Anna-Marie
I wake up with the oddest sensation of being on a boat, and it takes my slow-churning brain a moment to remember I fell asleep on a hammock, which is now swaying as Josh shifts. I’m curled up under his arm, my face on his chest. My mouth is fuzzy and tastes like too much beer, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been drooling onto his shirt, which is something I thankfully only do when I fall asleep drunk.
As I definitely did last night, though not so drunk I can’t remember a startling number of details about our conversation.
Marriage. Kids, even.
And the worst part, the part that is making my slight hangover headache start turning into a pulsing drum of panic, is how amazing it had all felt. How it sounded to say my name with his—Anna-Marie Rios—and the expression of bliss on his face when he heard it. How I could picture it, like one of those cheesy film montages set in warm, soft-edged filters: him standing on a beach in a tux, grinning at me as I walk toward him in a flowy white gown; us playing video games on a couch we bought together for our new house; me bringing him his morning cup of coffee to wake him up and a little dark-haired girl named Kohler jumping up on the bed to “help,” giggling as her daddy groans and starts tickling her.
I couldn’t just picture it; I wanted it. Desperately. More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.
No consequences, my ass.
I sit up—carefully, because I don’t want to tip the hammock and dump both Josh and me on the beer bottle graveyard on the ground beneath us. I’m trying not to wake Josh as I do so—I wish I could say this was from purely unselfish motives, but honestly, the panic is making it difficult to breathe and I’m not sure I’m ready to talk to him again yet. Not sure I can handle the words “ring” or “marriage” or even “Harry Potter” right now.
Apparently it’s impossible to get out of a hammock without waking the person you’re sprawled across, even if that person is Josh Rios in the dawn hours.
“I reject the morning,” Josh groans, running his hand along my back. “I thought it wasn’t going to happen this time.” His dark hair is mussed from the hammock and his many, many attempts to balance beer bottles on his forehead throughout the evening, and his eyes are barely slits against the sunlight.
The sight tugs at my heart. How many mornings have we woken entwined like this, him barely awake, me filled with a warmth I refused to examine too closely because I was afraid of what it might mean?
And that was even before I went and fell in love with him.
“Damn rotation of the planet,” I say softly, watching how the light filtering between the leaves above us plays on his face.
“Mmmm,” he agrees sleepily. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Nowhere, I want to say. Nowhere without you, not ever again.
My pulse spikes, and I clear my throat, because it has suddenly gone so dry it might be a wildfire risk in there. “Coffee,” I manage, this time having to force the smile. “I’ll see if anyone’s started coffee yet.”
“I won’t say no to that.” He rubs his forehead, and before I can change my mind and curl up next to him again, I work my way out of the hammock.
I can hear voices from the house, so apparently at least someone’s up this early, but I don’t really care who. I just need to get away for a minute. To think. To breathe.
The screen door bangs shut behind me as I enter the kitchen, which is thankfully empty—the voices seem to be coming from upstairs. I open the can of off-brand coffee that is a far cry from the gourmet kind at Josh’s place, but hasn’t killed either of us so far. My hand trembles as I go through the motions of making the coffee.
I’m just scared, I tell myself, trying Josh’s labeling thing. It’s okay to be scared. I’ve gone through a lot this week, and the whole world has seen me naked and thinks I have a sex addiction and also that I cheated on Shane and damn, why did that song he wrote have to actually be good? But more importantly, I’m Josh’s girlfriend, and I love him.
I love him, and he loves me, and it’s going to be okay.
It’s going to be okay.
By the time the coffee is brewing, I’m feeling more in control again. Calmer. I slowly breathe in the aroma, pretend I’m back at Josh’s place. Pretend, maybe, that it’s our place, and I’m about to crawl back into bed with him and—
“No! I don’t want to go!” Ginnie shrieks from upstairs, sobbing, and I nearly spill the coffee I’m pouring as I jump. Her feet pound down the stairs.
“We are going now, whether you like it or—dammit!” This sounds like Tanya, and it sounds like she’s in tears. I set down the coffee pot, just as Ginnie dashes by the kitchen and out the front door.
“Tanya,” I hear my dad say, though it’s far softer than the rest. “Don’t go, just listen to—”
“No,” she says, and I can hear the fury in that one syllable. “I don’t want your excuses, Bill. Save them for her. We’re going.”
I grip the edge of the counter, because I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I’m dizzy from the déjà vu of hearing variations on this over the years.
Shit. Shit, Dad, why?
My dad doesn’t beg or argue—I’ve never actually heard him do so when his wives or girlfriends leave him for his cheating. And so the only sound for a few moments is the thump of the suitcase Tanya is pulling down the stairs. She turns back only to say “Byron, get Ginnie’s suitcase too, please.”
“Mom, why can’t we just—” Byron starts, his voice filtering down from the hallway upstairs, but Tanya cuts him off.
“We are leaving now, and we will talk about it on the road.”
I can’t see her face as she passes by the kitchen, her bobbed hair hanging over it, and she’s rolling her suitcase, which isn’t completely zipped up and has clothing sticking out from the sides where it was hastily crammed.
She yanks the suitcase hard when it catches on the weatherstripping at the front door, and a simple blue cotton bra and long feather earring that is hooked to it fall to the ground. She either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, and the suitcase thumps down the wooden porch steps.
Numbly, I walk to the stairs and pick up the bra and the earring. I can barely bring myself to look upstairs, but when I do, my dad isn’t even there anymore. He’s gone back into his bedroom, and closed the door on this relationship like so many others. All I see is Byron bent over an open little-girl’s suitcase decorated in bright butterflies, stuffing in clothes and sparkly shoes, looking like he wants to punch something.
I don’t blame him.
From the door down to the basement, Cherstie is peering out, as is Aunt Patrice behind her, both woken up from the commotion. They meet eyes with me, clearly questioning, but it’s like I can barely see them, let alone answer them.
I swallow, my throat so tight it feels all but closed up. My eyes are stinging, my fingers gripping the bra until my knuckles are white. I walk out onto the porch. Tanya has thrown her suitcase in the bed of one of the pickup trucks—I didn’t realize one of those was hers, though it makes sense—and has wrangled Ginnie into the car, though my heart still cracks open from the girl’s sobbing. Tanya slams the car door, and I flinch.
How many times have I heard car doors slam like that, cutting off the sound of crying or shouted expletives?
Tanya leans against the truck door, her head down and her eyes closed, arms folded across her chest, and it looks like the truck is the only thing keeping her from collapsing. I make my way down the steps toward her and she looks up at hearing the crunch of my sandals on the gravel.
Her face is blotchy, shiny from streaks of tears, her eyes puffy and red. She looks younger than ever. She swipes at the tears angrily as I approach.
“I—I . . .” I have no idea what to say, and I can’t even form words. All I can do is hold out the bra and the earring, which she takes from me, her lips pressed tightly together.
She shakes her head. “You were right. God, I should have—I should have done lots of things. I should have not been an idiot who thought this would be different, and—” Her voice breaks, and she looks up at the sky, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.
It’s like I can still hear the echo of her voice from the other day: He’s a good man, and I love him. And I think that’s worth the risk, don’t you?
“I’m sorry,” I manage. “I’m so sorry.” My voice sounds like a little girl’s, just this squeak, and I feel my face burning from shame, though I’m not even sure why.
Because it was my dad that broke her heart?
Because I didn’t somehow stop it?
Because I get to stay my dad’s “favorite girl,” even as he goes through woman after woman and leaves them all devastated in his wake?
The crunch of gravel sounds behind me, and it’s Byron hoisting a faded backpack and Ginnie’s suitcase. He glares at the ground, and climbs into the truck without saying anything or even looking at me. The door slams shut again.
Tanya’s face crumples, as if she was only barely holding total grief at bay until both her kids were safely in the car. She takes a long shuddering breath, and I want to put my arms around her. But my arms feel like they’re weighted with lead, and if I move they might shatter both of us.
“Me too,” she says, with a nod. “I’m sorry, too. Take care, Anna-Marie. I wish . . .”
But she doesn’t finish that, and she doesn’t need to.
It doesn’t matter what she wished, or what I wished, or what her kids wished. Because my dad did what he always does, and now she is joining the long list of women betrayed and gone.
Then she turns and walks to the driver side of the car, her spine unnaturally straight, her hands clenched into fists. She climbs up into the truck and it rumbles to life, and then they are gone, my almost stepmother and stepsiblings, and I hate myself that I didn’t really say goodbye to any of them.
“Anna-Marie?” a worried voice calls, and it takes me a numb second to realize it’s Josh.
I turn to see him standing on the driveway; he must have heard Ginnie’s crying and the slammed doors and come around the side of the house. He walks toward me, his gaze never leaving my face. “Did Tanya leave?”
He must have seen Tanya leave, so it’s clear what he’s really asking.
“My dad cheated on her.” I find myself hugging my arms to my chest, in the same position Tanya was, only without a massive truck to lean on. “She took the kids and left. He didn’t even—he didn’t even try. It’s like he never cares.” My own voice sounds distant, removed from me.
Josh’s brows draw together. “God, Anna-Marie, I’m so sorry. I’m so—come here.” He reaches for me, ready to bring me into his arms. Ready to hold me and comfort me and tell me he loves me.
But I take a step back.
Because my ears are still ringing from the slam of Tanya’s truck doors as she left. I feel the pain on my scalp from when my mom would brush my hair as a child, after one of her fights with my dad, brushing too fast and too hard, tugging through the snarls like maybe this was one battle she could win. My eyes sting from the tears of every time I’d find Shane with whatever girl he broke up with me for, tears I’d never in a million years let him see. My face burns with the shame of opening Reid’s wallet to slip a sexy note inside and seeing the picture of a pretty blond woman I would soon discover was his wife.
“I can’t do this,” I say, and the tears spill over onto my cheeks.
Josh freezes, his arm still reaching for me. “What?”
“This. Us. I can’t—I can’t do this.” My voice is cold, a perfect match for the ice flooding my veins, pooling in my stomach.
And it’s Josh there in front of me, Josh who swore he’d never cheat on me, that he’d never hurt me. Josh who I fell in love with, who I pictured a future with. He looks like he’s going to be sick, and he’s shaking his head and saying, “No, Anna-Marie, let’s talk about this, okay? Let’s—is this about last night? Because I know that wasn’t real, okay? We never have to talk about it again.”
But it doesn’t matter if we don’t talk about it, because now all I can see of that future is me yelling and crying and gathering up our dark-haired children into the car and trying with everything in me not to completely break apart where they can see.
“We knew perfectly well it would have consequences.” I squeeze my eyes shut, to try to stop the tears and to keep from seeing his pain, because I can’t handle that and protect myself the way I need to, the way I should have all along.
“Anna-Marie,” he says again, and his fingers touch my elbow, just barely. “Please, let’s just talk, let’s just—”
“No!” I yell, jerking away from his touch. From him. Because I know what will happen if we talk. He’ll make me believe again in things I never should have believed in the first place.
When I open my eyes, I see that his are red-rimmed, and my heart cracks.
“Why are you doing this?” he asks, his voice strained.
“Because I have to!” The words burst out of me, a tidal wave that won’t stop until it’s swept both of us under. “Because you’re just like all the others! Because I’ll trust you and love you and give you everything, and one day you’ll find someone younger and prettier and you’ll just toss me aside like I’m nothing. And I won’t let that happen to me. I won’t.”
Josh’s face pales, and then flushes. “How can you say that? After everything we’ve—how can you—?”
He stares at me, like he’s waiting for me to tell him I don’t mean it. But I don’t—I can’t.
His voice goes flat. “You really think that of me.” When I don’t deny it, he shakes his head and a dark look crosses his face. “Fine. Fine. If that’s what you really think I am, then maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re just like all the others. Maybe you are replaceable.”
Everything goes still. Even my heart, like the pain is so great it can’t beat past it. “Leave. Now,” I growl.
There’s a beat where I think maybe he won’t. Where I think maybe I’ll beg him not to.
But I stay rooted where I am, silent, and he stalks off to his Porsche. Before I know it, he’s gone too, his car disappearing down the street.
And I’m left standing alone in the yard, filled to bursting with so much pain and anger and regret, and yet somehow emptier than ever before.