Chapter 1
Lyra
“Well, here we fucking are, Brody,” I mutter to my beloved dog as I take in our new house. The moving truck just pulled away, and now I don't know where to begin. Officially making the move today has my situation finally feeling painfully real, and my eyes begin to sting as everything that’s happened over the past month hits me like a freight train. The empty mess of boxes I’m looking at perfectly echoes how simultaneously empty and chaotic my brain is right now. So I do the only sane thing, which is drop to my knees and throw my arms around Brody's furry body. The tears fall freely, and he softly whines, digging his wet nose into my neck. My soon to be ex-husband Derek was magnanimous enough to let me keep him, and it was the absolute least he could do all things considered. His new girlfriend Kayla is apparently allergic, though even if he wanted to keep Brody there was no way in hell that was happening.
“It's just you and me now, buddy,” I whisper thickly to him. His black fur is soft, warm, and comforting as I stroke his back and lean my head on his. He turns to lookat me dead on with so much concern and confusion in his intelligent, golden eyes. Humans don't deserve dogs, especially German Shepherds. His life has been upended too, all because I'm a living cliché. I’m a 36 year old woman blindsided by her soon to be ex-husband, who so wonderfully told her he wanted a divorce because he found someone new. Since that day just over a month ago, I have wracked my brain to try to figure out how I missed it. Am I so caught up in my work that I was completely oblivious to Derek being unhappy? We met 9 years ago, and were married for what I thought were 6 happy years.
We had dinner together most nights, checked in with each other throughout our workdays, had sex pretty regularly, and were getting along in my mind. Looking back, there were signs. I even questioned him about them, but he denied anything. Since I have the firm belief that a wife should trust her husband, even though none of my life experience has shown me a trustworthy man, I let it go. Stupid, stupid, naive me for trusting him instead of my instincts. Luckily, I never even took his last name because I wanted to stay known as Lyra Spinelli at work.
I’ll never forget the night Derek came home and served me the papers. He came in after his trip to the gym like always. I had just finished my last meeting for the day not much earlier, and threw a quick casserole together for dinner. It was like any other weeknight. His expression brought me up short before anything else. There was a folder in his hands.
“Lyra, we need to sit down and talk,” he said, more solemn and serious than I had ever seen him.
“I don’t think that could possibly be more of an ominous start to a discussion, so this should be fun.” Icouldn’t help it. My defenses were up in a flash and the snark came flying out.
“That right there is part of what we need to talk about. The way you use snark as a defense, even with me, is starting to truly grate on me. I’m just going to come out with it. I’ve met someone, Lyra. Her name is Kayla and she goes to the same gym as me. We’ve been seeing each other for a few months.”
There is no roller coaster in the world that could have prepared me for the drop my stomach made with his admission.
“You’ve been having an affair for a few months?” My reaction was to instantly turn ice cold, to numb the stabbing pain of what he was saying. It was my biggest fear come true, I was put in the same situation as my mother. After my dad left my mom for another woman, I watched her struggle with the aftermath. I swore I would be smart and never let it happen to me.
“Yes. There is no getting around it, and I’m not sorry about meeting her. She’s warm, and gentle, and she needs me just as much as I need her.”
“So, to sum up, you’ve been seeing someone on the side because I’m not warm and cuddly enough for you? Not only that, but any time I questioned you working late, or the extra time you spent at the gym, you were fucking gaslighting me? Did you just get home from fucking her?” My voice was shaking with female rage through my constricted throat. He sighed dejectedly.
“I think we’ve both checked out of this marriage. You’re very focused on work and no, you’re not really the warm and cuddly type. We don’t fight anymore. There’s no passion in our sex. There is nothing between us anymore. I want a divorce. These are the papers to get the processstarted,” he said, handing me the folder. I didn’t miss how he refrained from answering my question about coming home from fucking Kayla, and the gaslighting, which told me he did.
Every insecurity, every hang up I have, washed over me like a tsunami as I looked at the divorce papers. Derek had made me feel like my heart was safe with him, that I was enough. I never felt more stupid in my life than I did that night. There was no fighting for a man who would cheat, as much as I was hurting and as much as our marriage meant to me. It’s an automatic deal breaker, even if Derek confessed and had said he wanted to try to still make it work with us. So after some heated conversation, we filed the initial paperwork a few days later.
Brody's soft bark pulls me out of my spiraling thoughts as he turns in circles in front of me. This is his “I need to go out” dance, so I clip his leash on his collar and throw my sneakers back on. I can't wait for the fence to come in for the backyard so that he can run around, but for now long walks around my new neighborhood will do. The fence was one of the first things I asked about when I looked at the house.
“Ready to check out all the new smells, bud?” I ask him, and he barks more forcefully this time as his tail goes a mile a minute. It's a brisk October afternoon in New Jersey, but sunny and mild enough that people are out enjoying it. A handful of kids on bikes zoom past me in the street as I start a fast walk on the sidewalk, while the adults are gathering in a few driveways to sit around fire tables and chat. I hear what I assume is a football game from one of the driveways since the guys there are all wearing the jerseys of the closest NY team. As I pass through the neighborhood, I get the assortment of nods, smiles, and waves. What normallyshould be a brisk 30 minute walk is taking way too long. There are a handful of people who stop me to chat and make small talk about the weather, or ask how I’m settling in. The men listening to the game boisterously ask if I’m a sports fan, to which I give a half-hearted, “not really, sorry!” A young girl who is probably no older than 9 lights up when she sees Brody and takes a step toward me.
“I love dogs, is yours friendly?” she asks a bit shyly. I appreciate it that she asks me, good on whomever is raising her for teaching her that.
“He is, this is Brody. You can pet him, he loves the attention,” I tell her.
She beams and comes up to us to stroke his head, before dissolving into giggles as he mauls her face with kisses.
“We have a dog called Thor, maybe they can be friends!” she tells me excitedly.
“He'd love to meet Thor, I bet they'll get into all kinds of mischief together,” I answer with a grin. It occurs to me that it's the first time in a month I've genuinely smiled at a stranger.
“I’m Gabby, I live there,” she says as she points at the house three down from mine.
“Nice to meet you Gabby, I'm Lyra. Hopefully I'll see you again soon and meet Thor.”
She laughs and runs up her driveway, tugging on the sleeve of a woman who can only be some relation with their identical wavy brown hair and hazel eyes. I keep walking, but wave at the woman when I see Gabby pointing me out to her. “I know, I was watching. You were very good and polite,” I can hear the woman say as she smiles down at her.
My phone ringing is my savior, since I don't think I can handle any more small talk with strangers at the moment.Everyone seems very nice, but my social meter is small at the best of times, and now it’s practically non-existent. As I figured it would be, it's my best friend Gina. My social meter doesn't apply to her since she's family.
“Hey babes, you off work yet?” I ask her.
We've been best friends since elementary school. We were both sitting alone at the 6th grade skating party, feeling like the socially awkward 11 year olds we were. She marched right over to me though when she spotted me alone, and asked me to skate with her. So we skated hand in hand around that rink, and we've been sisters from other misters ever since. Neither of us knows when or why we started calling each other “babes.” It is rare that we call each other anything else now though.
“Yep, in the car. Just let me run home and change, and then I'll be over to help you get settled. How much wine should I bring? Also, I'm starving. You're ordering us lots of pizza as payment for my services.”
“Of course, I'll order extra olives for you,” I answer back.
