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I felt my eyes begin to burn, and I wanted to burst into tears. I was angry, but mostly broken at his words. His tone. I didn’t care about having kids, and J.R. could have been in the band until he was eighty, for all I cared. All I wanted was to be his wife.
I was not used to arguing with J.R. We never argued. We rarely even got angry at each other. This conversation had evoked new emotions, and I didn’t like how it felt.
“Just forget it,” I said as I rolled out of bed. I pulled an oversized t-shirt over my head. “Forget I said anything.” I threw open the bedroom door, and then I turned back to him. “I’m not going on the road with you.” Then, I slammed the door shut and stormed to the kitchen for coffee.
I felt like my blood was boiling. I was angry, but mostly hurt. I felt like the last few years with J.R. had been a complete and utter waste of time. He’d never marry me. He wasn’t interested. All I could think about was how my mother was right; he’d eventually leave. Marriage makes leaving harder.
I hunched over the kitchen counters, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. I covered my face with my hands, and I cried into them. My heart hurt as I imagined myself spending the next twenty years with J.R. only to have him walk out on me when I’d be too old to find another. I wasn’t sure that I was willing to risk that. Not anymore. I had never been much of a risk-taker, anyway, but this was my life. I loved J.R. I loved him so much that it hurt. But I couldn’t—Iwouldn’t—stick around with a man who wasn’t willing to commit himself to me. I couldn’t stay anymore.
Maybe it was a dramatic decision. Less than twelve hours before, I had been over the moon that he had even surprised me by coming home early. Still, it felt right. It felt like the only option to continue forward.
I felt myself begin to mourn him there in the kitchen as I stared mindlessly at the coffee pot pouring it’s hot, brown liquid into the carafe. I only gave myself a few seconds to do so as I accepted my decision to leave him. To walk away from this house, this life. To start over somewhere else. Alone.
I dried my tears, pulled my coffee mug from the cabinet, and poured myself a cup of coffee. The next time J.R. came home, I wouldn’t be here.
15
Present
“I was scared,” I tell J.R. as I think back on the night I packed up my bags and left. It was one of the worst days of my entire life but one that, in hindsight, I could have spared myself from experiencing.
“Scared of what?” he asks. I can tell by the way he is looking at me that this is one conversation he’s been waiting to have since he realized I was gone. I didn’t leave a note. I just took my clothes and left.
“All I have ever wanted since the night I met you was to spend the rest of my life with you,” I tell him. “I wanted to marry you. I wanted to be your wife, and I wanted you towantto be my husband. You made it pretty clear that you weren’t going to marry me, and I…I was scared that one day, you would leave me. So, I left before I had a chance to get left.” It sounds so stupid now. All of it. None of that even sounds like my own logic, and it wasn’t. It was my mother’s logic. It was fear that she had given me.
J.R. stares at me, but really, it’s more of a glare. I’m not even sure what he’s thinking. I worried for weeks after I left about what he was thinking. How he was feeling. I was an asshole for vanishing, and I can admit to that now. I don’t expect him to ever stop being angry with me. If he had done to me what I did to him, I don’t think I could stand to be in the same room with him. I might have even hunted him down and killed him. Maybe that’s a little dramatic, though.
After a few moments of intense quiet, J.R. suddenly bursts into a fit of laughter. His laughter is so sudden, so raw, so loud that it startles me, and I have no idea what to think about it. He’s even hunched over, holding his stomach, slapping his thighs, and I think I even see tears in his eyes from the laughter.
“What could possibly be so funny?” I ask him, feeling like I should smack him back into his right mind. He’s officially lost it, I determine.
J.R. turns away from me briefly before turning back. He smacks the palm of his hand against the kitchen counter and looks at me with eyes full of an emotion that I can’t even interpret. “You left because you thought that I wasn’t going to marry you?” His voice is loud, and for a brief moment, I’m afraid he’s going to wake Knox. But then I remember that she could sleep through a nuclear war.
I don’t answer him. I just stare at him. I’m partly shocked by his reaction, and I’m partly unsure of where this conversation is headed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this. Wide-eyed and wild-looking. Even when he’s playing a show, he doesn’t look this insane. This is what I did to him. I turned him into a crazy person.
I fold my arms across my chest, feeling a bit insecure. I think he’s mocking me, and I don’t appreciate it.
J.R. opens a nearby drawer and rummages through it. Then, he pulls out a small, white box. He turns his blue eyes back to mine, and then he tosses the box at me.
I catch the box in my hands, but I don’t look at it. Instead, I keep my eyes locked on J.R., waiting for an explanation. Although, I think I know where there is going. I’m not an idiot. I know exactly what is in this box, and I’m not sure there is anything else in this world that could make me feel like a bigger jackass than I do right now.
“I came home that weekend to ask you to marry me. But then, we had the argument about marriage, and I knew I couldn’t ask you then. You would think I was just asking you because you told me to.”
He’s not wrong.
“So, I was going to wait a little longer. There were only a few more weeks left on the road. I was going to come home, take you out there on the dock at sunset, and ask you to be my wife.” His wild blue eyes have been replaced with the saddest blue eyes I’ve ever seen.
I look down at the box in my hand. I won’t open it. I don’t want to see it. My heart is broken, and I am the one who broke it. I wipe a tear from my cheek, walk the box back to J.R., and then tuck it back into his hand. I look up into his eyes to say something, but I have nothing to say.
I walk past him, and I find my way out to the back patio. It was my favorite thing about this house. The patio stretches the entire length of the house, with black iron railings and a view of the ocean that is magazine worthy. There’s even a walkway that joins with the boardwalk, leading to the dock. We built a pergola with a swing and a fire pit and added Adirondack chairs for seating. We added string lights around the area to make for the most beautiful place to be on a warm summer night. I think it’s one of the most magical places on the island.
I ease into the swing, pull my knees up to my chest, and begin to process the story. The real story. Not the one I had created in my mind. Not the story where I believed that J.R. would leave one day. The true story. The one where he came home unexpectedly to ask me to marry him, and I ruined it. I’m angry at myself. Angry for allowing the words that my mother spoke to me so long ago dictate my path. My life. My decisions. I’m a different person now, but back then, I was her puppet. I think that maybe my mother was only trying to motivate me to be the best by telling me that I wasn’t. By giving me the worst-case scenario—the scenario that TV and movies never give you.
J.R. had never been anything but good to me. Even if we never got married, he loved me. He would have died for me. He wouldn’t have left me. I know this now.
I guess I can blame my mother all I want, but ultimately, the decision was mine. I was young, silly, impatient. Maybe I was worried, too, that he would meet some other girl on the tour. Someone younger. Someone prettier. Someone who fit in with his rock-and-roll scene a little better than I did. I was insecure, and my mother’s words only fed into that insecurity. Even after she died, all of that “advice” she used to give me continued to haunt me.
I let myself cry a little more, and then I decide it’s time to wake up Knox. J.R. tells me that he wants to take her out on the boat, but he doesn’t ask me to come, too. I stop by the bathroom to check my complexion in the mirror before I go to wake up Knox. I don’t want her to know that I’ve been crying; but my brown eyes are red, and my cheeks are blotchy. Even my long, dark hair looks exhausted. I roll my eyes at myself. I did J.R. a favor. He deserves a woman much better-looking than I am right now.
