Page 1 of Red Zone Realizations
Prologue
AUDREY
SIX MONTHS AGO
I read somewhere that you can bounce back from anything in a relationship except disgust. Once you’re disgusted by your partner, there is no coming back from that. It’s the end of the road.
I discovered that truth tonight at our engagement party. I’d gone into the kitchen to grab more chips to put out for the dip when I overheard Hunter, my fiancé, talking to his mom.
“We’ll probably wait a few years to start trying for kids,” he told her.
“Well, don’t wait too long. Time goes faster than you think. You’ll blink and the next thing you know, you’ll be thirty,” his mom replied.
“I don’t intend to wait that long. Audrey talks a big game, but I think she’ll have changed her mind before we’re thirty. When all our friends are slowing down, she’ll see that this is what life is meant to be about—our purpose.” He paused. “Noone has their mind made up for that long. We all change as we grow older, it’s inevitable.”
I heard his mother's earrings, always oversized, jingle as she shook her head at him. “I’m not sure you know that girl as well as you think you do. She isn't uninterested in children because that’s what everyone expects of her. She truly feels that way in her heart—that children aren’t in either of your future.”
“That’s why she says she doesn’t want kids, but would she be willing to stand on those same principles if it meant losing me? Us? Family?” he said, gesturing at the party going on around us.
I’d reeled back as if I had been slapped and was unable to listen to his drivel any longer. I could feel the acid welling up into my throat, and it only took me a split second to realize what that was.
Disgust.
Absolute repulsion.
I knew in an instant that what he said about losing him over my long-held beliefs was true because yes, I could—and would—walk away from our relationship without blinking an eye. Somehow, I kept it together until we got home, but I couldn’t fathom going to bed and lying next to this man for even one moment longer.
A few hours later, long after this sham of an engagement party ended, I set my marquise engagement ring on the kitchen table in front of Hunter. It makes a quick click as it lands. I stare at it like it’s a snake in the grass ready to strike. Then my gaze travels to the man in the chair across from me.The man who had slipped that ring on my finger a year ago. He had looked so handsome down on one knee in the restaurant we had our first date. His brown eyes were confident but questioning. His soft brown hair had been freshly cut and perfectly styled. Looking at him now, though, I don’t see any of that man in him anymore. It’s like I had imagined him.
“I can’t do this.”
“Do what, Audrey?” Hunter’s voice is low, like he knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“Be with you anymore,” I say under my breath.
Hunter runs his hands over his face as if tired by my dramatics. “What is this really about?”
I gather all the courage I’ve ever had to speak my truth. “You know I don’t want kids.”
“I know you say that.” He pauses. “I didn’t think you meant it.”
“You never thought to ask me? Instead, you tell your mom you know me better than I know myself?”
“Eventually you’ll change your mind. Every woman does. We’re young right now.”
“I won’t, though.”
“You can’t possibly know that now.” At the very least, he’s consistent in his messaging.
“You know what? You’re right. We are too young.” I cross my arms over my chest, the weight comforting. “Too young to get married.”
He stands, leaning over the table. “You don’t mean that.”
My throat is too constricted with emotion to talk, so instead, I nod. He drops back in the chair, all the fight gone out of him. Silence falls between us. There’s nothing left to say. I can’t magically become who he wants me to be. I won’t. Kidsare the one thing in my world that has no compromise. You can’t have half of a kid.
He’s unknowingly hit me where it hurts the most. He can’t understand how much I want to want what everyone else seems to know intuitively. When I was made, there was a piece of me missing. I have never had the desire for children. I’ve never had baby fever. I see moms smiling, holding their baby, looking like the entire world is in their arms, and I feel… nothing. Happy for them, of course, but there’s no tug in my gut, no swelling of my heart. Just stillness. Now, I’ve come to understand that the stillness differentiates me. It makes me part of the other. I will never willingly feel that way again.
I walk down the hallway, the click of my kitten heels resounding against the hardwood, as I enter our bedroom to pack a bag. Panties, bras, pajamas, shorts, and T-shirts. The rest I can come get later, right now I’d do anything to get out of this apartment. To stop feeling the weight of this failed engagement hanging in the air like smoke after fireworks.
