The curtains raised gently in the evening breeze then flapped like ghosts and I looked out of Zoe’s open bedroom window. The waves were big from the hurricane and I worried about Astrid in New York.
A bunch of people were still surfing. They had been our there all day and I looked to see if the girls I met the other day were out there. I tried to remember their names. One was Clarissa…Rissa. I couldn’t remember her friend’s name. I thought maybe I should go out and look for them because tonight, in a couple of hours, Luna was having another one of her parties. It would be nice to see them there.
Then in the morning, Jake was supposed to come. I thought about my text to him, that I had asked him to come from sunrise to sunrise. I thought that I could turn my adoration into hate and somehow punish him when he got here. I wondered if I could blame that bizarre lapse in judgement on the lemonade, since I had found out later it had champagne in it. But there have been so many lapses of judgement recently that I was done trying to figure myself out.
The roar of the waves was glorious and I breathed in the sea air. I watched in awe as the wind would pick up tiny, tornados of sand and carry them around the beach for a minute before letting it all blow away in scattered directions. Each miniature tornado was like a life, from birth to death in 2 minutes. I thought about how my perception of life had changed since Meliah died. I didn’t want to save my money anymore, I wanted to spend it. She had worked so hard to save up and pay off her house and her student loans. She had just become completely finically secure, ready to enjoy her successes and her new baby on the way. Then it was all gone with running a stop sign. There just happened to be a truck there…just happened to be.
I walked from the window and looked down at Zoe as she slept. It wasn’t fair to her, for me to live like my tomorrow was near too. I needed to protect her tomorrow. I sat down in the wicker chair by her bed, so confused. She needed to come first. I had chosen her, I had chosen to be a mother and it was time to make a sacrifice for her, if I couldn’t make it for Chris. I picked up my phone and texted Jake, “I can’t do it”. Then I put it down and thought about how we only spent a couple of months together but he knew me better than anyone. He knew I was no angel. I smiled. He liked me for who I was and his reactions to everything I did, simply made me swoon. I wondered what he would be like as a real boyfriend. He would probably be the type to get bored easily and just when you got used to his attention and love, he would be distracted by the changing winds and that would be it. I imagined leaving Chris and being with Jake forever. I would always hate other girls who looked at him. I would always be insecure, and probably angry with him. Why did I want the person who could never love me how I needed to be loved…while I betrayed the person who loved me with respect and adoration? I rocked back and forth in the little wicker chair and Zoe turned her head on her pillow and sighed in her sleep. Her daddy loved me in a way I had dreamed of being loved ever since I was a little girl. I was so lucky. But why did he love me so much? I put my head in my hands. I so didn’t deserve him. But I was going to start to try to deserve him.
I thought about our marriage vows and about when the officiant said that marriage was hard work. He said that relationships change and grow and sometimes grow apart. Then he said sometimes the grass is greener on the other side but when you are married, it is greener where you water it. Now that sentiment was in a pop song I heard on the radio a few times and I wondered if there was a God and he was trying to remind me in this weird way, of my marriage vows. But there I was going thinking I was the center of the universe again. I thought about when I was a little girl and I would walk out to the swing in my back yard and think, “She walked out into the back yard.” I was the character in my own book, of my own life.
I thought to myself now, “She looked at her little girl and decided that her life needed to be built around this child, and that any sacrifice for her would be worth it. She decided to change her self-watering from deceit of an adulterous relationship, to yoga.”
I laughed and bit my lower lip. Ugh, I hate yoga.
But maybe I could take a dance class. In fact, at the studio where Zoe had her “spectrum” dance class, it looked like they had an “adult” ballet class I could check into. Maybe tonight I would actually talk to some of Luna’s guests, perhaps attempt to make a few friends.
I looked down at my phone. Jake hadn’t texted me back. My heart hurt. I supposed I was going to have to get used to that, until it went away, probably never.
Ungrateful Bliss 