Page 52 of Ever After

Then, after a while, I never saw Aiden come to bed and never woke up with him next to me. He was always out with his friends and would pass out on the couch when he would come home—his excuse was he didn’t want to wake me up. He assumed it was thoughtful of him to do that. I chose to just let it go and stopped fighting him about it. That was yet another reason our marriage started slipping away. We stopped fighting for each other.

* * *

After a few days, we finally got Lia’s apartment all packed. I had to move things around in my guest bed for her to fit in. Luckily, she doesn’t have a lot of stuff. It wasn’t hard making room for her. Aiden didn’t think she was going to go forward with moving in. He got upset with me. I’ve tried many times to talk to him about the living situation. He never would give me a straight answer. This was the only solution I could come up with to hopefully make him realize we’re not getting back together. I asked him to come over and pick up some of his stuff, and he seemed confused. I can’t believe he still doesn’t get it.

The sadness on his face the second he walks into the house and sees us moving Lia in is evident. His eyebrows scrunch together, and the corners of his mouth are drawn downwards. I’ve never seen this face before. It causes everything in me to ache. I know we are both hurting in this situation but there’s no other choice. I can’t take him back. I will never trust him again. Without trust, there is no relationship.

After Aiden leaves—and surprisingly without much of a fight—I hear a knock on my bedroom door. Lia cracks it slightly, letting a bit of light in. “Can I come in?”

I sit up on my bed and nod. She goes to the other side of the bed and lies on her back next to me. I lie back down and both of us stare up at the ceiling.

“That was a little intense when Aiden came over,” she mumbles.

“I didn’t expect him to get this sad over this. Angry? Sure. But I never imagined this much sadness. It seems as if he’s more upset over this than when he received the divorce papers.” I didn’t see his face when he got them. The way he talked about it didn’t seem as if he was sad.

“I wonder why that is?”

“I don’t know. We are both hurt. Him more than me at this point, I guess. I’ve been hurting for a while now. I’m coming to terms with it, and he seems like he is just barely grasping the concept that this is over.”

“The hurt all over his face almost made me back out of moving in here.”

I turn my head toward her. “You better not back out. Especially with all the damn packing you made me do.”

Lia sits up and stares down at me. “It wasn’t that bad! I don’t have much. It’s not like I could keep much in that shithole, anyway.”

“You’re right, but all those stairs. My legs are killing me. Moving is exhausting. I can’t imagine moving out of here.”

“If Aiden was sad about me moving in, imagine how sad he is going to be when he movesallhis stuff out.”

I throw my hand up and cover my face. “I can’t imagine.”

We sit in silence for a few minutes, and the more the silence takes over, the more I’m getting into my head and thinking about all the memories we shared. Tears stream down my cheeks. I wish he would done all of this when I was trying so hard to make it work. I tried so hard. At one point, I felt so physically exhausted from how much I was doing. He wouldn’t reciprocate anything I was doing. That’s when I knew we needed professional help if we were going to fix things.

My hands are still covering my face. I feel movement beside me and Lia says, “Are you crying?”

She must have heard my sniffles from my runny nose. “Yes.” I take my hands down and rest them on my stomach, still staring at the ceiling.

“Why are you crying? Are you sad over Aiden?”

Wiping the tears from my face, I turn to my side and stare at her. “Not crying over him, but the things he keeps doing. It keeps bringing up memories. Wonderful memories we had. The memories that made me happy with him. I’m crying over the memories. The memories from a person I once shared so much with. Memories from someone I thought I knew. You’re right, he has changed. I would have expected none of this looking back at how we used to be. I miss the person who he used to be. Going to therapy was supposed to get him back to that person. What he is doing now is what I needed for so long. It’s just too late. It was probably too late even before he slept with someone else. I was holding on to hope for too long.”

Lia says nothing. She listens to me and lets me cry.

I think both my body and mind have reached their breaking points.

The soundof my phone wakes me up. I turn over and grab it off the nightstand. I must have fallen asleep while crying when Lia was with me. It’s six o’clock in the morning, and Jay is calling me this early. The time difference between us is two hours, and he’s ahead.

I swipe my thumb to the right and answer his call. “Hey.” My voice is all husky from all the crying last night.

“Hi, beautiful. You sound tired.”

“I am. Is everything.” A yawn breaks through me and interrupts my sentence. “Is everything okay? You’re calling so early?”

“Oh shit. The time difference wasn't on my mind. I was excited to call you. I didn’t realize what time it was for you. Do you want me to call you back?”

“No. It’s fine. Why are you so excited to talk to me? You have me intrigued.” I sit up a little and rest my head on my headboard. Exhaustion makes it difficult to move much more.

“You sound tired.”

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