Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 131209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 656(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 437(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 656(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 437(@300wpm)
What the fuck?
“I don’t know, Robert, ask her to leave!”
“Please calm down.”
“Calm down? You want me to calm down? Jesus Christ, do you not realize that Brooke could know that you have another family, that you have another life? Does that not matter to you?”
Oh my God, I’m going to throw up.
“Yes, Abbie, I am fully aware of what is going on. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? That doesn’t help anything now! When I agreed to this, Robert, when I agreed to your lifestyle and your indiscretions, it was on three conditions. Do you remember those? Huh?”
“Of course I do...”
“Well then let me remind you again! You would ALWAYS put our marriage, children, and love first and foremost. ALWAYS!”
“I know...”
“You promised me that they would never find out and neither would our friends or family, that you would take your lifestyle away from here to where it wouldn’t hurt us or anyone we knew. Do you remember what you promised me?”
“I do…”
“And you swore to me that you would always come home to me! You would never be without me! What the fuck, Robert! I can’t believe you!”
“Jesus, Abbie, I know, baby, I know… I’m so fucking sorry, but we don’t know that she knows anything. You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“She’s not here! Her best friend is here, but she is not, Robert, and you said you heard something. You said you heard people! Christine could barely move to answer a question this morning and the help was given the weekend off, so there is no other explanation other than Brooke being home and seeing you or hearing you with that woman!”
“Can you just calm down, please?”
I couldn’t take it anymore, I had heard enough. I stepped away from the door and left. I got in my car and just drove around with nowhere in particular to go. My cell phone rang endlessly and text messages plagued me; I finally had to turn off my damn phone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone or listen to what anyone had to say.
I couldn’t believe what I had heard. My mom knew about it and she didn’t care.
“As long as you come home to me…”
“Always put our marriage first…”
“Always put our children and love first…”
“You promised me…”
It echoed and repeated itself in my ears, making them ring and bleed with deceit. My mind was racing with thoughts, one right after the other, attacking its way into my heart and making me feel a loss. I felt like someone had died. That’s the best way to describe it; I mourned something I didn’t understand.
I wept and brushed away all my tears, exactly the way my mom had done with my dad’s indiscretions.
I found myself by the pier on South Beach. I sat underneath it for hours, contemplating life. How ironic that at sixteen, I was rationalizing life and all its glory. I didn’t want my life to change, not with my parents nor my friends. I wanted it to go away. I wanted to feel like the normal sixteen-year-old girl that I was when I woke up the day before. Excited that it was my birthday and that I had received a car. I wanted to end the summer and go into my junior year being captain of my squad and starting to look at colleges. All of the normal stuff, I didn’t want it taken away from me just as everything else had.
I knew that if I told my parents that I was aware of it all then nothing of what I wanted would happen; everything would change, not just my outlook on love and marriage, but my life as well. My relationships with everyone would become corrupted and molded into something that I didn’t even want to think about. I wasn’t a coward. I would have been fully able to confront both of them, but a huge part of me didn’t want to.
I was exhausted. And I guess I was also selfish because as much as I knew the truth, as much as I knew that it was lies and deceit tainted with I love you’s and promises of tomorrow… and you’re the only one… it didn’t matter because it was mine. It was mine to do with as I saw fit. I had the problem in the palm of my hand and the only solution I could conjure up was to make it all go away.
And by that, I mean to keep my goddamn mouth shut.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder…
CHAPTER SIX
<>D<>
“Mommy, will you play with me?”
“No, honey, not right now. I need to get dinner ready for your dad. You play by yourself, okay? Like a good boy.”
Lauren was taking a nap or she would play with me, and Mommy still had Alexis baking in her tummy or maybe she would play with me, but I didn’t think so because when Lauren was a baby, she didn’t do anything beside sleep, cry, and poop.