everyone else revolved around, and suns never questioned the gravitational pull they had over planets. It was just the natural order of things.

What he didn’t understand was that in his parents’ relationship, Nelly was the sun, not one of his dads.

I plastered on a smile and pretended to cheer with all the others, feeling guilty as I did so. Nelly deserved a happy birthday. Everyone did, but that just had my mind racing. Jesse forgot my first birthday, opted to attend a ‘very important’ bike show on my second birthday, and then proceeded to get drunk and pass out in a gutter apparently. And the last? I’d decided to take the bull by the horns and buy my own cake, flowers, favourite food, so that all he had to do was turn up…

But he didn’t.

I met his gaze head on, staring right back, as I saw all the different ways he utterly failed to live up to the standard set by his parents of how to be a partner. All the ways he failed me. Never in big ways, catastrophic ways, like finding him balls deep in a girl or whatever—in some ways that would’ve made things easier. I’d know what to do if he was unfaithful to me.

Dump his arse, set all of his belongings on fire, and then move on with my life. Instead, I endured a death by a thousand cuts because I couldn’t work out what the fuck to do with a boy that was too bad to stay with and too good to leave. So I did what I usually did, and followed along with everyone else as they tucked into the food, putting enough on my plate to avoid scrutiny, though not enough to waste, because I knew I wouldn’t eat a bite.

---