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From the moment that Annmarie had died, I’d felt like I lived in a fishbowl. There was constant hovering, never-ending ‘are you okays,’ and then there was Jubilee. Always reminding me of what I’d lost.
Not intentionally, no. But each time I saw her, I saw Annmarie.
Unlike Annmarie, I hadn’t been ‘all in.’ I’d been ‘kind of, sort of, in.’ I loved Annmarie…but what I felt for her, I’d never been sure if it was due to me being with her since we were so young, or because I actually loved her.
When Annmarie and Eitan had died, I’d been prepared to tell Annmarie that I wanted a break. That I wanted to see what college was all about. I wanted to experience life, and I wanted her to experience it, too. Not spend all of her years on me without once seeing what was out there.
Then she’d died, and not only had my life changed irrevocably, but my outlook on life changed.
I’d had my choices ripped from me the moment that she was pronounced dead by the paramedics. And when I’d met Raine, I’d finally seen a light at the end of the tunnel.
Raine hadn’t looked at me like I was broken. She hadn’t thought that maybe I was just a little bit too caught up in my dead girlfriend. She saw me for me.
At least, I thought she had.
When we’d gotten married, it’d been almost a spur of the moment thing.
She’d been almost hit by a car as we were out on a date, about a year into us dating, and I’d seen my life flash before my eyes.
I’d seen myself, forever alone, because I was too scared to take that next step in case my significant other up and died on me for a second time.
So, I’d asked her to marry me, right there, in the middle of the crosswalk in the forecourt of her college campus.
She’d said yes, and about two days later we’d gotten married at the courthouse without either her parents or mine knowing.
We found out she was pregnant a few days after that, which was when I’d gone to the recruiter and signed myself up for the military.
“I thought that you got the dog in the divorce?” Jubilee asked.
“What the hell does she want with the dog? She hated that thing,” Pete mumbled. “Wasn’t she the one that dropped him off at your pop’s place because you deployed and she didn’t want to take him for walks?”
I nodded once. “One and the same. And Bronco hates her. I’m not sure why she wants him.”
I’d gotten Bronco, my now thirteen-year-old Golden Retriever, from the humane society about a week before the nearly getting ran over incident and subsequent proposal. Bronco had been mine ever since, and despite Raine putting up a little bit of a fight due to her pettiness and dislike of me at the year mark of our marriage, he’d remained mine.
“Ask her,” my father suggested. “I saw her and the new guy a few days back.”
Her and the ‘new guy,’ who was her new husband, moved back to our hometown after my divorce. She’d waited a solid two weeks before she’d started seeing someone else, all the while I had to sign divorce papers while I was deployed and deal with all the guys in my unit tossing me sad faces when they saw.
“Hear she’s pregnant,” Pete said. “Think she’ll be able to carry this one?”
Raine had miscarried our baby at a little over twelve weeks gestation. Which I knew was a very solid reason into what started her downward spiral of hate toward me.
She wanted our life back. She wanted me back at Northwestern, playing football, and coming home at night. What she did not want was me gone for months on end, and her having to pay bills and live in a place she didn’t want to live while she waited for me to come home.
I’d gotten the message that she’d lost the baby while in the end stages of boot camp, and our reunion after I graduated wasn’t the happy one that I’d expected. It was stilted and awkward.
The awkwardness continued after I found out I was being deployed to Afghanistan. By the end, I was counting down the days until I could get on the plane and leave her weirdness behind.
At first, I’d decided that her newfound attitude was due to her miscarriage, but the more time I spent with her, the more I realized she was relieved that she was no longer pregnant with my baby.
Needless to say, when I stepped on that plane, I was a different person.
One that had regrets when it came to marrying a woman that looked at me like she hated me.
“You say that like it’s happened more than once,” I said, sounding surprised.
