Page 2 of Trading Up
I decided, since he’d opened up about some painful shit, I’d offer some painful shit of my own, almost like a trauma bond with this guy. So, I told him how I was an affair child, and upon figuring it out, I put all of my efforts into working, getting top grades, and joining a few clubs while getting college credits just so I could graduate valedictorian, top of the class, with a full ride to this state university. I had even skipped a year in school, wanting to do whatever was needed, all to get away from myfamily. We walked and talked until I couldn’t hide the yawns behind my cup anymore, so he offered to walk me back to my dorm.
That was when we found out that not only do we share a lot of interests, but most of the same courses because we’re both business majors, and we also live in the same dorm building, right down the hall from each other.
He stuck his hand out.
“I didn’t do this before, but. I’m Deveraux. Friends call me Dev. Thanks for bein’ an ear.” I shook his hand back and smiled at him.
“Does this mean we’re friends?” I asked, a small smile on my face as I looked up at this man. There was a twinkle in his eye, and as soon as I saw it, it was gone. I kept the excitement over getting my first friend in my eyes. I wanted him to see I was happy to be his friend.
“Sure, why not?” He smiled down at me, one side of his mouth tipping up.
“Then can I call you Row?” A slow, small smile crept up both sides of his face, barely touching his eyes. I couldn’t help the breath I took and held. I was hopeful. He was my first friend, and I didn’t want to call him the same thing everyone else did. He was special to me.
“That’s cool,” he nodded once and walked away. He paused at the end of the hallway where his door was. Only when I closed the door did I hear the door of his room thud shut. I smiled a little.
I had a friend.
My first friend.
T W O: Ruined Chocolate Shake
Sarah’s POV
Somehow, fifteen years had passed by in the blink of an eye since my first year, junior year, at college. Fifteen years since I’d made my first friend, and now I was a wife and mother of two rambunctious kids. Deveraux and I had graduated after two years, both of us having completed college courses while still attending high school. After two years of friendship, I was hoping there could be more, but Deveraux decided that he wanted to study in culinary school, so he left to pursue his dream. But we talked every day, multiple times a day. He started calling me baby girl at the end of our junior year of university, and it stayed that way. I stayed to get my Master's in business. During that time, was when I had met my husband, Will Andrews. He was a senior, getting his bachelor’s in business, and set to graduate in the fall. He was kind and humble, even though he was set to take over his father’s construction firm.
He didn’t look down on me because I had parents who weren’t married, or that I’d basically been raised by a single mother. He told me that it was admirable the way my mother sacrificed and raised me, pretty much on her own, aside from the financial help from my father and the once-monthly visits. He pulled me into his world slowly, with care. He was a strong and firm pillar of support for me to achieve all my goals and aspirations.
He had lulled me into a false sense of security.
Tomorrow was my thirty-third birthday. And Row, my best friend of fifteen years, had helped to give me the best gift I could have ever hoped for. He had been helping me preparemy gift since the day I found out about Will and Paloma. Since the day they wrecked me, breaking something fundamental, something deep within me. It was a piece I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover. Row had been there for me. Every step of the way, he was holding my hand, encouraging me with his words, his presence. He was lending me his strength and his shoulders to cry on when I needed them.
He was my best friend still, but more. Something had shifted in our dynamic. And I knew it had to do with my gift. It took four months for everything to fall into place and the plan to be hatched, but it was finally happening. A divorce.
A.
Very.
Public.
Divorce.
There aremomentsthat can, and will, alter the course of your life. Moments when you see things clearly, things that change your future and make you question everything about your past. Moments when you canfinallysee things so clearly, so vividly, things both past and present, that it was like looking through an empty Waterford crystal vase and seeing the garden on the other side. Moments where every red flag you ignored, instead of listening to them like a normal person, because love makes you blind, and rose-colored-glasses are a thing.
My moment was four months ago. These little moments went from those tiny, little red flags they put in your lawn to outline where your new pool was going to be dug, to those the size of the American flag at an NFL game, impossible to ignore; flapping in your face. They were there. All the time. Even when I thought I was sleeping.
That was what happened four months ago.
Things had never been clearer than they were looking through the window of the trailer that my husband used as an office. Things were clearer than they had been in what felt like ages. For the first time in thirteen years of dedicating myself to Will, I wasn’t going to shrink away, pretending I hadn’t just seen it with my own eyes or heard it with my own ears. I was hiding, phone out, recording everything for evidence in my impending divorce, contemplating if bathing in bleach or pouring it directly into my eyes and ears would be better to get the sounds and images permanently cleansed from my mind. However, I was pretty sure that option would cause irreparable damage, and I still needed to be able to provide for my two kiddos.
Driving to my best friend's house, I thought back on the time since having our youngest three years ago. At first, the changes in him and his behaviors were subtle, so subtle that I didn’t notice. Telling me he’d packed his lunch, or the guys ordered something, and he decided to get in on their order. Telling me he was working through lunch and wouldn’t have time to see me or the kids. He would always come home exhausted, telling me they were taking on yet another job that would cause him to be away from home more. He promised it was all for us and our future.
His father had built the company, but it wasn’t a huge construction firm. Yet. That was what he claimed he had been working towards, why he was taking on all this ‘extra stress’. It was to put Anderson Construction on the map, to secure our futures, and to ‘provide a better life for you and the boys’. He had talked and dreamed of building it bigger. Of building an office building for himself, instead of using the trailer his dad had. That was a sign, to him, that he’d made it.
Ten years after our wedding and taking over the company, now he felt like he was ‘on the verge’ of an expansion and the office building ‘we’ had always dreamed of. I hadn’t dreamed of that. I had dreamed of a comfortable life, raising our kiddos, family vacations, after-school sports, and date nights with romantic weekends away. In the last three years, the number of those happening had dropped to practically non-existent levels as he worked until late in the night, while I was drowning in diapers and screaming kids.
Ten years of marriage, three years of dating, thirteen years of promising to be life partners, of going through life and navigating parenthood somewhat together during pregnancy and parenthood. Things were even better during the second pregnancy, but then things shifted a bit more, in a way I didn’t see right away. A touch more than what they had already.
Then, it was a late dinner here and there for his crew, his clients, basically anyone that weren’t me and the boys. He said he had to wine and dine these clients and potential investors, for the sake of Anderson Construction to grow, ‘for us’. That was his go-to line when I’d complain to him that I needed more help with the boys, or that they missed him. Maverick, our youngest, really only knew me as his parent. When things were taking a little longer on the new development projects, or to trying to get new clients, Row would come to help. He was always there to help. He never let go when it felt like I was drowning, not just in my own emotions and diapers, but in my head.
