Page 24 of Sex, Lies, and Margarita Mixes

And I’m definitely not normal… but I feel exposed.

No one makes a sound. Not even Bree. And Bree is always making a sound.

I want to say something.

Anything. But I can’t. Because I’m two seconds from breaking again.

So instead, I quickly stand and brokenly whisper, “I need air.”

I leave.

I walk on the beach for a bit. But I feel even more exposed out there, so I slip back into the condo and head to our room, hoping it’ll be empty. It is.

I pace. I scream into a pillow. I stare at the ceiling and pretend I’m not crying.

I’m a hot mess and Chase is in a toxic relationship with me because he loves me and I don’t let him know how much I actually love him, too.

I do. I do love him. I do want him to stay.

I just don’t know how to say it without losing myself in the process.

CHASE

* * *

I don’t even try to fall asleep. I can’t.

I’m lying in bed, in the small room across the beach house—the one she came to me in last night—staring at the ceiling, replaying her voice in my head on a loop while she’s still beside me.

“Chase… on his knees. Begging.”

She said it like it was a fantasy… but I know better.

It’s a memory. It happened. Once.

It was the first time she kicked me out, a mere month after our wedding. She was almost hysterical, and I had no idea why. Nothing happened that I could remember. But she took off her wedding ring, her actual ring, the one I bought her the day after our wedding and threw it onto the counter. She told me she couldn’t do it anymore and I needed to get out.

I begged her to calm down. I was on my knees on the cold tile. My hands were shaking. Tears were rolling down her face. She was so panicked and I didn’t know why. Not because I was pathetic, but because I meant my wedding vows. Losing her was never an option.

It still isn’t.

It’s almost 3AM when I stand up and grab the notebook from the nightstand—I’ve been carrying it since the first day she ever told me to leave—and walk barefoot across the patio to the guest room she’s using on the opposite side of the house.

I don’t knock. I just slide it under the door. And I leave.

The notebook isn’t anything fancy.

It’s a black composition notebook. The kind you use in school. The edges are frayed. The spine is bent. It doesn’t even close all of the way anymore. But inside… every page is hers.

The first sentence on the first page reads,

“Shit I Should’ve Said Before You Walked Out.”

The second says,

“I didn’t put the cayenne next to the oregano to hurt you. I did it because you always reach for it first, and I live to see you smile.”

Page after page is just filled with my thoughts.. about her.. about us… about how much I’m not going to let her go, no matter how hard she pushes me.

---