Chapter 1
Harrison
* * *
I left the office early today. I couldn’t focus. Not that it did me any good. I didn’t want to go home either. Not to an empty, lifeless apartment. I have a queen-sized bed, a dresser, and a recliner. Pathetic I know, but when I leased the place, I didn’t think it would be permanent. When my wife said we needed a break, I thought I would be there for a week or two, and then I would be moving home. I thought I was doing the right thing by giving her the space she asked for. Little did I know that day changed the course of our future. Here we are almost nine months later, and not only am I not living in the house we bought together, but I’m also less than twenty-four hours from the court hearing that will separate us in the eyes of the law.
I’m hours away from divorcing the love of my life.
How did we get here?
I wish I knew.
I wish that there was a defining moment in our marriage that got us to this point. Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers. We’ve talked about it, been to marriage counseling. We tried. We fought for our love, for the vows that we shared, but in the end, we couldn’t make it work. It seemed like nothing I did those last few years made her happy. Everything I did, hell everything I do, it’s with her in mind.
For our future.
The one that no longer exists.
So, yeah, I didn’t want to go home to a lonely, empty apartment. Instead, I came here, to the local pub on Main, Twist of Lime. It’s a small hole-in-the-wall joint. Winnie, that’s my wife or soon-to-be ex-wife—that’s going to take some getting used to—anyway, Winnie and I used to come here when we first got married. We had date nights. She’d dress up, and I would bring her here. Maybe that’s why our marriage failed. I want to blame it on that, but I know better. Winnie loved this place. It’s very low-key, and their wings are the best in town.
Sure, being here is like taking a knife to the chest, but so is that reminder on my calendar for tomorrow. The one that reminds me I’m going home alone tonight and every night moving forward. I just can’t picture myself with anyone but her.
“Can I get you another, Harrison?” Cliff, the bartender, asks me.
“No.” I raise my half-empty glass. “Still working on this one.”
“You’ve been here for over two hours, and that’s still your first. Let me get you a fresh one.” Before I can tell him not to bother, he whisks my mug away and replaces it with a new frosty one.
“Thanks,” I mumble. I really am torturing myself by being here, I wasn’t exaggerating, but I can’t seem to make myself get off this stool and go home. Maybe that’s the problem. It’s not home.
Home is with my wife.
My soon-to-be ex-wife.
“Thought I might find you here.”
I don’t bother to turn my head to see who it is. I would recognize that voice anywhere. My best friend, Chase. We met in college, around the same time Winnie and I met. He works for me now. I should have known that when he couldn’t find me at the office, he would come looking for me.
“You found me,” I say, taking a large swig of my new ice-cold beer.
“Why are you doing this to yourself, Harrison?” he asks, holding up his finger to get the bartender’s attention. “Bottle of water,” he orders.
“You’re going to let me drink alone?”
“Someone has to drag your drunk ass home,” he counters.
“I’ve been here two hours and haven’t managed to finish one beer.” He raises his eyebrows and looks at the fresh frosty mug in front of me. “Cliff felt sorry for me drinking warm beer,” I explain.
“Here you go. He’s right, you know. Barely drank any of the first. He’s obviously got a lot on his mind and drinking piss-warm beer is not going to help.” Cliff taps the counter twice and heads to the other end of the bar to wait on another customer.
“Look, man, you gave it all you had, and it just didn’t work. These things happen. You have to stand up, dust yourself off, and move on,” Chase rambles in my ear.
See, my best friend likes to play the field. I’ve never seen him with the same woman twice. That’s just not his style.
“I told you not to marry her,” he smarts.
Turning in my stool, I give him a menacing look. The same one I gave him in college when he told me that exact thing. “Fuck you,” I seethe. “You have no right to talk about my wife like that.”
“Your ex-wife,” he challenges.
“One of these days, my man, you are going to fall ass over elbows and I’m going to sit back and enjoy the show.”
“Not happening. You think I want to be here?” He points to where I sit on the barstool, drowning my sorrows in draft beer. “No thanks. I’d rather have new pussy as often as I want than to be miserably tied to one.”
“That’s just it. We weren’t always miserable.” It’s true. Winnie and I were inseparable from our first date. After college, getting married was what we both wanted. It’s after we said “I do,” that things start to get foggy. I can’t pinpoint what it was, a particular day or argument that led us here. What I do know is that tomorrow she’s no longer my Winnie, and fuck me, but I’m not okay with that.
“No,” he agrees. “Not in the beginning, but people change. They grow apart. It’s done, Harrison, you can’t change it. Even if you were contesting, which I know you’re not, the judge can still grant the divorce. It’s over, buddy. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can move on with your life.”
“Yeah.” I know he’s right, but I hate it. I hate that this is what we’ve come to. That the woman I love, with everything I am—
we’re talking deep in my soul, can never love another—is no longer going to be mine. There’s a chance she’ll even change her name back, and fuck, that’s going to wreck me.
I’ve been through our marriage time and time again.
What did I do wrong?
What did she do wrong?
Where did we go wrong?
I let work take over my life. I let my focus drift to building for our future, for the family we one day hoped to have. Working six and seven days a week, ten- and fourteen-hour days to make it work. One day I came home, and we just… weren’t the same. I got caught up in work and let the love of my life feel as though she was anything but.
I tried to fix it, but the business was still there, still needing my attention and in the end, it wasn’t enough.
I wasn’t enough.
I tried to cut back on my hours, but we were opening a second location, and I’m the owner. I had to be there. Even when I wasn’t, my phone was blowing up and our time, the time we were using to find our way back to one another, was interrupted. She told me we needed space.