“Marriage will either be the best or worst thing you ever do.” – My mom

The following is a piece of a book I’m writing. If you enjoy it, you will enjoy the finished product once I finish the manuscript and find a way to get it published! Enjoy!

Happy reading!

P.S. The following is a true story.

 

I could hear the background noise of the TV as my eyes slowly closed, and a new scene unfolded in front of me.

As the scene focused, I realized I was watching a couple on a date. It looked like a first date. I floated above them in the rafters unable to hear what was being said, so I watched intently trying to make out body language to ascertain how the date was going.

The couple appeared to converse awkwardly, and it seemed that the date wasn’t going well. After a half hour, the man asked for the check, and they parted ways a few minutes later without a kiss in the parking lot. The man got in his car and began to drive home. I wasn’t following him on purpose, but it seemed as though I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

He took a pretty, winding backroad that looked out on the city. I tried to make out what city it was, but it wasn’t somewhere I had been. New York? LA? There were mountains in the backdrop. Maybe it was Denver?

Eventually, he pulled his car into the far-left lane and flicked on his left blinker, waiting for the light to turn green. As he waited in the late-night air, his breath unfurled like a puff of smoke in front of him. He obviously hadn’t turned on the heater despite the cold temperature. A few minutes passed before the light told him to go and he turned left and then immediately turned right into his designated parking spot.

He walked up the steps to his condo, his head hung low in exhaustion. He unlocked the door and set down his backpack inside. His shoes and parka were still on, but he closed the door and sat down in the dark. He sat there quietly, and lonely. I couldn’t read his mind, but he looked sad sitting all alone in the empty condo.

He sighed loudly, putting his face in his hands. He released his face again. “Where are you?” he whispered into the darkness.

The scene was starting to look too personal, but I had no choice but to watch. It’s as though someone or something was trying to tell me something important.

But no one was there.

The vision began to blur, and as I began to blink, another room came into focus. I tilted my head up and swung it around. I recognized the dark bedroom as my own. The alarm clock next to me was showing 3:30 AM.

There was a man beside me, but not the one from the dream. I looked harder to make out his features as I groggily recognized my husband lying next to me.

I lay my head down and tried to capture what I had just been watching in the dream, but it was falling away quickly.

“That’s your husband,” a voice whispered.

I lay still – close to paralysis – and listened. All the muscles in my back began to tense, and I clenched my hands into the fitted sheet underneath my body.

It took several moments before I dared talk back to the voice. “Which one?” I asked. The voice chuckled. “You already know, and you know what you need to do.”

My spine prickled. I looked at the man lying beside me: this stranger of a man I had given my heart to five years ago. What was going to happen? I looked at the little details of the life we had formed together: a photo of us smiling at each other as we exited the church on our wedding day, an old Valentine’s Day card on my nightstand, and the Bruins clock we found at a small store on Cape Cod that now hung above our door. I swirled the rings sitting on the ring finger of my left hand. How was I going to let it all go?

Soon, my eyes slowly began to close as I drifted back to sleep – only this time, I didn’t see him. I knew he was there – he was out there somewhere, breathing in and out with no one beside him. And he was waiting for me, wondering why he couldn’t find me. But I couldn’t tell him the horrible truth: I had married someone else before I found him. And if I didn’t find the courage from somewhere deep inside of me, this wonderful man would have to spend a lifetime knowing that someone else married his wife.