Staying True - A Contemporary Romance Novel (20 page)

This freedom caged me.

Chapter Sixteen

Nadia

Jessica sat on our couch for the
first time in over a year and a half. She looked at me with apprehension, with sadness,
with a desperate appeal to erase her mistakes so we could get back to living as
we did before. Instinctively, I rushed to her side and comforted her. “You’re
home now. You’re safe now. Everything’s going to get better from here on out.”
I kissed the top of her head, and she fell into my embrace.

“Promise?”

I squeezed her tighter wanting to
ease away her pain. “I promise.”

For her first three days, I planted
myself in a pot of sunshine and happiness for her. I cooked her favorite meals,
rented her favorite movies, and bought her flowers. I did everything I could to
renew her spirit to what it used to be before the accident.

She was broken.

I arranged one elaborate plan after
the other, trying to recapture her spirit. We shopped at Neiman Marcus. We ate
caviar on a rooftop restaurant in Manhattan. We spoiled ourselves by taking in
two Broadway plays. Yet, still, when she laughed something was missing. When
she flirted, it didn’t seem sexy. When she passed people on the street, she
didn’t flip her hair or sway her hips in the same seductive way she had before.
Jail sheared off a part of her essence.

I feared I’d never get her back.

Then, one morning as we sipped coffee
in the living room together, she looked up at me with that special, adoring
look that always sent tingles down my spine. For a blink of a moment, hope
rested in the spokes of her eyes. A monumental tingle zoomed through me. “There
you are.”

The sparkle vanished. She cocked her
head. “What do you mean?”

“Your old self.”

“My old self?”

“The Jessica I fell in love with.”

She feathered my cheek with the
backside of her hand. “I don’t think so, Butterfly. I don’t know if I’ll get
back to that person again.”

I cupped her hand to my face. “Sure
you will.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

I pressed her hand against my face
even harder. “Don’t be silly. We’ll get back to where we used to be.”

She blinked heavily. “I’ve certainly
missed this sweet side of you.” Her eyes sunk lower than usual. I still tried
to adjust to her dark circles from the stress and wear and tear of prison life.
Her cheeks also sat sullen on her face like two sore pockets that once housed
life. She no longer shined like the Burlesque star she used to be. Now in its
former shiny place, sat a woman who looked older and more serious.

She folded her hands in her lap and
looked around. She stopped on our wedding picture hanging above the fireplace
mantle. She studied it, squinting at times and stretching one corner of her
mouth up in a half smile. “I was definitely a wild person back then.”

“Crazy wild.” I cradled her wrist,
and she shivered. “Are you cold?”

She shivered again. “I’m okay.”

I plucked up the afghan behind us and
curled it around her. “Better?”

“You’re mothering me.” She laid her
head back against the suede and glanced at me with the lightest smile.

“I just want you to be comfortable.”
I patted her shoulders. “So what were you thinking of when looking at our
wedding picture?” I cuddled in closer, forcing her arm to brush against mine.

She hugged herself, staring up at the
portrait of us under an archway, smiling, dreamy-eyed, love pouring out of us
and reflecting back at the camera. “Back then we had the whole world in front
of us,” she said.

“We still do.” I nudged her. “We
still have that great big world out there in front of us.” A sinking truth of
all I just gained and lost shrouded me. I fought past it, intent on staying
true, on being a good wife again, on fixing her broken spirit. She needed me.
“We can do anything with our life.”

“You are such a good person,” she
said, admiring me. “I wish I could be the same for you again.”

I softened my gaze, cupped her face
in my hands, and spoon-fed love into her sad eyes. “What happened was a
mistake. We’re going to get past it. You are still a good person.” I bore my
eyes into hers. “Do you understand me? You are still a good person.”

She gulped back tears and nodded.

I wiped them as they fell not taking
my eyes off of her. In her eyes I saw fear. She needed me more than ever. I
would heal her. I would help make her whole again.

Tears fell onto the afghan. “I’m not
the same person.”

“It’s okay. We’ll get you there
again.”

“I don’t want to be, Nadia.”

“Shh.” I pulled her into my arms.
“You have every right to be scared.” We rocked back and forth amidst a weighty
responsibility that shook my core.

She pulled away. “I’ve set up an
appointment with the priest at the church around the corner for tomorrow. I’m
going to start there and see if he can help me get rid of some of these bad
feelings.”

I poured more love into her desperate
eyes, hungry to erase this grime from our lives and get back to laughing, sex,
and pure Jessica-style fun. “Do you really need a priest?”

She leaned into me, rested her head
against my chest. “He’s already been to the prison to meet with me several
times. I definitely know he can help me transition back to normal life.”

Suddenly, as if the ground slipped
away, I tumbled into unknown territory. How did I let her slip so far from my
reach? I should’ve visited her more. I should’ve smiled more. I should’ve told
her I loved her more. I shouldn’t have been so selfish and scared. She needed
me, and I turned away. And now she trusted a stranger of a priest more than her
wife.

“Maybe I should be there with you.”

She shook her head. “No. I need to do
this part on my own.”

The invisible cloak of reality tossed
itself on top of us, dimming the light needed to sustain love, trust, and
interdependence. I needed to stop thinking about Ruby, about The Rafters, about
Rhode Island, and to start focusing back on this life that needed me, this life
to which I had vowed my commitment.

* *

I insisted on going with her to see
the priest. We sat before a tall, dark-haired man with a reserved smile and a
softness to his cheeks that placed me in comfort.

He opened up the talk with a prayer.
Jessica and he bowed their heads and surrendered to God. Meanwhile my cell
buzzed, and I jumped to silence it. Ruby had texted me. “Just wanted to see how
everything is going.”

A smile sneaked onto my face, the
likes of which should never be present during a solemn moment. I turned off my
phone and bowed my head, reciting The Lord’s Prayer along with them.

For the next thirty minutes, we sat
there listening to Jessica confess her feelings. “I don’t feel like I deserve
good things to enter my life anymore.”

“God has forgiven you already. You
need to place your trust in Him, and do the same for yourself. If He has
forgiven you, you can’t question that by refusing to forgive yourself.”

“I killed a woman. I robbed her of a
lifetime. How do I forget that and pretend life is rosy?”

“Forgiving doesn’t mean you forget.
You must learn by this experience and be guided by this experience. God doesn’t
want you to live a life where you are inflicting resentment and guilt into the
gift of each new day. He wants you to remember what happened and honor the
experience by learning from it. He also wants you to pass these lessons onto
others.”

Jessica wobbled her head
side-to-side. “This was so much easier to grasp in prison.”

The priest nodded. “God is with you.
He will get you through this.”

Later on, I cooked us dinner. “Can
you pass me the soy sauce from the cupboard?”

She opened it and rummaged through.
“We need to reorganize this stuff.” She picked up a jar of Thai red curry and
squinted at the label. “This expired a year ago.” She laughed and continued to
search for the soy sauce. “Butterfly?”

I turned to her. She held up a bottle
of Nyquil cold medicine. “We can’t have this around anymore.” Fear danced on
her face again.

I stopped stirring my veggies. “Why
not?”

“This contains alcohol.”

“So? It’s cold medicine.”

“I’m an alcoholic.”

The room spun around me, swallowing
me up. Her words strung out in front of me, slapping me with a cold hard fist.
“Don’t say that.”

“I am though.”

It hurt to hear her admit defeat. My Jessica,
the fun-loving, goofy woman who could turn a funeral into a party, needed to
reclaim her strength. “You’re too strong of a woman to label yourself that
way.”

She flung the expired bottle of curry
sauce across the room. Red paste splattered across the cream granite. “Stop.
Will you please just stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop trying to save me from myself.
I feel this pressure from you. Like if I don’t snap back to the person I was
before all of this, you’re not going to love me. I’m okay with being an alcoholic.
I’m okay with seeking outside help. I’m okay with having to change myself to
better suit the condition. But you’re not.”

I flung the wooden spatula across the
room now, too. “But you do need saving. Look at you.” I waved my arms in the
air. “You are walking around this place looking like you’ve got a death
sentence hanging over your head. You haven’t smiled in days. You’ve shown no
signs of gratitude for everything I’ve put up with over the past two years. You
look like you’re about ready to burst into tears every other second. You need
saving. And I’m at my wits end. I don’t know how else to make you feel good.
Everything I say you balk at.”

Our chests heaved up and down. We
panted like a couple of greyhound dogs at the end of a wild sprint.

“I’m weak right now. What can I say?”
Her chin quivered. “I just need some time to find myself again, Nadia.”

The instinct to save her pulled at me
again. “You’re not the weak one,” I whispered.

She walked over to the splattered
curry and knelt down. “We’ve got quite a mess here.”

I joined her. I placed my hand on her
thigh and stared at the mess. “Nothing we can’t clean up.”

* *

That night after I tucked Jessica
into bed, I drew a hot bath. I sneaked in my bottle of white wine from the
basement stash and turned on some classical music. I lay back against my bath
pillow and thought of Ruby, of her long blonde hair, of her soft fingers on my
skin, of her gentle smile. After drinking two glasses, I caved and called her.

“Hey, darling,” she said.

Her voice wrapped itself around my
heart and instantly melted me. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

“Everything okay?” Ruby asked.

“It’s okay, yes. I just missed
hearing your voice,” I said. “Are you doing okay?”

“I’m doing fantastic. How’s the
wifey?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to talk. I
wanted to hear her soothing voice instead. “She’s fine.” God, I missed her. I
missed everything about her. I missed her smell, her hair, the feel of her
fingers on my skin, the passion in her eye, the tease on her lips. Like an addict
myself, I reached out for a fix. “Do you miss me as much as I miss you right
now?”

“Darling?” Ruby’s tone carried the
weight of many sandbags. “I really wish I could talk right now, but the truth
is, I’m on a date, and we’re getting ready to take off for a nighttime flight
up to Maine.”

My spirit burst, emptying the air
from my lungs. “A date? Who is she?”

“She’s a client.” She lifted her
voice in sing-song fashion. I could just picture her staring into the eyes of a
beautiful woman, willing for me to hang up so she could get on with her
exciting plans. “She flies a Cessna and wants to show me the nighttime sky.
We’re going to eat lobster and fly back. Isn’t that so cool? Flying to Maine
for lobster. Ha. Now that’s a first for me.”

My head buzzed. My heart ached. I
gulped more wine. “Have a good time.”

“Thanks, darling. I’ll call you in a
few days, and we’ll catch up. Until then, take care of yourself and enjoy the
time with your wife.”

“Thanks. Will do.”

“Bye!” she said.

The click echoed a finality that splintered
me.

* *

I obsessed over Ruby all night long,
imagining her forgetting all about me. Maybe this new woman would be the one to
finally settle her. Maybe she’d travel across the interstate to western
Massachusetts with Shawna and Grampa, singing Billy Joel tunes, and admiring
the view of maple trees and the smell of hot apple cider. Maybe she’d be the
lucky one who got to lay in bed under the comforters, hugging Ruby and cradling
her curves. Maybe she’d be the one who got to massage Ruby under a stream of
hot, steamy water as Ruby orgasmed in her arms.