It’s amazing how the smallest, most inconsequential thing can send your world crumbling around you like a brittle, old mirror shattering into a million tiny shards. One shoe: red, high heeled with a little silver buckle winking up at me from the living room floor. I stood staring at it unable to breathe. My chest clenched painfully around the erratic fluttering of my heart.

Beyond the shoe lay its mate. Beyond that, a balled up sock. Unlike Hansel and Gretel it was a bread crumb trail leading into the dark forest instead of out. My feet felt nailed to the floor but I forced them to move one after the other. Raise the right foot, extend forward and lower. Raise the left foot, extend and lower. Those fifteen feet from my living room to the cracked bedroom door were the longest journey I had ever made in my life.

It takes a certain kind of masochism to walk towards your own doom. To see every sign flashing in bright red neon—“
turn around, save yourself, here there be monsters”
—and continue that slow march towards pain. My fingers were on the door handle; the cool smoothness of the metal against my skin. Every fiber of my being was screaming at me to run. I already knew what was happening. I didn’t need to live with the image running through my head for the rest of my life.

But truthfully, a big part of me did need that image. I needed to see it to believe it. I could hear the low rumble of his laughter. I knew it so well from many nights spent cuddled on the couch watching old Bill Murray movies together. He would laugh and his chest would vibrate beneath my head making me feel safe and warm. Now the laughter answering his wasn’t mine.

Without seeing it for myself how could I believe that Chris,
my Chris,
would do this to me? The man I loved, the man who had brought me medicine whenever I was sick in bed with a cold, who had held me in his arms when I finally had to put my cat to sleep. Who had stayed by me these past few years through good times and bad. My constant companion, source of strength and love was behind this door.

Gently I pushed it open, the crack expanding inch by agonizing inch. The soft light of the bedside lamps spilled out across the carpet, across my sneakered feet and I could see everything. I could see Chris, the smooth muscles of his back as he thrust forward, the red of her toenail polish as she wrapped her leg around his hips guiding him into her.

The sound that came out of my mouth was raw and primal like the howl of a wounded animal. It welled up inside of me and forced its way out. An inarticulate cry of pain as my heart shattered. Chris turned, our eyes met and I was trapped in that moment. Hanging weightless in the reflection of myself in his deep brown eyes. I opened my mouth to speak. To say something…
anything
…but there were no words. Instead, I turned and ran.

Distantly I could hear Chris calling my name and the girl fumbling to get her clothes on and then I was through the front door and into the blissfully cool night air. My cheeks felt flushed and feverish as I stumbled over to my car. I yanked on the handle frantically before realizing it was still locked. The front door of the apartment opened and Chris’ voice chased me into the night as I fumbled with my keys finally managing to hit the right button and falling into the driver’s seat. I pulled out of the lot so fast I almost clipped him with my bumper.

Chapter One

Olivia

The average human heart pulses at a rate of 72 beats per minute. That’s 2.5 billion beats in a life of 66 years. The ancient Egyptians believed that that heart was the seat of wisdom and the soul, everything that set you apart as an individual. Later humans would discover the primacy of the brain. The heart was no longer associated with logical processing. We learned that even our emotions were spawned in the grey matter in our heads but the heart still retained its symbolic meaning. Despite our scientific understanding, no one was passing out Valentine’s Day cards featuring a squishy brain with Cupid’s arrow passing through it.

It was easy to understand why we held on to that symbolic heart as I lay on the comforter of the motel bed. I knew it was my traitorous brain flooding my body with chemicals and emotions but the physical, raw, hollow ache was centered in my chest; on my fluttering heart struggling to maintain its 72 beats per minute. It hurt so much I could barely breathe.

I had made it exactly a block and half after I careened out of my apartment parking lot. One point five blocks before I had to pull over and be sick on the side of the road. As I lay in the drainage ditch on my hands and knees with my stomach clenching and heaving the image of that shoe floated through my mind, taunting me with its easy sensuality.

How could this happen? How could this be my life? I was throwing up in a bush like a college freshman after her first party. A fresh wave of crippling pain ripped through me as I remembered that was where Chris and I had met.

Get it together. Stand up. Get back in your car and drive,
I told myself.
But drive where? The voice in my head didn’t have an answer for that. My parents lived on the other coast and I wasn’t particularly close with them. My nearest relation was my Nana down in the Florida Keys and my friends in Boston were glorified acquaintances at best. I finally settled on a semi-reputable motel on the outskirts of town.

The clerk checked me in with professional efficiency pretending not to notice my tear streaked makeup and lack of luggage. Her pasted on smile said it all:
Honey, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last. I see women like you come through here all the time.
I was thankful for her distant nature. If she had asked if I was ok I think I might have broken down into a sobbing mess right in the middle of the lobby.

The room was clean but I hardly noticed. All I managed to do was kick my shoes off and collapse on top of the bedspread before the flood of tears washed me away. I don’t know how long I laid there crying but after a while it felt like I had sapped my body of all of its moisture. My eyes felt like hot stones in my head and my throat was raw. I still felt like crying but there was nothing left. I was wrung out like an old rag.

I flipped on the TV desperate for something to end the thoughts endlessly whirring through my head. Of course the first thing on was Sleepless in Seattle.
Click
. An ad for Chris’ law school.
Click
. The Sex and the City movie where Carrie is left at the altar.
Oh my God!
Clearly TV was not going to work for me tonight. I flicked it off quickly and threw the remote into the corner before I put my fist through the screen.

The only thing in that sad little motel room that looked even slightly helpful was the minibar. I emptied it quickly, carrying the tinkling little bottles cradled in my arms back to the bed. There is nothing more pathetic than sitting alone in your hotel room getting drunk off the minibar with no one to call.

Chris and I had only moved to Boston two years ago so he could attend his dream law school. I had immediately settled into working two jobs so I could support us while he went to school. It was not a lifestyle conducive to making friends. Oh sure, I had a few coworkers I made small talk with during our shifts but I could never go out with them to drinks at the bar afterwards. I was always either running home to Chris or running to my next job so eventually they just stopped asking and my social life became Chris and only Chris.

Apparently Chris didn’t have much trouble making new friends,
an insidious and singularly pissed off voice whispered in my head.
While I was working and putting my dreams on hold for him he managed to get real friendly with Ms. Red Shoe.
I tamped down on these thoughts as soon as they appeared but they left me with an uncomfortable welling of pain in my chest. My sadness was enough to deal with at the moment, I didn’t need to add rage to the mix.

One by one the little glass bottles were emptied into my mouth until I couldn’t feel anything except vaguely queasy. I didn’t so much drift into unconsciousness as slam into it face first. It was the first good thing to happen to me that night.

I woke up in the morning feeling like my mouth was covered in fuzz, my eyes were stapled shut and a marching band was parading through my frontal cortex. For one happy second I didn’t remember where I was. Then it all came crashing back in a wave of agonizing pain that stole my breath. I was lost and alone. The man who had anchored my life for years was gone and I felt alone and adrift.

The phone sat silently on the nightstand mocking me with its unblinking message light. No one knew where I was to call but even if they did I suspected the message light would be just as dead and lifeless.
No friends, no one to confide in. It’s a hell of a life you’ve built for yourself, Liv. Where exactly are you going to go? What are you going to do?
I might not have had all the answers but I knew that line of thinking would just sink me deeper into depression. Besides, I did have someone I could confide in and somewhere I could go. Desperate and in need, I did the one thing I could think of: I called my Nana down in the Keys.

Nana and Poppop had been married for over fifty years when he finally went peacefully in his sleep. In those fifty years she had raised four children, kept house and worked part time as a bookkeeper at a local appliance store. When Poppop died, Nana’s four children expected her to move in with one of them or into one of those retirement homes with the brightly colored brochures showing silver haired seniors batting tennis balls back and forth.

She had surprised them all by coming downstairs a week after the funeral with three packed suitcases. She told the collected family that all her life she had dreamed about moving down to the Keys—where she and Poppop had honeymooned. She had stayed in our northern California home town for the sake of the family but now the time had come. She had money from Poppop’s pension and life insurance policy and she was going to finally live her dreams.

It was as if a bomb had gone off. There was complete pandemonium.My aunts and uncles begged and pleaded, they argued and cajoled but Nana just shook her head. She told them she had given them many long years which she had been happy to do but now it was her time to be selfish. Inside my rebellious little teenage heart I had been cheering her on.

Ten years later, Nana was still happily living in her little bungalow in the lower keys. She called her children once a month and spent the rest of her time drinking piña coladas on the beach. I needed some of her strength right now.

The phone rang for endless seconds until her warm familiar voice filled the line.

“Hello?”

“Nana…” My voice broke on the first word as I imagined her sitting in her sunny kitchen with the phone kept carefully away from her salon sculpted blue curls.

“Olivia baby, what’s wrong?” She knew my voice from that one strangled word. “Are you hurt?”
Was I hurt?
Not in the way she meant but more than I had ever believed possible.

“No, no. It’s Chris. I caught him with some…woman.” I managed to gasp out in between sobs.

The silence was deafening. It lasted only a few seconds but to me it seemed to stretch out for an eternity. When Nana spoke again her voice was thick with carefully controlled rage.

“You pack your stuff, kick him in the balls and come down here right now.”

It was exactly what I wanted to hear. No, it was what I
needed
to hear. That someone, no matter how far away, had my back and maybe I wasn’t quite so alone in this world. I choked out a thank you and fell back into the bed crying from relief, from pain, from joy and from sorrow.

It took me at least an hour to pull myself together. When I went to the bathroom to clean up a total stranger looked back me from the mirror. My hair was a snarled tornado of dark curls. Long black streams of mascara ran down my cheeks and my brown eyes were watery and red rimmed from crying. I was a puffy pathetic mess but somehow I didn’t have it in me to care. My emotions were all used up on more important things.

I managed to wash my face and tame my hair back into a loose bun. My clothes were the same from yesterday. I hadn’t bothered to pack an overnight bag when I had fled the apartment. They had obviously been slept in but there was no help for that now.

Good,
that angry voice in my head whispered.
Let him see what he’s done. Let him see the damage he’s caused. He can’t rip through my life like a tidal wave and not see the wreckage left behind in his wake.
I was growing to like her ferocious nature. Normally in life I was a people pleaser. It was good to feel like I had somebody on my side, even if it was an imaginary friend.

Standing outside my apartment door with my key in hand was a moment I would remember for the rest of my life. I would always remember the trembling in my fingers; the way my knees felt as if they were filled with water. The way my breath hitched and broke threatening to turn into a sob with every inhalation.

I clenched my teeth hard and ordered myself to stay calm. I tried to still the painful anxious swelling in my heart. My only saving grace was that Chris had a constitutional law class Thursday mornings. I could pack and leave in peace. If he had been there I may have had a breakdown. I didn’t know if I could have faced him.

It turns out that my luck was not the gentle hills and valleys most people experience through their life. Nor was it a steady upward or downward trend. My luck was in a freefall that defied the laws of terminal velocity. As the front door swung open I saw Chris sitting on the couch staring at me.

Kill,
my pissed off inner monologue thought with a viciousness that startled me.
Simmer down,
I thought back trying to get my previously undiscovered animalistic nature under control.

Chris wasn’t watching TV. He wasn’t on his computer. He was just sitting on the couch waiting for the front door to swing open. I could see that he had been crying and I felt my self-control break a little and a small flutter of hope come through the cracks.

“Livvie…” He said and it hung in the air which was already too crowded with the things left unsaid between us. That one word pushed down on me with an unnatural weight.

“I’m here for my things,” I said quickly trying to steel myself emotionally but hearing the hitches in my words. Even that simple statement was pregnant with emotions.

“Can we talk?” He asked. I took a seat on the other side of the couch feeling the familiar nubby fabric beneath my hands. It felt like home.
He
felt like home.

“I think we’ve both known for a while that things haven’t been working out between us.” He started and with that one sentence I felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the room. Everything looked distant as if I were viewing it down a long tunnel. I pinched my thigh hoping against hope that I wouldn’t feel the press of my fingers and this could all be written off as a horrible, interminable nightmare.

“No,” I struggled to keep my voice steady. “I found out that things hadn’t been working out when I walked into our bedroom and found you inside of some stranger.” He at least had the grace to hang his head in shame. A new, more experienced and infinitely sadder part of me wondered if it was an act. “Who was she?”

“Just some girl from school. She means nothing.”

“She means something to me. What’s her name?” My voice was as cold and as brittle as ice.

“Gina.” A whisper full of pain. Gina was the name of the new study partner he had been telling me about for the past few months. Hearing him gush over how smart she was had pained me in a way I couldn’t verbalize so I just kissed him and told him that I was happy he had made a friend but to be careful not to let her get the wrong idea. Apparently I had been the only one with the wrong idea.

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