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20 – YESENIA
Our initial reunionwas sweet and emotional after we got past the anger of what we’d both been through. These last three weeks have been pure hell. Thrown back in time, I’ve realized that everything I ever thought to be true was not. Everything I’ve been told and believed never happened.
I was punished when everyone was convinced that what I knew to be true in my heart was a figment of my imagination.
The last three years of my life have all been a fucking lie!
Somewhere deep inside, I knew that it was a lie. I guess that’s why I didn’t faint when Kincaid and I arrived at my apartment door three weeks ago, only for me to see my husband standing there.
My initial comfort in him being back in my life hasn’t been lasting. It’s like getting used to someone new that you just started dating. It hasn’t been easy to fall back into our old routine because we’ve both changed in little but various ways.
I’m used to eating on the run or out, and he’s always here expecting a home-cooked meal. I’ve grown comfortable with the silence in my home, but he always has the TV on turned to some political show, and it’s loud.
I’d forgotten how messy he could be in the bathroom, always leaving things on the floor without bothering to clean up. Coming home to find that my favorite bottle of wine or snack that I’d been looking forward to all day is gone doesn’t make a happy Yaya.
Then there are the subtle ways he watches me when he asks a question, trying to discern if I’m lying. Never mind that I’ve caught him several times checking my phone to see if Kincaid and I are in touch.
Cade’s been texting, but I haven’t been responding. I finally locked my phone when I caught Nicky checking it the last time, creating a huge argument. He seems bored now. Before, he was always on the go with something to do, and I was the one running behind him.
It’s not good, but I want to believe we’ll work through our differences.
“Yaya,” he calls to me now from the bedroom doorway.
I turn around from the living room window where I’ve been watching the rain fall for the last hour. It reflects the pain and despair in my soul.
My gaze takes all six-four of him in as he lazes against the doorway with his arms crossed over his midsection. For a man of forty, he’s in excellent shape. There’s not an ounce of fat on his body, thanks to the twenty pounds he’s lost in his absence. It’s hard to believe that he’s kept up his rigorous workout routine in the three years he’s been away.
“Yes?”
“You coming to bed?”
I sigh and shake my head. “I...I’m not sleepy.”
He pulls his lanky frame away from the doorway and stands behind me, where I’ve turned my gaze back out the window. Nicky envelopes me in the cradle of his arms. I used to feel so safe here, so alive.
Things are different now. I’m torn between two men and feel like I’m betraying them both.
Why now? Why fucking, now, when I finally decide to move on with my life after waiting for his ass for the last three years, does he show up?
Nicky kisses my head affectionately as he always used to do.
“I missed you so much, sweet girl.”
Sweet girl.That was his nickname for me from the time that I met him while I was in college. He attended one of my mother and stepfather’s various charity functions. We were intrigued by one another from that first night.
We hid our affair from my parents for a year before my mother ran into us, leaving a restaurant one night. She was initially upset about it but finally came around after a discussion with my stepfather. The next thing that I knew, the three of them, my mother, stepfather, and Nicky, were planning a wedding. In time, my mother, in typical Liliana Garcia-Hamilton fashion, deemed my husband too good for me.
“While in the hospital, I always dreamt that someone out there loved me and wanted me to come home. I always hoped that someone was searching for me. I just didn’t know who she was,” he says softly in my hair.
