Chapter 6
Jackson
Idrive to my parents' house in a daze.
Ellie’s wedding ring is in my pocket, and my world is hollow and broken. Her pain was so loud, and I don’t know why I would hurt my wife like that.
So why did you?
I told myself I would stop at a kiss with Rachel, and I didn’t. Ellie was right to wonder—and to ask me—if things wouldn’t escalate even more. I told her it wouldn’t, but if I don’t know why I would cheat on my wife, what guarantee is there that I wouldn’t do it again?
I park outside my parents’ three-bedroom house, in a different subdivision about twenty minutes from Ellie’s parents' home. Then I cut the engine and sit, my hands wrapped around the steering wheel, my eyes dry and burning.
The lights are on inside, and my parents will be home this evening as usual.
I’m an only child. My parents used to joke that if they’d had two or more kids, they couldn’t have afforded to retire early.
Dad was a mechanic and my mom a secretary, so I didn’t grow up with much money.
The reality is, both wanted more kids, but it never happened, which is why they’ve wanted grandkids so badly. Now, it will never happen.
We were talking about starting IVF next year after six years of trying.
It’s expensive, up to $25,000 a cycle, and with no idea how many cycles it could take for Ellie to get pregnant, we’d have needed to re-mortgage.
We wanted to try everything we could first before we bit the bullet.
My parents probably would have helped out financially since I got a full-ride scholarship and didn't need the money they had saved for college.
I don’t know how much time passes before the front door opens and my dad, in dark-wash jeans and a light blue button-down shirt, steps out. Tension stiffens his shoulders, and his eyes narrow on me. One look at his face, and I let out a quiet exhale.
I know when my dad is getting ready to rip me a new one, and right now, he is pissed.
He closes the front door behind him and walks over to the passenger side, climbing in and shutting the door.
He doesn’t ask me what I’m doing, driving to his house and sitting outside it with the engine off.
Especially after I hung up on him earlier and didn’t call him back.
He’s best friends with my boss. Dennis would have called my dad the moment I left work to tell him all about what I did with Rachel and my two-week suspension from work.
“You know, don’t you?” My voice is hoarse.
“Dennis told me. Then Ellie’s dad called us.
He was getting ready to castrate you for hurting his little girl, and I can’t say I wasn’t thinking the same.
Your mother…” He shakes his head, glowering at me.
“I don’t want to get into what your mother thinks.
What were you thinking? Didn’t we raise you right? How could you?”
"Hit me. Disown me. Whatever. I deserve it. I did things with Rachel, and I don’t know why.” My fingers tighten around the wheel, and I stare straight ahead. “I don’t know why I did it when I love my wife. Ellie asked, and I told her it was a mistake, but mistakes happen once.”
Something wasn’t enough. Ellary, or what I have, I don’t know.
I wanted more, and it’s cost me my wife. My family.
Tears track down my cheeks.
He squeezes my shoulder. “Come inside, son. We’ll talk it over.”
I brush my tears away and start to reach for a tissue in my pocket when my fingers collide with Ellie’s wedding ring.
I shouldn’t have stayed at the office to speak to my boss. A job can be replaced. A wife cannot. Not one like Ellie.
Dad presses a tissue into my hand, and I scrub it over my face and blow my nose.
“If I’d gone after her straight away, I could have convinced her to stay.” My voice cracks on the last word.
He squeezes my shoulder again as the front door opens and my mother’s figure fills the entrance. The light from behind her spills out into the darkening evening. “Come inside, son. We’ll talk.”
I sniff. “Ellie can’t stay at her parents' place. It’s too small, and they don’t have a spare room.
Just an office full of her dad’s stuff. Can you call her parents and tell her to go back to the house?
It’s her home, and she shouldn’t be the one to move out when I’m the one who fucked up.
I’ll pack a bag and stay somewhere else. ”
I don’t swear around my parents. I’m twenty-nine, no longer a teenager, but my dad would glower and my mom’s lips would flatten in disapproval. But today, I feel cast adrift, and the normal rules no longer matter.
“You can stay with us, son,” he says, not mentioning my cursing.
I shake my head. “Not now. I just need to be alone.” I don’t see anger or judgment in his eyes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
He loves Ellie like a daughter. While I’ve been going in and out of Ellie’s parents’ house since I was sixteen, she’s been at my parents’ house just as often.
What I did deserves all his anger and probably a punch in the face.
“Please, Dad. She needs the house more than I do.”
She’s not working, but even after she finds a job and divorces me, I will continue to support my wife. I won’t need a judge ordering me to pay her alimony. Whatever she wants is hers.
He gives me a long, searching look, then sighs and nods. “I’ll call her parents.”
“Let them know I won’t be at the house. Ellie won’t go if she thinks I’ll be there.”
He doesn’t deny it. “Okay.”
“And tell her to keep using the money from our joint checking account. She’ll argue and try to refuse, but she’s still my family, and I will support her.” My nose runs. I wipe it distractedly.
“Son…”
I take his hand, give it a squeeze, and pull it from my shoulder. “No, Dad. I can’t come inside. Not now.” They’ll want to treat me like a son who is deserving of love. That’s not what I need right now. It’s not what I deserve now, or maybe ever. “Tell Mom I love her, but I have to go now.”
He furrows his brow. “Go where?”
“Back to the house to pack a few things. You’ll let Ellie’s parents know about the house and the money, and that I won’t be there?”
She won’t go back to the house today. Not with the way her shoulders had been shaking as she walked away from me.
She’d been sobbing. She’d done it quietly. I hadn’t heard, but I’d felt her pain.
Her anguish.
Today she’ll be with her family. Tomorrow is the weekend. Maybe she’ll move back into the house then, but likely not. If she does, it will be on Sunday, so her parents and sister can help her before her sister has to work on Monday.
“I’m not getting out of this car until I know where you’re going, son.” Stubbornness shines out of Dad’s eyes.
I get it from him.
Releasing a resigned sigh, I say, “Fine. The motel downtown.”
His brows knit together.
It’s not the nicest place to stay, but I can’t afford anything expensive.
Money needs to go to my family, and I won’t be getting paid for two weeks because of my suspension.
Living with my parents isn’t an option. Dad will be too understanding, and Mom will fuss over me.
All I want is to be alone to lick my wounds and work out why I would blow my life up the way I did.
“I won’t change my mind about this, Dad. Please. I need to go pack a bag, but I’ll text you my room number if you or Ellie need to reach me.”
I know to expect divorce papers. Ellie never says something she doesn’t mean, and she means to divorce me as soon as she finds an attorney.
He sighs again, a longer, frustrated sound, sensing he’s fighting a losing battle. “Okay, son. I love you.”
“I love you too, Dad,” I say, forcing a smile to my lips.
Reaching for his door, he turns to look at me. “Keep your phone charged and call me if you need anything. We’re here if you ever need to talk.”
“Just be there for Ellie, okay? I know she has her parents, but…”
“Okay, son.” He gets out of the car and slams the door shut.
I start up the engine, the light illuminating the disappointment on my mom’s face that I’m not coming inside.
Lifting my hand in a wave, she smiles faintly as she returns it, and I reverse out of their driveway and turn the car around.
The house is as empty as I left it, though the lights are on because I ran out without turning them off. Everywhere I look, I see memories. Good times. The few arguments we had over the years never lasted long since we didn’t have much to argue about.
In the kitchen, I put the roast Ellie left out to thaw in the refrigerator.
My wife was at home getting ready to make me my favorite dinner, and I was getting my dick sucked by my assistant, I think bitterly.
Staying in the house a second longer is torture.
I head upstairs and rush through a hot shower to get myself clean. If only it were as easy to wash off all the guilt over what I did. Head down, water cascades over my hair as a broken sound tears out of me—low, raw, ripped from somewhere deep.
You deserve this pain. All of it. You deserve to wallow in it and suffer through it for hurting Ellie, who did nothing wrong.
Finishing up in the shower, I quickly dry off and head for the closet.
Then I dress. Jeans, a T-shirt, a hoodie, and throw more clothes into my bag. Not the weekend bag. A suitcase. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I pack sweatpants, nightclothes, and stuff for work.
I pick up a framed picture of Ellie and me on our honeymoon from the nightstand.
We’re sitting at an outdoor restaurant in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
An older married couple from Arizona, at the next table, took our picture, and we’re both smiling—Ellie’s skin and mine tanned from all our days exploring.
It wasn’t an expensive honeymoon, and our parents had offered to pay for a week in Mexico, but Ellie had always wanted to go to South Carolina.
I never laughed so much, and Ellie was so happy every damn day.
Holding hands, we explored downtown, ate out every night, and made love three times a day. It was fucking perfect.
And I threw my marriage away for no good reason.
Dragging a hand through my hair, I grip the short strands hard enough to hurt. “God,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “Why the fuck did I do it?”
The photo goes into my suitcase. I need something to remind me of Ellie, of a love I threw away and won’t ever get back.
My gaze lingers on our bed, and I rub my fist over my aching heart, grab my suitcase, and walk out. I turn off the lights as I leave, checking I’ve locked all the doors.
It was our starter home. The place we knew we would live in for a couple of years, but we’d soon outgrow. I carried Ellie through the doorway as she giggled and laughingly warned me not to drop her. It was a place where we fell deeper in love with each other.
And it’s a place I don’t know if I will ever be welcome again.
I’ve driven past this motel for years.
I sometimes wondered who would stay in this run-down shithole of a motel and why.
Now I know who.
People like me.
People who have thrown away a good, happy life for a short-term thrill.
After checking in at the front desk for a week with an option to extend for a ten percent discount, I haul my suitcase through the front door, giving the gray and brown-toned room a quick glance.
It’s a place to sleep, and it’s cheap.
That’s enough.
I drag the suitcase over to the dresser, but I don’t unpack.
Ellie doesn’t want me. She hasn’t answered a single text message or phone call since I left, yet a part of me is still hopeful.
Still clinging to the idea that this storm will blow over in time.
In a day or two, my phone will ring, and it’ll be Ellie, telling me she misses me and she wants me to come home.
That we’ll go back to the way we were.
That I didn’t blow up my life for no damn reason.
The blowjob wasn’t the best I had. Wasn’t something I desperately craved or ever wanted. It wasn’t because Ellie refused to give me head or that she was shit at it.
She’s loving. As loving inside the bedroom as she is outside of it. Quiet and sweet when we’re around others, and when it’s just us, our naked bodies wrapped around each other, she gives me every part of herself.
So why’d I do it?
Why’d I let a short-term thrill with Rachel derail my entire life?
Tossing my motel key onto a large walnut dresser, I head back to my car, which I parked just outside, and grab the brown paper-wrapped bottle from the passenger seat.
I don’t usually drink. A couple of beers with friends on a Saturday night is enough for me. Or the occasional glass of wine with dinner with Ellie on a Friday.
It’s just me in this quiet, slightly musty-smelling motel within sight of the busy intersection heading out of town. And this bottle.
Knowing my parents will worry, I pull my cell phone from my pocket and text them, letting them know I’m out of the house if Ellie wants to go back there, and that I'm at my motel room in case they need to find me.
Tossing my cell phone onto a flat pillow, I kick off my sneakers and twist the lid off the whiskey, lifting the bottle to my mouth as I settle onto the bed.
I should have picked up food.
Five gulps later, and the whiskey sits heavily on my empty stomach. I had a sandwich that Ellie made for my lunch this morning, but no dinner.
My phone vibrates minutes or hours later.
I dive for it, nearly dropping the bottle I’ve been sucking dry.
My heart drops when I see the name flashing up on the screen.
Wade. My best friend since high school, when we played hockey together. Both our dreams died for different reasons. I failed as a rookie. He turned his back on a pro hockey career to be a coach at the local high school. He has a wife and two kids now.
I should have known my parents would call him about me staying in a motel and refusing to stay with them. They would worry, and so would Wade. Ignoring the ringing phone, I lift the bottle to my lips, my world increasingly hazy.
“You broke our family apart. You did that. Not me. You did things with another woman—a woman you brought to my birthday party—that make me sick when I think of them. You ruined our marriage. Not me.”
Ellie’s words ring over and over in my head. There’s no shutting them off. No amount of whiskey is drowning them out. Alcohol only makes the words louder.
More painful.
The next couple of days pass by in a blur of whiskey, greasy takeout food, not showering, and mostly ignoring my cell phone. I check it when it rings, just in case it’s Ellie. But it never is.
I somehow get through a terse phone call from Haley from HR confirming that what happened with Rachel was consensual and approving my request to change offices when I go back to work, though the thought of going back, never mind being sober, seems beyond me right now.
When she hangs up, I go back to drinking whiskey and staring mindlessly at trash TV in my musty-smelling motel room in clothes I can’t remember the last time I changed out of.