First off, I want to apologize for not gracing you with any New Years Eve updates yesterday. It’s possible that I spent the vast majority of my day in bed recovering. I don’t know why I do that to myself. I swear, I only drink to the point of a hangover 2 times a year anymore – but New Years and my birthday are starting to seem way less fun when I consider the loss of the entire next day!
That update will come soon though, I promise.
Just as soon as I finish telling you that other story I’ve been working on.
The one with parts one, two, and three that you should probably catch up on before delving into what I’m about to tell you next.
Its funny how much time can seem to stop sometimes. How many thoughts can fly through your brain in just a few moments.
I sat there, staring at the phone and then back at him. Trying desperately to figure out what to say.
Not wanting to make a wrong move or do anything that could make this moment even more uncomfortable than it already was.
I felt trapped.
And more than anything, I felt like I needed to know what he was thinking before I said anything at all.
But looking at that text… it just didn’t make sense. I would have understood:
“I miss you.”
Or
“I’m sorry.”
Or even
“I still love you.”
But, “I love you so much! ;) XOXO”?
It just didn’t make any sense at all. Not given the circumstances. Not considering how she had ended things. And not when you took into account the fact that in 2 months, she had not once expressed any kind of regret at all over her decisions.
And really – what was with that smiley face?
It just didn’t seem like the kind of text you would send to a guy at all, but certainly not one under these circumstances. So randomly and out of the blue.
“It doesn’t make any sense…” He said. The first words he had spoken since the text had come through.
And I breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that we were on the same page. That I could proceed with caution.
“I don’t think she meant to send it to you.” I said. “I think she must have meant to send it to someone else.”
That was the only thing that really made sense. The only thing I could wrap my head around. I’ve done that before. Been reading old texts from someone when suddenly a new text comes in from someone else and when I go to reply to that – I wind up replying to the person who’s texts I was looking at originally instead.
On accident.
It would mean that she would have had to have been looking at his old texts, thinking of him in some way, but at least it made sense.
This theory of course sent him into a little mini panic. Was that text meant for another guy? I could see the fear washing over his face.
We had discussed this possibility before. He had actually asked her early on if there was someone else, and she had denied it. But my opinion, based on what I knew, was that there had to be. That given the way things had gone down; it was the one thing that would make all the pieces fit together. Initially he had been pretty resistant to this idea, but more and more things had come out lately that had made him begin to acknowledge the likelihood.
But this – the use of the ‘L’ word and the chance that it could have been meant for another man – I could see it tearing him up inside.
I was convinced that wasn’t the case though. That there was no way that text had been meant for a man. Not any man. It seemed like the kind of text you would send to a friend after they just said something inspiring, or motivational, or uplifting. The kind of text you would send in response to hearing exactly what you had needed in a moment of sadness.
Not the kind of text you would send to a potential or past love interest.
There was also the question or whether or not she knew about me though. At one point he even asked if it was possible that she knew he was with me now. If she had sent it because she was jealous, and was intentionally trying to make things between us uncomfortable.
I didn’t buy that either though. When she had walked away from him, she had pretty effectively walked away from all of their mutual friends as well. Friends who had embraced me with open arms. Friends who were steadily becoming my friends too. I just didn’t see any of them running to her to give the details on the new woman in his life. Even if they had run into her out and about and it had just come up – I was sure we would have heard about it.
But it is a small town, and I did acknowledge that it was possible she knew about me. Even still though, it didn’t make sense. And there was certainly no way she could have known he was with me at that moment. Whether or not she did know about me, I don’t think it had anything at all to do with that text.
After discussing it for about 15-20 minutes though, we decided that he should respond. That he deserved at least some kind of explanation.
So he did. Simply with a question mark. Nothing more at that point.
Thirty minutes later, when she still hadn’t responded back, I could see him starting to break.
And I was so angry.
I will say that there are many times I have felt sorry for this girl. I obviously don’t know her, and what I do know comes only second hand from both the boy and those close to him. I am not in any position at all to make a judgment. But my honest opinion has always been that she is just very lost. That she got married early on before she had taken the time to figure out who she was and what she wanted out of life. And that all the decisions she had made since deciding to leave had been made quickly and without a whole lot of rational thought behind them.
I’ve always believed that the day would come when she would regret her choices, and to some extent – my heart really went out to her for that.
I guess I can relate to throwing away something good with someone you love, for no other reason than because... you're broken. And lost. And confused.
But in this moment, I was so angry with her. For playing with his heart and mind. For being so careless.
And for popping up to screw with his head, when we had just been doing so well.
I convinced him he should push the subject. I know he would have likely just let it go, but all along I felt like he had made things too easy for her. Like he hadn’t really held her accountable at all for the promises she had made to him. It was hard for me to see, because I knew how much he was hurting. He kept that from her though. Both out of pride, and out of not wanting to force her into staying if it wasn't what she wanted. He had given her whatever it was she had needed in the ending of their marriage, without putting any more burden of responsibility on her than was absolutely necessary.
In some ways it was admirable (and reminded me so very much of how my father had behaved in going through his own divorce), but in others – the part of me that wants to see people brought to justice for their actions wished that he had made her face the damage she had caused a little more.
So I know it was my influence that encouraged him to text again “I don’t think you meant to send this to me, but would you mind explaining? You really should be more careful about what you send to me…”
Initially, I didn’t expect any response at all. I certainly didn’t expect the one she provided.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about?” She texted back. “I haven’t sent anything. I’m sleeping. You woke me up, and I have to work early in the morning. I’m going back to bed now.”
Now I was really pissed. We all knew she sent it, so why couldn’t she have the balls to own it? Why lie like that? Why try to make him feel stupid?
I taught the boy how to take a screen shot of his text messages and send to her exactly what had come up in his texts.
I figured there was no denying that tactic, and that she probably wouldn’t have been expecting him to confront her with actual proof of what she had sent.
I was right. And she immediately started backtracking. Apologizing, and swearing it hadn’t been her. Claiming that her phone had accidentally sent her sister a similar text early in the week as well. That she couldn’t figure out what was going on, but she really had been asleep.
At this point, my eyes were about to fall out of my head from rolling so hard. But I was keeping my mouth shut. Allowing him to handle this however it was he needed to.
So when he penned his next text, I couldn’t help but laugh:
“Whatever. Must have been the text Houdini.”
It was the first time, to my knowledge, he had confronted her with any kind of snarkiness at all. And this was a boy who I knew was fully capable of being sarcastic. So I was proud. Proud to see him put her in her place a bit, by calling out how ridiculous the entire thing was.
We both laughed.
And then we put his phone back on the nightstand and tried to get some sleep.
It didn’t work of course. We were up most of the night talking. Dissecting the entire situation. He didn’t hear from her again that night, but that did nothing to ease the adrenalin we both had pumping. I’m fairly sure we were up talking until both of our alarms began to sound the next morning.
We were talking, but we weren’t touching.
It was like suddenly, there was a wall between us. An invisible barrier that neither of us was exactly comfortable attempting to break through now.
We stayed on our own sides of the bed. Talking, but never once physically connecting.
I wanted to reach out to him. I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to hold him and let him know I was there.
But for some reason, I couldn't. And he made no attempt to alleviate the space between us either.
The next day he had to go a few hours out of town for work. I heard from both he and his buddy throughout the day and into that evening. He checked in the next as well, but they didn’t get back in town until fairly late.
We texted back and forth, but didn’t speak again. And even in our texts, it felt like there was something missing. Like there was a giant elephant in the room we were both trying to dance around without ever once acknowledging.
So Friday morning, I assumed we would be hitting up the grocery store together before heading out to the cabin with his friends. We had split up earlier in the week what he and I would be responsible for getting, and what they would take care of. When I got off work earlyI let him know I was ready to hit up the store, and when he responded with a few extra things he needed me to get – I just assumed he hadn’t yet gotten off himself. So I went and took care of getting everything we needed without thinking much about it.
Until I texted him as I was leaving to let me know when he got off work so that I could meet him at his place (where we were planning on leaving from). His immediate response was that he was already home and I should just come there – a good 40 minutes away.
He must have been off work for a decent amount of time by that point.
I tried not to be irritated, and told myself it wasn’t that big a deal. But when I got to his place and he was sitting out on the deck with his shirt off drinking a beer, I’ll admit that for the first time – I was a little less than pleased with him. If only because I had just been shopping for an hour for his friends. Trying my best to get everything we would need for 3 days in a remote enough location that we wouldn’t have an opportunity to head back out and get new supplies if there was something I had forgotten.
Let’s just go ahead and call it my first real girl moment in this. I was irritated, possibly irrationally so, because I felt like he a.) hadn’t wanted to spend time alone with me and b.) hadn’t cared to share in the responsibility of preparing for the trip.
Thankfully, I bit my tongue. Because looking back, it was kind of a silly thing to be irritated about.
It was just that….. I wouldn’t have hated being on the deck in my swimsuit with a beer in my hand too, instead of navigating through the grocery store during the chaos that was everyone in Anchorage also trying to prepare for a big holiday weekend.
I wouldn't have hated having his help either.
He did jump up immediately to help me unload the groceries from my car to his truck though. And he had already loaded up the four wheeler we would be bringing along for the off road trek out to the lake.
He had done his part.
I guess I had just wanted us to do it all together.
Like I said; my first real girl moment.
We got in the truck at that point for the drive out to where we would be meeting his friends before loading up the four wheelers for the second half of the journey. Most days that drive would have taken about half an hour, but with traffic the way it was – we were a good hour and a half out before we got there.
And nothing about that drive was overly enjoyable.
He barely looked at me most of the time. There was a definite distance there between us. Something I was having a hard time putting my finger on.
I began to regret agreeing to this trip. Spending time with him so remotely for 3 days was going to be beyond difficult if the entire time I kept feeling like he didn’t really want me there.
I knew why he was being like this. I understood that it had to do with her text. And the fact that neither of us was talking about it just felt so wrong to me. We talked about everything. We were always talking. To have this thing standing between us now just felt… suffocating.
So finally, I brought it up. Asked if there had been any further developments with the “I love you” drama.
He hesitated, and I knew there had been. That he was contemplating whether or not he really wanted to tell me.
Finally though, he pulled out his phone and said she had sent him an e-mail. He was trying to pull it up for me to read, but we were too far out for him to get internet at this point.
So he told me what it had said instead. That she had written the next day to apologize. She owned up to the fact that she had sent the text. That contrary to my initial assumption, she had actually meant it for him. Apparently she had been drinking, and had typed it out on her phone before realizing how inappropriate it would be to send. But when she went to delete it, she had hit “send” on accident instead. Which prompted her to completely freak out, and in turn to deny, deny, deny when he had questioned her about it.
From there I guess she went on to tell him that while she didn’t regret her choices, and she did think they were making the right decision in moving forward with the divorce, she did want him to know that it hadn’t been easy for her. And that there were times when she still missed him and thought about him. That she hoped he was doing well.
Most of what she said I think left more questions for him than anything.
He never did respond to that e-mail.
He told me that he had never really planned on telling me about it at all, but that because I had asked – he couldn’t lie.
It was the first time he hadn’t immediately volunteered such information to me. The first time it felt like in some ways, he was keeping it from me.
And I understood that, I did. There was no part of me that felt like I was owed that information. Or like I deserved to be kept in the loop.
Especially considering the fact that he himself hadn’t responded.
But I could tell that e-mail, the whole incident in its entirety, had shaken him. I could tell it had created a rift between us as well. That for some reason, it had made him want to keep certain things from me. Rather than discussing it all openly and honestly like we had up to this point.
And the only thing I couldn’t figure out was whether or not that rift would heal itself.
Or if we would find ourselves with this awkwardness between us from here on out.
For the first time though, I knew that I was nervous.
Nervous about whether or not we would ever get back to that good place we had been just a few days prior.
And nervous about the next 3 days we were about to spend in very tight quarters in the middle of nowhere with just one other couple.
(to be continued...)
ADSPACE
