Page 3 of Monsters of Midlife

We fell against each other, tears boiling in our eyes. Because we both knew she was so damn right. Ryder McKenzie, my not-so-sweet, younger husband.

“I was a fool for falling for him,” I grabbed Laney’s phone and pulled up the dating app she’d been perusing for me. “Come on. Let’s find me a date.”

I pulled it open and started looking at images.

“Swipe left. Swipe left. Swipe left. Swipe left,” I muttered.

It was a sad truth I didn’t know how I was going to recover from my ex-husband. There was no man on the planet who was going to match Ryder for anything.

Except all the missing attributes.

Faithfulness. Monogamy. Being present. Not being a total asshole all the time to everybody we ever met.

Those were all traits that had driven us apart, but what had ultimately caused me to file for divorce was that he was gone, like, all the time. After we got married when I thought his business trips would slow down, they hadn’t. In our first year of marriage, he was home maybe three days per month.

It got worse our second year of marriage.

By the start of our third I was already filing divorce papers.

The worst thing was, he hadn’t even put up a fight. What a fucker.

I kind of half-heartedly filed the divorce papers hoping he would fight me on it or say no or tell me he couldn’t live without me. After being gone all the time I think I was trying to give him a wake-up call. I’d even asked him to switch jobs time and time and time again, but he’d told me he couldn’t. His work was really important.

Instead of quitting his job, he’d asked me to quit mine and move to some podunk town in the middle of nowhere.

Bullshit.

That was never going to happen. I had my life in Boston as a research scientist for oncology and that wasn’t about to change.

As a cancer research scientist, I was pretty busy at the fucking lab all the time. All I was asking for was someone to be there when I got home. Apparently, Ryder’s work didn’t allow it. He worked in the family diamond business and was constantly leaving on trips. Trips I was not invited on. We’d never even gone on a honeymoon or a vacation in the two years we’d been married. By the time I was thirty-nine, it had become too much so I divorced him. That was three years ago, and I was still single. I hadn’t had a man come near my privates in years now. I sighed. It was fucking terrible.

“I really need a date,” I moaned, “but I’m not sure online is the way to get it.”

“Girl, we’re not looking for the love of your life,” Laney grabbed the phone and started swiping through the people. “We’re just looking for a big dick.”

I started cracking up. “I think I want more than a big dick.”

“Yeah eventually,” she said. “But you’re not even trying to get into this being single thing. You’re spending all your time in the lab. You may be a step closer to finding a cure for cancer but your vag is going to dry up.”

“C’mon. We are doing this one test at the moment my in-vitro assay has shown outstanding killing of patient tumor samples. It was like a lot more than I ever expected! If it’s as effective in the murine models, then I need to start the IND to see if I can start saving patient’s lives for real. I think it’s really going to be a breakthrough.” I didn’t sound as enthusiastic as I should have. The truth was, I was drained by all the lab work I’d been doing.

“Enough,” Laney held up her hand in protest. “I can’t track you when you do the cancer research stuff.”

“I’m impressed you even like me,” I muttered. “Smart women usually don’t like me.”

“What the fuck?” Laney protested.

“I’m calling you smart, asshole,” I looked at her sideways.

Laney was the Director of Marketing at a local engineering firm and one of the smartest people I knew. She hadn’t blinked twice when she found out I was a Doctor of Research in oncology. She had just given me a hug and said I must have a beautiful heart. She didn’t know I was awkward socially and didn’t really like people, so being in the lab looking at petri dishes was pretty much the best thing I had going for me.

In the lonely years of my marriage, it had given me hope that I was having a meaningful life, because after falling head over heels in love with Ryder when I’d been in Rarotonga on vacation, I had really fucked up my life. Ryder was like becoming a millionaire and not being able to spend your money. He was the perfect husband, but only when he was there. Which, in the few years of our time together, had been extremely limited. It hadn’t been a marriage. It was worse than a booty call.

He always said it would get better. That we’d have our time together and he would whisk me away somewhere and have me all to himself. The truth was, like I kept telling him, he could have me all to himself at home. It wasn’t like we had kids; we didn’t even have a dog because nobody was ever in our home to take care of it. Instead, we had an empty house and an empty marriage.

I took a deep breath. After three years I shouldn’t fucking miss him this much.

“Oh, you just got a buzz,” Laney said. “Fuck, this guy matched with you.”

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