Page 105 of The One I Want
“I am doing it!” she yells. “I love what I’m doing with Magnolia. I love that it's a thing we can do together. Hell, even Hank and Emerson have started asking questions about it and want to start making videos. Wes, I’m happy. I’m doing something I love with people I love. Isn’t that the goal?”
“Yeah,” I say defeatedly.
She takes a few steps closer to me, grabbing onto my shirt to bring me down closer to her. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But I don’t want you to stress over this. It’s nothing, and I’ll take care of it tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, giving her a kiss.
“Good, now let’s go back inside.”
I go back in, but the rest of the night is a blur. I don’t hear a single song that’s played. All I hear are evil voices taking over my brain.
Actually, just one voice. My ex-wife’s.
“Wes, I have nothing to show for my life.”
“I want more.”
“Living in Rolling Hills? Not exactly the life I imagined.”
Even as I go to bed that night, all I hear are those words that Cara said to me playing over and over in my head.
I held her back. At least in her mind I did. I didn’t realize she felt that way until it was too late. Is that what I’m doing to Betsy? Holding her back?
She didn’t even consider that job because of me and the kids. Does she want it? Should she take it? I don’t want her to not go after what she wants because of me.
She has to want more, right? She’s not even thirty yet. She should be having fun at bars and clubs on Friday nights, not at school dances. She went from a stranger to a nanny to the de facto mother of three kids in less than a year.
No way that’s what she wants for her life.
Cara resented me at the end of our marriage, but truth be told, now that I look back with a clearer vision, our marriage was over long before she gave me those papers.
But if it was fifteen years from now and Betsy left, hating me because I held her back from the job she was always meant to have? Well, I don't know if I’d survive that.
Scratch that. I know I wouldn’t.
Chapter38
Betsy
I don’t knowat what point in my life I became a person who cleans to relieve stress, but here I am, four months from my thirtieth birthday, scrubbing a kitchen counter like it personally harmed me.
I barely slept last night. And even though Wes and I didn’t talk after we went to bed, I know he was tossing and turning as much as I was.
Never go to bed angry. That’s the saying, isn’t it? Now I understand what it really means. Because I went to bed slightly angry and woke up with a lot of feelings inside that need to get out, and this poor kitchen is paying the price.
Watch out, refrigerator. You’re next.
I knew at some point Wes and I would have our first fight, but I never thought this is what it would be about. I have no idea why he flew off the handle like that. I wanted to ask him about it this morning, hoping that cooler heads would prevail. Instead, I got barely full-sentence answers to any question I asked. Even the kids knew something was off. I’m glad they’re going to Peggy’s for the day. Wes and I need to talk, and it’ll be better for everyone if it’s just the two of us.
I don’t want our relationship to be like this. Emerson has told me stories about how Wes and Cara would fight. That they’d wait until the kids went to bed, but it didn’t matter—they heard the arguments. I refuse to be that. I’m not saying we’re always going to be rainbows and sunshine, but I never want the kids to have to relive that part of their past.
Just the thought of Cara sends my anger level back to a ten. I turn my cleaning playlist up full blast, letting the song that used to be my college party song fuel my fire as I make this grease stain my bitch.
There’s a little trill from the smart speaker, announcing a notification.
“Call from Dad Cell”
I groan.
