Page 77 of Captured Solace

Did I love him? Love was such a heavy word filled with so many expectations and so much heartache. I wanted to deny what I felt, I wanted to pretend what I felt for him was purely physical. But the evidence of it was everywhere, betrayed by how quickly I’d allowed myself to fall into total disrepair.

I hadn’t gone outside in days even though it was warm and sunny. The birds were out, the marsh was full of little fish and frogs, and the flowers were blossoming. But I’d spent every day in bed, curled up in his t-shirt, staring blankly at the wall. Not even the things that used to bring me so much happiness were enough to pull me from my stupor.

I nodded quickly.

“He loves you,” Magnolia said.

“I know, he told me. But he broke me when he left,” I managed.

“And you broke him when you betrayed his trust,” she said, not unkindly. “Like I said, you both fucked up. But is your marriage worth saving? Do you want to spend the rest of your life regretting that you let the man you love walk away from you?”

A jolt of pain moved through my chest. “No, I can’t do that.”

“Then fix this,” Magnolia said firmly. “Maybe now isn’t the right time to say this, but…I would do anything to have Gathii back. I would sell my soul if it meant I could sit down and just talk to him one more time.”

I reached out and took her hand and she squeezed my fingers.

“Don’t waste the time you have with him,” she said quietly.

I shook my head. “I want to fix this, but I…I don’t know how.”

“Have you tried to call him?”

“He hasn’t picked up.”

Magnolia straightened, getting to her feet briskly. “Well, if he’s in town the first place to start is the bars. Sad, angry men always wash up in the same places.”

My stomach flopped and that dreaded image of Viktor fucking a blonde woman with fake breasts burst into my mind. “Do you think…do you think he slept with someone else? It’s been almost a month since he left and we are…separated.”

“I think…I can’t promise he didn’t. He sounded angry and angry people do stupid things they don’t mean,” said Magnolia carefully. “But it doesn’t seem like something he would do, even if he was hurt. He had it bad for you, that was obvious.”

“So…what do I do now?”

“Well, I have a friend who owns a bar down by the shoreline in Charleston,” Magnolia said. “She knows a lot of the other bar and club owners in town so she can ask around. Would that be alright?”

I nodded. “Thank you, Magnolia. And thanks for this, for letting me talk and helping me figure this out. It means a lot.”

Magnolia left later in the afternoon after helping me eat a tub of ice cream on the porch. When she was gone, I went upstairs and cleaned up the bedroom and washed the piles of dirty clothes in the bathroom. I wiped the layer of dust from everything and vacuumed until every surface was spotless.

Then I turned on music and took a long bath, taking care to exfoliate with scented scrub and shaved until my skin was silky. I went to the closet and discovered a black shopping bag on the top shelf I hadn’t noticed before. Viktor must have left it there. Lump in my throat, I stood on my toes and took it down, going to the bed and emptying it.

It was a set of pale yellow lingerie made of delicate lace with a little crystal that hung between my breasts. Viktor had bought this, perhaps when we were in New York and he’d never given it to me. I bit my lip hard to keep back the tears and went into the bathroom and held up the lingerie to my body.

But I didn’t have the heart to put it on. Instead, I dressed in a plain cotton bra and panties and an oversize sweatshirt and went downstairs. There was a bottle of wine by the sink that was calling my name so I filled up a glass and took it outside along with a bowl of Magnolia’s ginseng chicken soup.

I fell asleep in the chair on the porch sometime around midnight. The next few days ended the same way, although I managed to drag myself up to bed with my wine before falling into a slumber. The fourth day after Magnolia’s visit, I woke early and went downstairs in my underwear to drink coffee on the porch and watch the sun come up.

In the distance, I heard a faint rushing and I looked up, my eyes searching the horizon for the trawler. It appeared beyond the marsh and this time it drew closer until the water became too shallow to continue. I stood up, not caring that I was in my bra and panties, and moved to the railing. My heart beat a little faster and I looked around, spotting the guard at the gate. At least Viktor had left me protected.

The trawler sat there for a long time and then the engine whirred and it disappeared. For some reason, I just stood there, looking after it with a disappointed hollow in my stomach.

A week later, Magnolia appeared with a handful of shopping bags in her hand and announced that we were going out.

“It’s time,” she said, hurrying up the stairs before I could stop her. “You’ve been sitting around here waiting for me to hear anything about Viktor and it’s not doing you any good. I went shopping and got us some slutty dresses so we can go out and get drunk.”

I didn’t protest because after days of living in sweatpants, the idea of dressing up and going out didn’t sound terrible. If nothing else, it would at least be something to do to help pass the time. I sat cross-legged on the bed and watched as Magnolia emptied her bags.

“I got this black dress for myself,” she said, holding it up. It was a classy, formfitting dress that just reached her knee and had a scooped neckline. I nodded in approval. “And I got this for you.”

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