Chapter 11
BLAME MYSELF
“Iknow. I should. I need to. I was sitting here thinking it through.”
She hadn’t expected Blaze to drive by, let alone come down to see if she was all right.
She’d waved at him with a smile, but guess he wasn’t buying what she was trying to sell.
“Can I ask more about your situation with him? Maybe be a third party to give my thoughts. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“You know,” she said, turning to look at him while he continued to eat.
One meatball was gone, half the pasta and he was cutting into the next globe of beef.
“I haven’t had anyone to really talk to in a long time.
Not a man, that is for sure. And here you are, someone I’m flirting with.
Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve flirted with anyone?
Let alone just admitted that, which is even stupider because you were probably just being nice and now I’m a headcase in your mind. ”
“Whoa,” he said, putting his hand up. “Slow down. You’re not a headcase.
You’re not wrong on the flirting because I’ve been doing it back and maybe it’s been a while for me also.
So put that all to the side for now. I just want to know about Billy and that situation.
Don’t worry about the rest. We’ll get to that when we can. ”
Not what she’d thought he’d say, but she appreciated it just the same.
“Thanks. The shortened version with Billy. We went to high school together. He was a jock who liked to party and had a reputation with the girls. Not really who I socialized with, but we knew of each other. I went away to college, returned, he did the same and we ran into each other out one night. Got talking, he said he always noticed me and I told him he was full of shit.”
“Good for you,” he said.
“He wasn’t used to someone not giving in.
Maybe it made him chase me more and the more he did, the more I realized he was a nice guy under it all.
Did he like to drink and have a good time?
He did. Did I think he did it more than I was comfortable with?
Yes. But it’s not as if he drank nonstop.
He didn’t. We got engaged after a year and married and a few months after I found out I was pregnant. ”
“Planned?”
“No. But we weren’t upset over it.”
At least she wasn’t, but she never knew his true feelings for years.
That the pressure to support them while she was out for three months and the cost of a child was more than he could handle when he was so young and still wanted to have fun.
“What changed? You said he had a reputation. Did he cheat on you?”
“He did, but I didn’t find that out until after I left him. He actually thought I knew and that was why I left, but it wasn’t. He was drinking more. Not just out with friends, but at night after work. He didn’t know his limits and when he hit one too many, he just was combative. Verbally.”
“So you fought more?”
“A lot. I tried not to engage when he was drinking to avoid fighting. I didn’t want Gracie to hear and get upset.
But then one day I realized he was drinking all the time.
There wasn’t a good time to talk to him about anything.
When he was home, he was drunk, then he was high.
I found the weed and we fought over that.
I don’t care that it’s legal. It’s not what I want in my life.
None of it was what I wanted and everything I thought he’d be like when we were kids. ”
Which stood to reason why she fell for it as an adult and should have gone with her gut. Her first reaction to who Billy had been in school.
But she thought she was older, wiser and could handle him.
She could. Until she couldn’t.
“Was it only marijuana?”
“No. He was popping pills. He didn’t care what or what he mixed with the alcohol.
Bills weren’t being paid. He didn’t have money and I’d ask where it was.
When we’d fight, he’d throw things in the house.
Not at me, but around the house and break them.
Gracie woke up one night and heard it. Came down to get me and was crying. ”
“I hope that was the day you left,” he said. He put the plate down. She could see he was barely holding onto his control, let alone his words.
Yet for some reason with Blaze, that lack of control in the moment didn’t upset her.
“It wasn’t. Billy apologized right away, grabbed his keys and left. He didn’t come home for two days. We talked, he said he had a problem, he needed help, and wanted it.”
“You fell for it?”
Her shoulders tensed. “I won’t be insulted over that. It was the man I married and loved. Or did at one point. Our marriage was a mess, but he was asking for help and I couldn’t turn my back on him.”
“No,” he said. “Sorry. I probably would have done the same thing.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. You would have gotten help, but you would have left long before me and I blame myself for not doing that enough. I don’t need someone else to put it on my shoulders.”
He reached for her hand, laid his much larger one on it and rubbed his thumb over her knuckles until she loosened her fist.
He had a way about him without words. Something no one else ever had and it was exactly what she needed.
“Sorry. Go on.”
“Fast forward, he went into rehab, it worked for a bit then he relapsed. I knew it’d happen.
It’s common. But I wasn’t prepared for it again when I foolishly had hope.
I’d seen the signs of the drugs again. I found the empty bottles of liquor he was hiding.
We had a fight, a big one. Gracie was screaming and I picked her up, left and went to my mother’s.
The next day I came home and packed up stuff and moved in with them and served him with divorce papers. No more chances.”
“Good for you.”
“I’d support him with getting help, but it wasn’t in our lives. He went back into rehab and during that time he confessed he’d been cheating on me. He thought he was clearing the air for us to start over, but all he did was give me the hammer and nail for the coffin.”
“Are you divorced or just separated?”
“We’ve been divorced for a year. He’d been clean. We moved on. I knew he was dating on and off, but he had introduced no one to Gracie that I was aware of. I was in an apartment, working, we were going about our lives.”
“He relapsed again?”
“He did. He got mixed up with a woman who was drinking and doing drugs and he fell into the same cycle. He was yelling at me again in front of Gracie. I get it, people fight, but this was like before. Not merely a disagreement.”
“But a full-out war? Verbally?”
“Yes. I’d tell him to leave and he would and I’d calm Gracie down. But I could see she didn’t want to go with him after that. Mind you, he was always sober around her. He never yelled or treated her that way. It’s not that.”
“Are you sure?”
She sighed. “I want to say I’m positive because I believe she’d tell me, but I don’t know for sure.
But the last time he came to get her, she didn’t want to go.
He flipped out. Sober, mind you. But flipped out.
Started throwing things around my apartment, she’s screaming and crying and he has no excuse to even say why he’s doing it.
Or I didn’t think he did, but he admitted later that he was using again. ”
“So you had custody changed?”
“Yes. Nothing until he was clean again and supervised only. The courts agreed. She’s afraid of him. I’m not forcing her to go. The kid has been through enough. The interviews to get her side of everything because I understand they can’t take it from a divorced couple who is fighting.”
It’s where the system hurt and helped at the same time.
She knew the process and knew what her daughter would have to go through and hated that she was supported and not forced but had to experience it because Arden gave Billy so many chances.
“And that’s where you’re at now? And what happened today?”
“Yes. Every two weeks, Billy and Gracie get three hours together without me but with a court approved and appointed mediator. They can just be at Billy’s house, which was our old house, but it was uncomfortable for Gracie.
When he brought her out to do things, she opened up more.
I’ve seen changes in her and them. I’m happy to see it. I really am.”
“Which makes you such a great mother,” he said. “A great person. Few could be that way.”
“I know. I’m trying. Even through the mistakes I’ve made, I’m still trying.”
“Which is more than most would do.”
“I’ve moved on from him. A long time ago.
He knows it now. He has a girlfriend who wants to meet Gracie, but we are nowhere near that.
That’s what is starting things up. He’s always had an addictive personality and I never noticed it until we were done.
Women, drugs, alcohol. With me, it was about making me happy.
Wanting to be around me all the time. Doing what I wanted even if I didn’t ask.
It was almost smothering, but there was a tiny part of me that liked the attention. ”
Not the type of thing you want to admit to a man you just said you were flirting with, but she’d come this far so might as well get it all out there.
“Is that what you want or how you normally are in a relationship?”
“No to it all. And I haven’t been with anyone since my divorce. Haven’t looked. Haven’t cared. Haven’t wanted anyone. I’m kind of burned out.”
“But you’re flirting with me.”
“I hear some cockiness in your voice. Yes, I am. I was. I’m sure you’re going to run fast when I bring this plate into the house now, but I wanted you to know.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I think you’re a strong woman who gave someone too many chances for all the right reasons and he took advantage of it.”
“I think that too. I’m glad someone else feels the same and isn’t telling me I’m an idiot.”
“I’m sure you say it to yourself enough, you don’t need another person to do it.”
She threaded their fingers together and held onto a steady hand for once in her life. Just to test it out. See how it felt. Was it an anchor to hold her down or one to steady her?
She was going with the second and hoped this didn’t come back to bite her in the ass.