One week earlier…
“Namaste.”
Releasing a long breath, I open my eyes and watch as fifteen intermediate-to-advanced yogis bow back at me. With murmured thanks, they begin rolling up their mats and heading for the exits. I wave when I spot a few regulars in the group, mixed in with a healthy number of new faces. My class has grown more and more popular, these past few months. I’ll have to start turning people away if Aimee, the studio owner, doesn’t give me another time slot. Plus, I can’t lie — it would be nice to have something else to occupy my pathetically under-scheduled Saturdays.
A girl can only spend so many hours binge-watching Netflix alone before her brain starts to atrophy… along with certain other sorely-neglected body parts south of the waistline…
I don’t bother looking for my friends in the crowd. They’re not exactly what you’d call athletic — unless running through the mall in pursuit of a shoe sale counts as cardio. (I’m looking at you, Phoebe.) Besides, they’ve all been so busy for the past few months, I’m lucky if I even get to see them at our occasional girl’s nights. Without margarita pitchers and gossip to entice them, there’s approximately a zero percent chance of getting them to show up at one of my sunrise fitness sessions.
Maybe if I start serving bottomless mimosas after class…
I sigh deeply.
It’s not that I don’t understand why my besties have been MIA as of late. Our twenties have been a whirlwind of job changes and life shifts, new relationships and apartment moves, lavish weddings and squirming babies. Plus, unlike some of us, my friends actually enjoy spending time at home. (It probably helps that they have men who worship the ground they walk on — albeit, in fabulous footwear — waiting when they step through their front doors.)
What a novel concept: actually wanting to spend time at home…
“Thanks for a great class, everyone!” I call as my students filter out the front exit into the parking lot. “Hope to see you next week!”
When the door finally swings shut behind the last girl, I glance around the empty studio. It’s a familiar mess — foam blocks and free weights scattered haphazardly across the hardwood. I flip on the stereo and hum along to the refrains of an ‘80s love ballad as I stack the equipment in the racks on the left side of the room. My mind makes a slow loop through my daily to-do list.
Stop by the Farmers Market.
Long run along the Charles River.
Cook a new that new butternut squash soup I’ve been meaning to try.
Eat a bowl alone while watching a rerun of Chopped I’ve already seen twice before falling into my empty king-sized bed, pretending not to notice the crushing sound of silence in my empty house.
And repeat.
I’m stacking the last of the free weights when I catch a glimpse of myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror dominating the far wall of the studio. Bare feet, high ponytail, pink sports bra, black leggings. My posture is tense despite the past two hours of deep breathing exercises. My bow-shaped mouth is set in a frown. My light brown eyes appear flat and empty. God, I barely recognize my own reflection.
When did I become this unhappy stranger staring back at me?
Maybe around the time I served my husband Paul divorce papers six months ago. Or maybe further back, when he stopped coming home for dinner, or sleeping in our bed, or spending any time with me whatsoever. Then again, if I’m being totally honest with myself… maybe it happened long before then. So far back, I’m almost afraid to look, for fear of what I’ll find. Because the stark naked truth of the matter is…
Maybe I’ve never been happy with him.
Not ever.
Not one year, not one day, not one hour.
Not one single second of this marriage.
I’m so caught up in my own thoughts, I barely register the sound of the studio door swinging open until I catch a blur of movement in the mirror on my right. Spinning around, my mouth starts running on auto-pilot before they’ve even cleared the threshold.
“Sorry, you’ve just missed our morning session. The next class is core aerobics with Aimee, but it doesn’t start until noon…”
I trail off, sucking in a sharp gulp of air as I get a good look at the men who’ve just stepped inside. My tongue feels suddenly made of lead, unable to form words as my eyes scan them from head to toe. Which, frankly, takes quite a while because holy shit these men are enormous. Well over six feet tall with brawny builds to match, I’d guess they’re somewhere between thirty and forty but it’s hard to tell with their hair buzzed so short and their faces set in such scary expressions. Their massive muscles strain the seams of their matching black suits as they stride toward me, gun holsters clearly visible beneath their jackets.
Call me crazy, but I don’t think they’re here for core aerobics.
“Uh, hi there,” I say, striving for a calm tone as I take in their intimidating expressions. “If you’re looking for the law firm, it’s actually in the building just around the corner… sometimes the GPS mixes up the addresses and people get confused…”
There’s no answer. No sound at all except for four black shoes rapping like gunshots across the hardwood floor as the men come to a stop in the middle of the room. Well, that and the steady thumping of my own heartbeat between my ears, growing louder as the giants level me with those icy, thousand-yard stares.
I fight the urge to backpedal, abruptly aware of the fact that I am alone here in this soundproofed studio, wearing nothing but a hot pink sports bra and a pair of ultra-thin leggings, with two very large men who, it must be said, are the scariest dudes I’ve ever seen in my life.
Chill, Shelby, I chastise myself, squaring my shoulders with a confidence I don’t feel. You don’t even know what they want.
“Can I help you with something?” I force myself to ask, glancing from one giant to the next, my eyebrows arched in speculation. They must be brothers. They’re so similar looking, I can’t tell them apart.
“We’re looking for someone,” Righty says in a flat, faintly accented voice that sounds vaguely Slavic.
“Shelby Hunt,” Lefty jumps in, narrowing his eyes on me. “Wife of Paul Hunt. Ring a bell?”
My mouth goes dry. Out of nowhere, I feel like a fifteen-year-old girl again, caught in the act of breaking curfew. “Um…”
Two sets of dark eyes burn into mine, searingly cold, and I try not to shiver.
Lie, an inner voice whispers out of nowhere, irrationally afraid to admit my identity to two men who make the gargantuan casino bouncers I encountered in Las Vegas a few years back seem chill in comparison. Lie your perfectly-toned ass off.
“Well?” Lefty prompts impatiently. “You Shelby?”
“Sorry — afraid not.” I swallow hard. “Shelby called me this morning and said she wasn’t feeling well. Asked me to step in and cover her class.”
They don’t react, so I keep going.
“I mean, yoga isn’t really my specialty — I’m more of a barre gal, myself — but she covered for me this summer when I had a seriously intense case of food poisoning and couldn’t lift my head from the toilet bowl, let alone lead a class of bored housewives through rigorous choreography, so I figured I owed her one.”
The men glance at each other dubiously.
Are they buying this bullshit?
“Uh. So. What is it you want from her?” I ask, dragging their attention back to me. “I’d be happy to pass along a message from you…”
For a long, suspended moment they both just stare at me. I worry they’ve seen straight through my little white lies — okay, so they aren’t all that little, sue me — until Righty finally opens his thin-lipped mouth and grunts.
“Tell her we’re looking for her husband.”
“And that we’ll be back,” Lefty adds, still eyeing me suspiciously.
Hoping my face hasn’t gone pale, I give a small nod.
The men turn in tandem and head for the exit. It’s not until the door swings shut behind them, leaving me alone in the small, silent studio, that I realize my hand is curled tight around a five-pound free weight, every knuckle pale with tension.
I blow out a long, shuddering breath.
Namaste, indeed.
You’re probably wondering why I’m not exactly shocked by the sudden appearance of two armed gunman looking for my ex-husband. Err… soon-to-be ex-husband. Once the jerk agrees to sign the damn divorce papers I served him, that is.
The answer to your question — and, perhaps not so coincidentally, the answer to every other question concerning strange encounters with scary dudes in bad suits that have cropped up over the course of my life — is just another four-letter word.
Paul.
When I met him, I was an eighteen-year-old graphic design student at a small liberal arts college just outside the city, instantly infatuated with the TA of her mandatory Economics 101 class. Well-mannered and well-dressed, Paul was a few years older — and a few lightyears more confident — than any of the unrequited crushes I’d set my teenage sights on back in high school.
So, imagine my surprise when he made a point to talk to me after class one day. When he requested to meet privately to discuss my end-of-semester project. When he laughed at my jokes and smiled like I was the most adorable thing he’d ever set eyes on. When he asked me out on a real, actual date with real, actual candlelight and a real, actual kiss at my dormitory door when the night came to an end.
Me.
The awkward freshman, still attempting to shed her last layer of baby fat, whose love life until that point was about as passion-filled as a documentary on three-toed sloths. I was, in so many ways, just a girl. I didn’t know how to dress properly or highlight my hair to flatter my skin-tone or apply eye makeup that didn’t resemble a music video from the early ‘90s. (Hello, turquoise eyeshadow.) I didn’t understand what falling for a man like Paul would mean for my future.
And yet… I didn’t stand a snow cone’s chance in hell at resisting him.
We were living together off-campus by the time I was a sophomore, married the month I graduated, and settled firmly in the house Paul bought for us before my first student loan payment came due. And, for a while, things were good. Or, at least to me — a girl with exactly zero other relationship experience to compare it to — things seemed good.
Good enough.
Paul was making great money as a financial consultant at a big Boston firm. I kept myself busy with freelance graphic design projects, despite my new husband’s insistence that I didn’t need to work.
Just take care of the house, baby.
Be home waiting every night, baby.
Have dinner ready on the table, baby.
I don’t want you too busy for me, baby.
His gentle suggestions became increasingly demanding — and increasingly stifling — as the first years of our marriage passed us by. Slowly, at first. Then, so fast it was like I’d blinked my eyes and missed a whole half-decade of existence.
The blushing twenty-two-year-old bride was long gone, and with her the majority of my twenties. By the time I snapped out of my stupor and recognized what had become not just of my marriage, but of me, Shelby, a woman with dreams and aspirations outside the shackles of matrimony… I was twenty-eight years old and essentially a stranger to myself.
So, I resolved to get out.
To walk away.
To make a change before I lost one more single second of my life to a man who couldn’t even be bothered to make it home for dinner most nights, or ask about my day on the rare evenings he did, or summon the effort to give me an occasional orgasm during our increasingly infrequent encounters between the sheets.
Did I say infrequent?
I meant nonexistent.
Seriously, when you’re binge-watching Mad Men and start relating on a fundamental level to repressed 1950s housewives like Betty Draper… you know things aren’t exactly going well.
Hence: the divorce papers.
Christmas Eve, while Paul was busy working — because of course he didn’t take the holiday off, don’t be absurd! — I left them under the tree with a big red bow on top and tucked myself in bed with an exceptionally good bottle of Syrah that Paul’s parents gave us as an engagement gift.
To drink on your ten-year anniversary.
I drained that bottle, every damn sip, having a solo celebration to mark an altogether different sort of juncture — ten years wasted on a man who never cared about me as anything but a possession. Just another antique piece of furniture in his immaculate home. An article of clothing in his pristine closet. An object to stake ownership over, not to cherish until death did us part.
When I awoke on Christmas morning — my head spinning from a hangover rivaling the one I experienced following my friend Phoebe’s bachelorette party last month — I fully expected to find the papers signed, dated, and waiting for me on the gleaming granite kitchen countertops we had specially imported from Morocco.
They weren’t.
Instead, I found something else waiting for me. Paul. And the pure rage contorting his handsome features as his feet slowly closed the space between us and his hands not-so-slowly tore my papers clean in half… well, that was as surprising as it was terrifying.
Suffice to say, it never once crossed my mind that Paul wouldn’t be quite so keen on the idea of divorce. I thought he’d be relieved to be rid of me. After all, I wasn’t the one who avoided coming home every night. I wasn’t the one who walked through the door on more than one occasion with ill-concealed lipstick stains on his collar. I wasn’t the one who gave up trying to make anything resembling an effort starting shortly after our second wedding anniversary and worsening with each progressive year.
And yet, when it finally came down to it, Paul was surprisingly resistant. So resistant, in fact, he shattered a $300 lamp against a wall, put his fist through the foyer mirror, and screamed loud enough that the next door neighbors called the police.
Let me tell you: nothing says Christmas quite like watching your enraged husband being tasered, cuffed, and loaded into the back of a squad car while the entire block watches from their front windows, hot cocoa in hand.
Bring on the carolers!
In the months since, Paul has stayed away. Physically, at least. (The restraining order I filed ensures that small detail.) Unfortunately, a legal document does very little to block him from contacting me via phone, email, voicemail… candy gram, flower delivery, edible arrangement…
You name it, he’s tried it.
Despite the fact that I changed both my phone number and my locks… that I have thrown out so many flowers Mother Nature has put me on some kind of hit list… that I have chucked so many chocolates in the garbage Godiva has issued a warrant for my arrest… that I have an entire box of jewelry I’ll never wear, including a gaudy Byzantine bracelet and a bejeweled golden egg, the exact purpose of which I’ve never been able to figure out…
He refuses to see reason.
He won’t even entertain the idea of a divorce — no matter how many times I have served him with papers via courier. No matter that we’re no longer living under the same roof or sharing any facet of each other’s lives. (Besides, of course, a last name.)
Short of taking him to court for a messy public trial and forcing a judge to grant my freedom, I’m not exactly sure how to proceed from this point. So, for the time being, I’ve been letting things simmer on the back burner. Hoping he’ll eventually come to his senses and change his mind about this whole ‘marriage is forever, I’ll never let you go, you’re mine until the last breath leaves my body’ crap he started spouting on Christmas.
Don’t worry — I’m not living under any sort of delusion that he’s trying to win me back because he’s desperately in love with me. For Paul, this is merely a point of pride.
I am his perfect wife, who lives in his perfect house, on the perfect street in the perfect suburb. I host posh dinner parties for his co-workers. I mix a flawless gin martini. I attend business functions on his arm wearing gorgeous dresses he buys for me. I am the most important chess piece on the carefully calculated board that is his life.
Giving me up might mean losing that game. Losing face in his business circles. Losing the respect of his family and friends. And if there’s one thing the man I married can’t stand…
It’s losing.
I don’t know where he’s been staying or what he’s been up to since I cut off communication. Frankly, it’s not my concern anymore. Or… it wasn’t until today, when two large thugs showed up at my yoga studio looking for Mrs. Paul Hunt.
I’m not sure what, exactly, he’s gotten himself into that brought those men to my doorstep. All I do know is… I’m wishing like hell he’d signed those damn papers. If he had, no one would be looking for Mrs. Shelby Hunt.
They couldn’t.
She’d no longer exist.