She closes a chapter

The two weeks I spent in Nick and Dani’s spare bedroom passed in a blur and, surprisingly, they were two of the best weeks I’d had in a long time. Instead of feeling pathetic and sorry for myself, I took that time to regroup and reassess my life – or, more accurately, what was left of it.

The day after Jack had assaulted me, Dani and I took half an hour to pack what little was mine into boxes and bin bags once we’d found that the house was empty and the spare key was where I usually left it. As I’d suspected, Jack had gone to work like normal, and with a sinking feeling, I realized that it was normal for him to manipulate me like that; for him to hurt me like that.

That moment of realisation sent me over the edge and Dani had had to restrain me from trashing the house I’d never called him. I wasn’t going to be a fúcking martyr and “only take what I’d come into the marriage with”. No, I took whatever the hell I wanted, imagining that I’d sell most of it, especially since a trip to the ATM had revealed that he’d frozen my account, leaving me penniless.

Out of everything, saying goodbye to Holly was the worst part. She was a friend, a mother and a confidante all these years and the idea of not seeing her again made me weepy.

“I’m glad, Sofia,” she’d said, using my first name for the first time ever. After copping a look at the bruising I’d tried to hide, the smile on her face seemed forced. “I’m glad you’re going away for good. Mr.Harrington just isn’t husband material. He doesn’t know how to do it.”

“You…you know about that?” I’d sputtered, rubbing at my red eyes while Dani ferried boxes to her car.

Holly snatched my hands in hers, squeezing. “I have eyes, my dear, and I can see that you weren’t happy,” she said gently. “But this last holiday? Something changed over those two weeks. You were smiling more. Younger men will do that to you.”

My eyes had widened, mortification that this older woman knew of my indiscretion setting in. “How did you –”

“The first time I visited my niece over there, she was actually sick,” said Holly, “but after that? I reckoned you needed some time alone with your young man. So I kept going out.”

I couldn’t believe it.

“You deserve to smile,” she went on. “Just so you know, dear, a man who can make you smile and forget your troubles,is a man worth keeping around.” Then she told me that she was handing in her notice to Jack.

So I had nothing to my name but the few items I deemed important. Jack’s lawyer had served me with divorce papers two days after Gunter’s party and I briefly considered framing them before I remembered that they had to be signed and sent back. Once the divorce finally came through, I would be Sofia Lopez again and I could breathe.

But I had no Vaughn.

He’d stopped calling after a week of my ignoring him and stupidly, I felt his absence like a missing limb. He only wanted what was best for me. He’d said he loved me. Of course, it was probably in pity. Or maybe just a ploy to get me to leave Jack. Either way, loving someone because you pitied them wasn’t love, no matter what he wanted to believe in his fabulous rainbow-filled dreamland. We hadn't known each other that long and, despite how much he made me laugh, we were all about sex. Great sex does not a relationship make.“Penny for your thoughts?” Dani wanted to know, sliding a hot cup of tea across the table to me.

Sunlight streamed through the open windows and into the small dining room, setting the Sunday breakfast my best friend had made aglow. She sat across from me in a ratty terrycloth bathrobe, her strawberry-blonde hair tamed into a ponytail.

I shook my head, pushing all depressing thoughts of Vaughn aside. Reaching into the pocket of my nightgown, I pulled out a lone Pill and popping it into my mouth before chasing it with my tea. The black liquid burned going down my throat and I took a few seconds to offer Dani a lame, “I wasn’t thinking.”

Dani arched a brow. “Don’t insult my intelligence, Sof. Come on. It’s just us girls today.”

Nick had taken Jess and Nico to his mother’s place for the day and the house seemed so big and empty without fourteen-year-old Jess nattering on thephone and eleven-year-old Nico shooting things on his Xbox.

“Fine. I’m thinking about what the hell I’m going to do.” My eyes shifted to the Classifieds I’d been meaning to check out after breakfast. Just the thought of paging through all these odd jobs at my age was enough to make the bacon in my gut want to re-emerge.

Danielle’s face softened. “You know you can stay here as long as you like, sweetheart,” she told me. “Nick likes you, my children adore you – way more than they like me, that’s for sure – and I love coming home to catch up on Teen Wolf episodes with you.”

“You know we’re too old for that show, right?”

She waved a flippant hand. “Old, schmold. Jess thinks I’m cool. Totally worth it.”

I laughed, and the sound was strange to my ears. “I can’t stay with you and your family forever, Dan. I need to start fresh, get back out into the real world.” I sighed. “Being with Jack was certainly living a sheltered lifestyle.”

Danielle scowled. “Don’t even mention that abusive twat’s name in this house,” she snarled. “You’re miles better off without him, Sof. Listen, the hospital might need –”

“No, thanks,” I said quickly, gripping my cup a little too tightly. “I… I miss nursing, working with you, but this time, maybe I should do something different.”

She gaped at me. “Like what?”

“I don’t know.” I bit my bottom lip. “I really don’t know.”

Dani beamed at me. “I have an idea you might actually like…”

 

Before I went to nursing school, I did some secretarial work and that was why Dani figured I’d be pregnant to as atemporary replacement for Nick’s heavily pregnant secretary. Nick owned a garage that did custom jobs on cars and bikes. A week on the job and the most I’d done was to create a new, more efficient filing system for repair orders and the like. I was shocked by how many cars were involved in wreckages. Not being able to drive suddenly seemed like a blessing, as did submerging myself in the little intricacies of a repair shop.

But being alone in the front of the shop meant that my thoughts could hang above me like a dark cloud, just waiting for the chance to rain. Worries… Worries were like a plague of locusts. Was I ever going to get out my best friend’s house, no matter how much she insisted I wasn’t a burden? Was I ever going to be able to stand on my own two feet after so long of being carried by a husband who only wanted to control me?

Will I ever forget Vaughn bloody Parker?

That question haunted me every waking moment. During the day, when I was at the computer, wondering if he stared at his own screen and squinted at the rays like I did. And at night, when I was alone in bed, the memory of his thick cóck inside me as clear as if it was yesterday. The nights were the worst for me. Sometimes, I cried. I never knew my tear ducts could produce so much liquid until I cried for Vaughn bloody Parker.

He’d stopped calling. I’d stopped pretending I didn’t care.

I’d gone three weeks without sex. Maybe that was all I was missing when it came to Vaughn. Maybe that was the only reason I was going out of my mind missing him.

You should call him, the voice in my head said desperately.

But I couldn’t call him. I could never go back to him. My mind kept replaying his declaration of love – his silly, out-of-the-blue declaration – and the more I thought of it, the more ridiculous I felt. How would the two of us work exactly? Me, with my struggle with independence, my open wounds from my disaster of a marriage. Him, utterly boyish and naïve and séxy-as-sin. I’d always be thinking of our eleven-year agegap, would probably constantly be out of my mind with jealousy whenever he so much as glanced at a younger girl.

No, I needed someone my own age; someone mature and on the same level as me. Someone who didn’t claim to be in love after two bloody weeks of fúcking nonstop. Someone who didn’t look like he’d just stepped out of a GQ. Someone who didn’t say ridiculously sweet things to me when I was in his arms, or when he was inside me, or when…

“Stop it, Sofia,” I said aloud, receiving a strange look from Jon, one of Nick’s mechanics. He’d come to my desk to use the telephone.

“Yes, I talk to myself. What of it?”

Jon held his tattooed arms up, stepping away from my desk. “Nothing. As you were,” he added before backing away.

“Do me a favour and man the phone line for me, Jon? Tell Nick I’m going out for lunch,” I said to him, already gathering up my things. It was nippy outside, as it always was, and my coat was one of those big, thick and fleecy movie-star ones.

“Yeah, fine.” He glanced at his grimy hands. “I’ll just…hang around for a bit.”

Shouldering my handbag, I stepped outside, rubbing my hands together. There was a McDonald’s just a block away from the garage and the short walk gave me little time to think about how pathetic my life was. Getting a ride to my boss’s house with my boss to sleep in my boss’s guest room, just two doors away from my boss. Being so stupid to never think of putting some money away for myself during my ten-year marriage. Never standing up for myself whenever Jack would hit me. Never… The list was endless.

Stupid, stupid Sofia, all alone in this world.

But I wasn’t alone, was I? I had Danielle. I had her family. I had Vaughn.

Yes – had him. Past tense. You don’t have him anymore and you’re better off, right?

The voice in my head was a bítch and I didn’t want to listen to her anymore.She was still going off in my head when I finally joined the line in McDonald’s and my mental argument with her was the sole reason I didn’t notice Jack until he walked right up to me, a paper bag already in hand.

“Sofia?”

He’d shaved his hair, giving the illusion that he’d never had a receding line, and his murky brown eyes now blinked at me from behind wire-framed glasses. Despite the fact that this was a weekday, he was in a golf shirt and jeans – Jack thought denim was for hipsters – with loafers. My once-over ended when my eyes settled on his bare ring finger.

“Jack.” Cold detachment was what I settled on. For weeks I’d wondered if I’d quiver at the sight of him again, or if I’d finally fly into a rage over the way he’d brutalised me over the years.

“I thought it was you,” he said softly, audible even though the restaurant was filled to the brim with people. “You look well.”