Authors: L.D. Cedergreen
We had become
that
couple, the unfaithful husband and the pathetic wife—hurt, scorned, and hopelessly bitter. The couple that kept Ryan’s law firm profitable. The couple that Ryan and I had spent many nights discussing while we cuddled under our gray flannel duvet—agreeing that we would always be honest with one another, that we would never let our relationship get to the point where one of us would cheat out of sheer misery or unhappiness. That we could prevent such a tragic cliché with our unconditional love and candidness. It seemed almost funny that two well-educated thirtysomething adults could be so naive, but, of course, I wasn’t laughing.
Three
Ryan and I met in the midst of my junior year of college.
We were both pre-law. It wasn’t love at first sight by any means; in fact I think that I may have hated him at the start. Our official introduction was the night of the annual Sigma Nu Bash, Ryan’s very own fraternity. His friend, James, had been aggressively hitting on my roommate and best friend, Cassie, who was completely wasted at the time. I had been trying, to no avail, to convince her to leave with me. It was my job to escort her home safely, having lost the coin toss for designated driver. Ryan had stepped in when he realized what was going on, steering James effortlessly away from Cassie and in the direction of another coed who was less intoxicated.
He helped me walk Cassie to my car, her nearly limp body draped over the both of us.
I knew exactly who he was; everyone on campus did. Ryan was charming and sexy and way too dangerous for me. He was well over six feet tall with a ridiculously perfect body. He played college baseball, and I was sure that sheer fact alone—coupled with the warmth of his brown eyes and sexy smile—made panties drop everywhere he went. Vowing to be the exception to his rule, I turned up my sarcasm and gave him the cold shoulder that I had perfected throughout my first two years of college. I thanked him for his help, truly appreciating what he had done for Cassie, but I did not accept his invitation for coffee the following day or the next.
I seemed to run into him everywhere after that and thus began our banter that bordered between harmless flirting and cold-hearted criticism as egos were deflated and feelings were hurt.
I found him to be arrogant and rude, the kind of boy who could charm you and then wound you in the same breath. His perfect smile threatened my heart in a million different ways, and I refused to be one of his victims. He accused me of being stubborn and rigid, too uptight for my age. We went round for round, but still he kept coming back for more. Cassie tried to convince me that it was sexual tension. She joked that we should either “get it on or get over it”—her words exactly. I was hoping for the latter.
And then on the first day of a new semester, I found him sitting next to me in my Constitutional Criminal Procedure class, a third-year pre-req for those applying to law school, with a shit-eating grin on his face.
But it was during this semester that I discovered another side to him. I saw the real guy behind the panty-dropping smile. A compassionate, intelligent, and hard-working student who cared more about his degree than the speed of his curve ball or his next female conquest. I had been wrong about him, and this new realization was both refreshing and intriguing, to say the least.
We both realized early on that we had plenty in common beginning with our paralleled majors.
We became friends, our time spent together studying in the campus library or debating criminal justice issues over coffee. And then there was that moment, the moment when I realized that he was more than just my friend. He seemed to feel the shift at the same time, although he swore that he felt something for me from the first moment we met.
I remember
ed the rain, pouring down as if buckets of water were falling from the sky, the day that Ryan drove me to my apartment after a long study session at the library. I couldn’t seem to open the passenger door of his ten-year-old sedan; the handle was stuck. Ryan leaned across the center console, reaching over to help me. His body brushed against mine, causing my heart to pound in my chest. Before he was able to open the door for me, I looked into his eyes, and it was as if I could see my whole world in their depths. His lips crashed against mine seconds later, and I was lost to him. That was it for me.
We were inseparable from that point on.
Before long, everyone on campus knew that we were together, surprised that the unattainable Ryan Walsh was in a relationship. There was widespread speculation about whether or not we would last, but it wasn’t long before we proved the masses wrong. By the time we both had finished law school, we were engaged.
Our wedding was
just as I had always pictured it. A small church ceremony with an elegant outdoor reception. Everything was perfect, with the exception of Ryan’s father walking me down the aisle rather than my own. I loved Ryan’s parents as much as my own family. They were warm and kind, and, being that Ryan was an only child, they welcomed me with open arms, referring to me as the daughter that they had never had.
We honeymooned in Kauai, spending ten romantic but lazy days lounging by our own private pool and snorkeling in the lagoon just steps away from the beach house that we had rented.
I remembered looking into Ryan’s warm brown eyes—not much different than my own—and feeling as if all my dreams and hopes and life adventures were staring back at me. He had owned my heart, had known me inside and out, loved every part of me—despite my faults and insecurities. He had ignited my whole being; my attraction to him physically was beyond anything that I could have imagined, but it was no match for the magnetic pull that drew me to his soul. We were so happy. So crazy in love.
We
were both overachievers who logged countless hours at our respectful firms. In the beginning, I had been working hard toward corporate litigation, and Ryan had been a petty first-year associate trying to forge his way as a divorce attorney. And now, after years of hard work, Ryan had made partner, and I was well-known in the corporate world as the lawyer that businessmen would want by their side.
We had carved out a routine in our lives that we were both comfortable with, given our mutual obsession with our careers. Saturdays were usually spent working from home, together, but Sundays were reserved for just the two of us.
We went out for brunch, spent the day in bed making up for lost time, or simply strolled around downtown, shopping for items to decorate our new condo. Looking back, I realized that we probably spent too many years consumed with our careers.
By the time we decided to start a family
—after nearly eight years of marriage—only 50 percent of my eggs were viable, and we started down the road that inevitably ruined our marriage. I took my temperature daily, suffered through hormone shots, IVF treatments—I spent more time at the doctor’s office than anywhere else, and my caseload began to dwindle. In the end, nothing worked, and our relationship became strained. I couldn’t even remember the last time we had had sex just because we felt like it.
There was always a reason, a time, a procedure
, but never an urge. I couldn’t remember at what point we started to fall apart, when the mountainous tension began to build, and I started to pull away, fearing what would come next, or when he realized that I wasn’t good enough anymore or that I couldn’t give him what he wanted—a family. Of course I wanted to be a mother more than I have ever wanted anything in my life, and this maternal need had cost me my marriage. It wasn’t that long ago that Ryan had asked me when having a baby had become more important to me than him. I hadn’t even offered a response to his question; I didn’t have an answer.
Four
With every curve of the road, my heart beat louder in my chest
, reminding me of the countless times I had made this same trip as a child. The days when I sat in the back of my parents’ red Pinto, smashed in between our luggage and my younger brother, Jacob, as my excitement grew with each turn, bringing us closer to the cabin where we would spend our summer. I felt that same excitement now; images from those warm and golden—almost magical—months flashing through my mind. I could faintly hear my mother’s voice as she sang “The Bear Song” as a means to distract us from asking that inevitable yet annoyingly comical question that children seem to repeat every two minutes anytime they are in a moving vehicle:
Are we there yet?
She would follow it up with a long and repetitive version of
“Found a Peanut” or “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”—which she would change to “bottles of Coke,” proclaiming to my father that a song about beer was not appropriate for children our age. My father usually rolled his eyes playfully at her and sang along with us, overemphasizing the word “Coke” just to annoy my mother. It was an annual journey that I remembered fondly; everything about it so typical, it was
predictable that I felt a sudden pang of wistfulness. For
that
life,
that
girl.
I spent every summer of my childhood at Priest Lake
—where my grandparents owned a small cabin tucked away behind a cluster of evergreens. The lake was just a few steps away, down the dirt lane that several other cabins were built along. Adults bonded over huckleberry daiquiris and barbecues while the children—the best of friends—played in the lake by day and told stories around campfires at night. We became strangers once again when autumn fell upon us.
My best memories could be found along this large crystal
-blue lake in the northern Panhandle of Idaho. Maybe some of the only happy memories spent with my father. I hadn’t been to the cabin since my teenage years, when I had landed a job as a lifeguard at the local swimming pool, officially ending our family’s tradition of spending our summer months at the lake. Mom and Jacob had spent the occasional weekend at the cabin over the years, but I had stayed with friends in order to fulfill my weekend shifts at the pool until I left for college, when I hadn’t bothered to come home for summer break at all, let alone travel to the lake. The cabin had been nearly abandoned for several years now. Mom had returned strictly for upkeep purposes, but, still, she could not seem to let it go. Until now.
I heard my cell phone ringing through the car stereo speakers
, and I glanced down to see Ryan’s name flash across the screen. He had left me an endless string of voice mails and text messages, all left unreturned. He had even called my mother several times. I had overheard her tell him firmly, “Of course she’s here, and she’s safe, but that’s all you’re getting out of me, Ryan Walsh.”
True to form with any mother, my mother’s use of
someone’s full name meant serious business, and I was sure her choice of words had not been lost on Ryan. I pictured him cowering with his tail between his legs on the other end of the phone.
Good, let him cower
, I thought. The truth was that I was afraid to speak to him. I feared where our conversation might lead. I was also angry, so, by taking control to be sure he would fail in his desperate attempts to reach me, that gave me a fractional sense of satisfaction. But that didn’t stop me from obsessing over every phone call or text message, analyzing every word.
Sighing out loud, I pressed
Ignore. I still couldn’t speak to him. I was plagued with too many emotions. I needed time to sort out everything. That was what this trip was about, time to myself to reevaluate my life, to determine where everything had gone wrong, and to see how I got to this place where happiness was just a distant memory. I was miserable, and I feared that I had felt this way long before recent events had turned my life upside down. In fact it was difficult to recall my last moment of true utter bliss, where my face was turned into an effortless smile and my heart felt light but full.
My mind was drawing a big fat blank
—it had been that long. Part of me knew that this wasn’t all Ryan’s fault. There were two people in this marriage, and I wondered at what point I had stopped caring about what he felt and had become caught up in my own misery, keeping him at arm’s length. I knew that I was just as much to blame as he was for my unhappiness, but I was so angry with him for this choice that he had made, for the secrecy. I couldn’t think beyond what I had witnessed firsthand. The betrayal cut so deep that I wasn’t sure if we could ever go back to what we had been. Or if that was even an option.
I heard a loud chime, my phone’s indication of a new text message.
I held up the phone in front of my face attempting to see who the text was from, although I had a pretty good idea. My heart clenched as I viewed Ryan’s name on my screen. A ripple of pain shot through my chest as I tried to wash away the image of him with another woman. I feared it was stained on my heart forever, left as a reminder as to why I subconsciously pushed everything inward, relying only on myself. The disappointment was so much more manageable when I didn’t expect anything from others, when I didn’t depend on anyone. It was a lonely existence that I knew all too well, but lonely was better than scraping pieces of my broken heart off the pavement.
I glanced back and forth from the road to the phone, trying to read his words
, though I knew there was nothing he could possibly say to change what he had done.
You can’t ignore me forever, Gemma.
I am so sorry. We need to talk. Please come home or call me. I love you, and I’m worried about you. I need . . .
The phone slipped from my hand, landing on the floorboard near my feet. I tried to bend down to grab it without taking my gaze off the road, but the phone was out of my reach. I unlatched my seat belt, bending down farther, blindly feeling the floor mat with my hand, as my eyes followed the dotted yellow line of the road before me. I finally had my phone in my grasp and brought it to eye level, glancing down momentarily to read the remainder of Ryan’s text.