Page 4 of Returning Your Love
Like that would happen anytime soon.
“I’ve only ever wanted one thing from you, Charles Henderson. One!” Shelly turned stormy eyes on me, arms crossed.
“Don’t start, Shell,” I warned, yanking open the fridge door as my stomach twisted into knots. “Fuck knows we’ve been trying foryears!”
“And if you had a normal job that offered insurance, we could figure out whose fault it is that I’mnotpregnant!”
Fucking hell.
She’d spouted her disapproval of my decision to take over the shop after working there since high school but never to this extent. Dragging my failure to give Shelly her stay-at-home mom dream into this argument? Was she trying to cause a heart attack or make me want to jump off a goddamned bridge?
We’d been happy enough in the beginning. No fire or crazy passion but a calm, shared existence I thought I could be content with for the rest of my life.
Now?
I’d be fine if I winked out of existence, my failings unable to haunt my every waking breath.
I popped the cap off my bottle of beer and chugged until my lungs screamed for oxygen. A spin on my heel sent me toward the bathroom, but no way would I escape reality so easily.
I fucking bombed at everything, whether it was living up to my dad’s standards, getting good grades in school, bringing in enough money on my own and paying my bills on time, or keeping my supposed other half happy…
Shelly continued to rant about those vows I’d made to love and honor her, blah, blah, blah. And she called me selfish for working too hard—toprovidefor her, goddamnit! Shelly had always been an outspoken, determined woman dead set on getting what she wanted, and while I’d been attracted to that part of her personality when we’d still been in school, I’d learned the hard way she was as easily pleased as my father. Which was not at all, no matter what I did or how much I tried.
Lately, I’d been questioning if I’d made a mistake in marrying her.
I closed the bathroom door in my wife’s face, locking it so she wouldn’t follow me in and gripe at me while I showered.
Part of the reason I wasn’t quick to come home at night was due to her constant nagging and complaining. The woman drove me to drink, but I wasn’t about to become a drunk and addmarriage to my list of failures for my dad to remind me of when I was forced to visit my childhood home across town.
I started the shower and hummed to myself while stripping to drown out the grumbling still going on out in the hallway.
Shelly pounded on the door when I chose not to respond.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” I finally raised my voice to her level. “Let me shower, and we’ll go to the party, okay?” I kicked off my shoes. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered to myself. “What does a man have to do to get some goddamn peace and quiet in his own home?”
“You’ve got five minutes!” Shelly yelled. “I hate being late!”
I huffed. The only time she did was when it was her period, but even that had changed because disappointment always followed a delayed menstrual cycle. Too much lack of success in getting pregnant had made her give up hope and left me with a limp cock that wasn’t interested in donating sperm even if she asked for it.
Which, she hadn’t done for months.
Intimacy had shit the bed when I’d found her sitting on the bathroom floor earlier that spring, pregnancy test in hand and tears rolling down her cheeks over yet another negative result. She’d made sure to remind me it was my fault, same as the prior thirty or so other months we hadn’t conceived. She hadn’t told me when she ovulated since then, and I couldn’t be bothered to initiate.
Didn’t want to deal with even more guilt over failing her yet again.
Shelly and I seemed doomed, and I didn’t know how to make shit better. Nothing I ever did created a positive change, and I was exhausted physically and emotionally.
The shower rid my body of sweat, grease, and grime, but my thoughts still felt shitty, all jammed up by her usual unwelcome home and the truth of why lay ahead of us tonight.
Jamie Forester had returned to Pippen Creek.
My heart sped even as my stomach twisted into a tight knot over secret, selfish thankfulness he’d come back years earlier than expected.
Once upon a time, Jamie, Shelly, and I had been three peas in a pod. Inseparable. The best of friends who did everything together. Hell, Jamie had even tagged along on a lot of Shelly’s and my dates in high school. Senior year, he attended prom with us as Shelly’s “side dish.” We’d gotten teased over it by others in school, and I often wondered after he’d left town how many people had expected us to end up in a poly relationship.
As a secret pansexual, I would have been down for that back then. Jamie, however, was as rednecked, jock-like, man’s man as they came. While he’d never shown much interest in girls, Shelly especially, I’d assumed it was due to football being his focus and ticket out of the backwoods of northern New Hampshire.
I never understood why he felt he had to make a name for himself. His dad Sutton, the chief of police in our small town, had a great reputation and was admired. Respected, even by those he had to toss into a cell to sleep off their drunkenness. Jamie’s mom showing her true colors as a piece of trash when we were in middle school hadn’t stained him. Not sure Jamie saw shit that way though.
