Page 61 of Broken Vows

I want to take it back. To laugh it off, pretend it was nothing more than politeness. But I can’t—not when the truth is sitting heavy in my chest. “I’m not,” I say quietly. “I promise.” I squeeze her hand, grounding myself. “You’re smart, driven, have a great sense of humor, and beautiful.” So fucking beautiful. “Not only are you ‘wife material’, you’re what men dream about.” You are what I dream about. “You will never, ever waste another second thinking about what this guy said to you. Got it?”

The smile that breaks through brightens the entire space. She nods and returns to her crepes.

And I return to wondering what in the absolute fuck I’m doing.

27 Lexie

“Well you look as beautiful as ever,” I say to my mom as I walk into her apartment. “Yellow’s a great color on you.”

“To think I raised you to be a decent human being,” my mom says with a scowl. “You’re not too old to ground. Just remember that.”

I laugh, set a few bags of groceries on her counter and start stacking her fridge. A month after my mom’s accident and head injury, the bruising has morphed from a terrible red, to purple, to a now faded yellow. We can joke about it now, but the relief I feel knowing she’s not permanently hurt still hits me hard. “Did you have your appointment with Theo yesterday?” I ask, keeping my gaze steady on the fridge rack as I stack yogurts, and not on her eyes.

It’s been less than a week since Theo and I had breakfast and wandered through the market together, and if I thought he occupied my thoughts before, I was wrong. I saw a side of him I didn’t know existed. Kind. Open. Human. Our conversation over crepes seemed to put us both on unfamiliar ground, easing into an easy, almost intimate comfort. So much so that my plans to confront him about being a freakishly obsessed stalker, and demand to know why he rented a place next to mine, evaporated. As we strolled past the different booths, the easy silences felt just as natural as talking. And something in me didn’t want to break the spell. It’s weird, and creepy, and should be more concerning, and yet, there’s a sense of safety knowing he’s watching me. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way, and it feels… nice.

For once, he opened up—about the pressures at work, his strained relationship with his mother after I caught him ignoring one of her calls and I couldn’t help myself asking what was up. He even reluctantly admitted, after I forced it out of him, that the approaching wedding was making him only slightly nervous.

We’ve texted every day since. It usually starts wedding talk, but slowly it morphs into swapping movie suggestions, him telling me stories about his patients, me venting to him about vendors, and telling him about former bridezillas, and grooms I wanted to strangle.

My heart is stretching in a way I didn’t know it could, and I know any moment it’s going to snap. Our budding… friendship… will end when the job is over. I can’t delude myself that when him and Annabelle are married, we’ll keep in contact.

And something about that hits hard.

“Yes, my appointment with Dr. Astor was great yesterday,” my mom says, handing me the rest of the grocery items. “He said I have the body of a healthy seventy-year-old.”

I laugh. “You’re only fifty-five.”

She waves me away. “I’m just kidding. He said the new thyroid meds are working, and the vitamin D levels are inching up, but he wants to see them higher.” She hands me the final item, and I close the door. “You know, I sure had that boy pegged wrong.”

My heart squeezes so hard in my chest that I grip the countertop. I think I may have misjudged him, too. I’ve been replaying what happened at the university over and over in my mind and the thought that I might have had this all wrong keeps itching at me.

My mom grabs two sodas and a bag of potato chips, and settles into the couch. “Are you two still spending a lot of time together?”

I nod, and stuff chips in my mouth. She doesn’t need to know how much time, even though I want to tell my mom everything. But who in their right mind tells their mom that they’re actively falling for an engaged man who once ruined their life? Or at least thought they ruined their life.

Maybe I’ll never know if he got me expelled. My life is different now. I’m different. He’s different. It might be time to finally let this go.

A spotlight shines on the terrible thing I’m doing. Explaining my feelings to my mom, how I ache for him when he’s not around, how I’ve never felt so safe and protected and stimulated, would fall on deaf, judgmental ears. My mom’s Catholic. I can already see her reciting the Hail Mary under her breath as her thumb and index finger rub a phantom rosary.

Religious or not, I deserve the wrath.

She must know that I don’t want to say much more, because she turns on the TV and we resume our bi-weekly ritual of watching the local news while painting our toenails. Several long moments pass and my mom leans into me.

“My beautiful, sweet girl,” she says as she gives me a soft smile. “I love you. And you deserve to be happy. Just make sure you’re taking care of yourself too, okay?”

With those words, I return to face the TV and blink back tears.

“Justin, noooo. Don’t make me go alone,” I plead into the phone, trying to reason with my former best friend who just told me that he thinks he has food poisoning and cannot accompany me to an event tonight. “That creepy ass rep, Cody, is going to be there and you know he won’t leave me alone.”

Tonight, the most connected vendor we work with is hosting a client appreciation night and Sydney said (demanded) that Justin and I attend to represent our company since she’s out of town on a wedding. I don’t love these events, but they’re a necessary evil in this line of work. And now that I’m a lead, my presence is expected. But going alone is going to be miserable.

After Justin apologizes, again, Theo suddenly pops into my head as someone to bring instead, but I immediately shut it down. Inviting a client to a work event would cross every professional boundary, not to mention the fact that he’s getting married in ninety days. And I’m still digging into his connection to Olivia, still telling myself I want to take him down—or at least that I should. But, my feelings are muddying my judgment. I know I need to focus on the task at hand. I know I need to let him go.

But I can’t.

Every moment I spend with Theo, I fall deeper and deeper into his orbit, and it’s dangerous. The Barlowe and Astor families are powerful, wealthy, untouchable. If they found out even a fraction of my intentions, my career would be over and I’d be blacklisted from every company in the city.

And yet, I can’t shake this feeling that Theo doesn’t want this marriage. He rented an apartment next to mine! He seeks me out, talks to me, sees me in a way no one else ever has. A man who makes someone feel like this can’t want to get married. He just can’t.