Page 30 of Between the Flames

CHAPTERSEVENTEEN

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.

My hand was frozen on the handle of the door to Pub 1902.

It had been almost 10 years since I had seen her, but there was no doubt in my mind that the stunning woman sitting toward the back of the restaurant was Elle.

I stared through the door like a fucking creeper until an elderly woman approached, giving me a pointed look as she eagerly waited for me to open the door. I was a little too rough as I opened it and waited for the woman to walk through. Stepping in after her, I rushed to the hostess stand and turned my back toward the restaurant to shield my face. I stood there lost in thought before my mind came back into focus when the woman behind the podium popped her gum loudly. Meghan, her name tag, read. I told her I was there to pick up food under the name of Lily, and she walked away to go get my order.

Did I dare turn around? She was so close, and who was she here with? Questions raced through my mind, flashbacks of young Elle looking at me over the flames of a fire on the last night I saw her. I turned my body slightly, putting her table in my line of sight. She was looking down at some sort of tablet and a small smile pulled at her lips as her eyes skimmed over whatever she was looking at. The man she was with had his back to me and I couldn’t make out who it was, but I felt a powerful sensation burn through me with every fiber of my being. Jealousy. It was a feeling I had lost touch with, an emotion that I had long since felt. Nothing throughout my entire ten-year marriage with Lily had ever made me jealous, yet here I was standing in a restaurant staring at a girl, a woman, that I had zero right to have any emotions for, spewing with jealousy. I watched her sit up straighter and set her device down on the table. Just as she began shifting in her seat, I twisted my body back around, not wanting to be caught staring at her. This was not the time or the place for a trip down memory lane.

As soon as the waitress returned and handed me my food, I wasted no time getting the fuck out of there, nearly ripping the door off its hinges as I bolted.

* * *

That night,after returning home with our food, Lily, Jordan, and I ate in silence. When Jordan was finished devouring his plate, he asked to be excused, cleared his dish, and headed back up to his room to turn his video game back on. I waited silently until I heard him speaking with a friend through his mic. When his headphones are on is when Lily and I choose to have the conversations we don’t want him overhearing. I knew he wouldn’t hear us now, so it was time for us to have a conversation about our marriage.

I knew what was missing in my life within that three-minute span at the pub. I think I always knew, I was just never brave enough to admit it to myself. We had always been open and honest with each other, and I wasn’t about to start lying to her now. She needed to know that I saw Elle, and she needed to know that it fucked me up in the head.

I broke the silence, my heart beating wildly in my chest. “Lily….” I started, but she cut me off.

“Ry, I need to talk to you.”

Fuck. The last time she started a sentence like that was eleven years ago, and she was pregnant with Jordan. I swear my heart stopped beating. I could feel the beads of sweat at my hairline and my palms went clammy.

We said no more kids. We had agreed years ago that we were done. Fuck.

Our eyes met from across the table and I could see the tears in her eyes welling up. All the air squeezed from my lungs.

“I’m not happy,” she blurted. “I’m bored. God, I’m so fucking bored, Ryder. We’ve become this old married couple who doesn’t do shit and barely has a sex life and is just boring. I hate it. How did we get here?” A tear fell from her eye and I watched it stream down her cheek and land in her lap. She wiped the second tear before it made it that far.

I mulled over her words.

We got here because we married out of obligation, not love.

That was the truth. The hard, cold reality of our lives and the reason we had both wasted the last ten years. I raked my teeth over my bottom lip, staring at her as she stared at me. “Lily…” I began again, the scenario I had thought up in my head suddenly rearranging itself to fit this new reality. She was unhappy, and the only thing I could do at this point was to man up and own it.

“I agree, and I know, and I’m so fucking sorry. But… I don’t know if we can fix it.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t know if I want to fix it.”

I held my breath, watching her face for a reaction.

We sat in more silence, both of us thinking, reflecting on everything that had transpired within the last 10 years of our marriage. At least, that’s what I was thinking about. My gaze was downcast, staring at my hands as I picked a bit of rough skin from the edge of my fingernail. I hadn’t realized Lily had moved to my side of the table until her warm hand landed on my arm. Looking up into her eyes, I could see the worry. A thousand things ran through my mind and I felt utterly defeated in that moment. A rush of failure coursed through my veins. I had failed her as a husband and I was failing Jordan as a father by telling his mother I wasn’t sure if I wanted to fix things with her.

What kind of asshole was I?

I was ready to toss this entire life aside all because what? Because I had caught a glimpse of a girl from my past and had been hit with a bout of jealously? What the fuck was wrong with me? I was about to tell her that I was sorry and that I would do the things she needed me to do in order to make this work for Jordan, but she shocked me by letting her words spill first.

“Have you felt… No, never mind,” she began before pulling her thumb to her mouth and biting the edge of her nail.

“No say it, Lily. We’ve already begun the conversation. Have I felt what?”

She hesitated, her eyes cast downward to her lap. “I just… do you feel like we made a mistake when we were younger? Rushing to get married when I got pregnant? Do you ever wish… I don’t know.”

“I don’t regret marrying you, Lily. I don’t regret any of my choices that I made for our family. I have regrets from my childhood, yes, but marrying you isn’t one of them. You’re my best friend. And this fucking sucks. Don’t think for a second that this is the way I thought this conversation would go, but we both need to be honest with ourselves. It’s long overdue, don’t you think?” My heart raged against my chest as I struggled with the emotions that flooded me. There was a part of me that wanted to take back my words and continue to be in this marriage with Lily. It was the safe choice. The easy path. The one that would continue to give Jordan a childhood without a broken home. But the other part of me knew that this wasn’t the life I was destined to live. It couldn’t be.

“I think we both know that there has always been something missing between us. I think we both live with regrets about some points of our past.” She blew out a giant breath. I watched her as she clasped her hands together, bouncing them slightly in her lap. “I don’t think I want to fix this either, Ry.” Lily’s voice sounded strained as she breathed them into existence, her confidence wavering with the finality of them.

Her words replayed through my mind like they were inked onto a ping-pong ball and someone was playing against a wall.

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