“Really?” she screeches, squeezing my hand and bouncing in her seat.
“We’ll think about it and talk about it,” I reiterate in a calm, even voice. But there’s no stopping her excitement. The mere fact I’m willing to consider it is a huge victory because she also knows when I make my mind up about something, I don’t change it.
“Thank you, Daddy.” She tugs her hand free, launches off the chair, and throws herself at me.
I’m so surprised at the spontaneous act of affection that I almost don’t hug her back. It’s been so long since she’s shown this to me and I have to say, it’s the best feeling in the world.
I squeeze her tight, pressing my face into her neck, wishing my sweet girl will always love me the way she does right now.CHAPTER 3EllaI love my vanity. It was one of the main selling points of this house when we were hunting last year after Jim got traded to the Vengeance. It’s in the middle of the long, two-sink vanity and about four inches lower so I can sit in a chair to do my makeup and hair. It has a built-in makeup mirror framed in silver with a magnifying lens to one side for detailed eye makeup work.
Most women look at the kitchen first—and ours is fabulous—but I like primping, taking my time with my hair and makeup, and this little piece of the house just called to me.
I think the reason I like primping so much is I don’t do it often. For years as a stay-at-home mom, I didn’t bother with such things. I might slap on some mascara to run out to the grocery store, but that’s it. During the years I got my degree—same. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone as I was happily married.
Even now, unless I’m doing a Zoom meeting with my ad agency team in New York, I don’t bother. Hell, I’m lucky if I get out of my pajamas on any given workday.
I would get dolled up when Jim and I went out on a date or a team-related function. Those moments weren’t infrequent, but they weren’t often. Regardless, I cherished them because I’d always been a girlie-girl, and I can tell Lucy is going to be the same way.
Tonight, I’m sitting in front of my vanity, adding waves to my long hair with a round iron. My makeup is done to perfection, and my hair is coming along nicely.
I’m getting ready for a date, except it’s not with my husband. While he’s spending the evening with our daughter, I’m going out with David, the man I’ve been dating for the last three weeks. I’m paying extra attention with my appearance, wanting to knock his socks off.
It galls me the reason I want to do this is because I don’t want to give any credence to how much I’ve been thinking about Jim since he visited yesterday.
And that kiss we shared.
And the feelings it stirred, not just from his touch, but from his declaration he wants me back.
No, getting back together with Jim isn’t going to happen. Even though I still love him, I can’t go back to that life. I can’t accept not being his everything and no matter what he might say, I wasn’t that to him for an exceedingly long time. It hurt too much, and while I might miss all the good things we had going for us they don’t outweigh the bad that tore me apart in the end.
Huffing out a sigh of regret and longing for everything we’ve lost, I cap the mascara I had just swiped across my lashes and turn to set it in my makeup drawer.
My gaze locks onto the edge of a photo pushed toward the back. I should ignore it—I had put it in this drawer over five months ago when I asked Jim to move out.
Not really wanting to, but not seeming to be able to help myself, I grab the photograph and pull it out.
I try to examine it without emotion, but I can’t. It’s of Jim and me about two years after Lucy was born. We were so young—just around twenty-two, I think—and we were on a little summer vacation. It was just the two of us. My parents watched Lucy, and Jim whisked me off to the Maldives. We were living a fairy tale with him being a professional hockey player making more money than we even knew existed, having a beautiful baby girl, and I had a husband that adored me.
The picture is a selfie as we were walking along the beach at sunset. Our faces are pressed in close together, both beaming at the camera, and just before Jim had snapped the photo on his iPhone, he turned and kissed me on the cheek. I’m grinning like a fool and Jim’s eyes are closed—almost in rapture—as his lips press against me. It’s a simple picture and even though his eyes are closed, the entirety of it is of a man deeply in love with his wife. It’s a moment that stirred such deep emotions when I first saw it that I knew I’d have to print it so I could see it often.