And don’t get me started on the number of my friends who complain about their children on their timeline. “Evie was up all night crying! Ugh! When will she sleep through the freaking night?” or “I can’t wait for school to start back! These boys are driving me insane!”
If those mothers only knew.
If I were a mother, I wouldn’t take a single moment of my child’s life for granted. I’d be grateful for every second they whined or cried or got sick or talked back to me. I’d cherish every second they were home during the summer and I’d miss them every second they were away at school.
That’s why I deleted social media. Because with every status I saw, I became more and more bitter. I know those mothers love their children. I know they don’t take them for granted. But they don’t understand what it’s like not to be able to experience the things that bring them stress. And rather than despise every person I’m friends with online, I decided to delete my accounts in hopes it would bring me a small semblance of peace. But it hasn’t.
Even without social media, not a single day goes by without being reminded that I might never be a mother. Every time I see a child. Every time I see a pregnant woman. Every time I run into people like Eleanor. Almost every movie I watch, every book I read, every song I hear.
And lately . . . every time my husband touches me.
Chapter Five
* * *
Then
I’ve never brought a guy to my apartment who wasn’t Ethan. In fact, Ethan rarely came here, either. His apartment is nicer and much larger, so we always stayed there. But here I am, about to have rebound sex with a complete stranger just hours after I caught my fiancé having an affair.
If Ethan is capable of an affair, I am certainly capable of revenge sex with an extremely attractive guy. This entire day has been one bizarre event after another. What’s one more?
I open the door and make a quick scan of the apartment in case there’s anything I need to hide. In doing so, I realize I’d have to hide everything and that’s not possible with Graham one step behind me. I step aside and allow him to enter my apartment.
“Come in,” I say.
Graham walks in after me, taking in my apartment with his sad eyes. It’s a small one-bedroom, but all the pictures of Ethan and me make it feel even smaller. Suffocating.
Leftover wedding invitations are still spread out over the dining room table.
The wedding dress I bought two weeks ago hangs from the entryway closet door. Seeing it makes me angry. I pull it down, fold the wedding bag over, and shove it in the closet. I don’t even bother to hang it. I hope it gets wrinkled.
Graham walks over to my bar and picks up a photo of Ethan and me. In the picture, Ethan had just proposed and I said yes. I was flashing my ring at the camera. I stand next to Graham and look at the photo with him. His thumb brushes over the glass. “You look really happy here.”
I don’t respond, because he’s right. I look happy in that photo because I was happy. Extremely happy. And oblivious. How many times had Ethan cheated on me? Did it happen before he even proposed to me? I have so many questions but I don’t think I want the answers enough to eventually subject myself to an interrogation of Ethan.
Graham sets the photo down on the bar, facedown. And just like we did with our phones, he presses his finger against it and gives it a shove across the bar. It flies over the edge and shatters when it hits my kitchen floor.
Such a careless, rude thing to do in someone else’s apartment. But I like that he did it.
There are two more pictures on the bar. I take the other one of Ethan and me and place it facedown. I push it across the bar and when that one shatters, I smile. So does Graham.
We both stare at the last photo. Ethan isn’t in this one. It’s a picture of me and my father, taken just two weeks before he died. Graham picks it up and brings it in closer for inspection. “Your dad?”
“Yeah.”
He sets the photo back on the counter. “This one can stay.”
Graham makes his way to the table where the leftover wedding invitations are laid out. I didn’t choose the invitations. My mother and Ethan’s mother did. They even mailed them out for us. My mother dropped these off two weeks ago and told me to look on Pinterest for crafts to make out of leftover invitations, but I had no desire to do anything with the invitations.
I’ll definitely be throwing them away now. I don’t want a single keepsake from this disaster of a relationship.
I follow Graham to the table and I take a seat on it, pulling my legs up. I sit cross-legged as Graham picks up one of the invitations and begins reading it aloud.