Page 4 of Loyal
When he’s gone, I get up to shower.
It’s not that he isn’t a total catch. He is gorgeous and sweet. I know he has to have flaws somewhere, but I’m still wearing those rose-colored glasses. It’s easier to wear them when I know that he deserves much better than me. I’m not his endgame.
He is twenty-two. He has his whole life ahead of him while I’m a decade beyond him. He will still be young and chipper when I’m needing my diapers changed at the nursing home.
How could he possibly want me?
Pushing all thoughts of him aside, I finish out my morning routine and head into the kitchen. I start making breakfast when I hear my daughter’s door open.
At seventeen, she is unruly. I know people say the teenage years are the worst, but I never thought my girl would be like that. The divorce didn’t help. She still asks if I’m going to get back with Billy. The answer is always no.
I will never go back to a loveless marriage. To a man who never paid me any attention, and when he did, it was to point out what I did wrong.
I know he wants me back, but it’s not for me. It’s to save face. He can’t stand the fact that he lost the woman he married. Something he viewed as his.
I haven’t been his for a long time. He needs to realize that. As does my daughter.
“Good morning, honey. How did you sleep?”
She yawns. “Fine. I thought I heard something outside my window, though.”
I tense. Loyal walks by her window to get to mine. I better make him take a different route.
“Oh? Did you look?” I ask.
“No. I didn’t hear anything else, so I figured I’d imagined it.”
I frown. “It could have been a burglar.”
I shouldn’t be encouraging her to look when I know it was Loyal, but she needs to have some sort of survival skills.
“It wasn’t. Dad is picking me up after school today. We are going to dinner at that Italian place you like. Will you come?” She sounds so hopeful.
I know this is the moment her attitude will change. It always does.
“Honey, I already told you that I don’t want to have dinner with your father. Or go anywhere with him. We are divorced. I am moving on with my life, and he should be too. We both love you so very much, but we won’t ever be together again.”
I can see the shift in her eyes.
“You wanted the divorce, not him. He isn’t moving on. He still loves you and wants us to be a family, but you hate us that much that you won’t even try. I don’t understand how you can be such a monster.”
She pushes away from the table and rushes out of the room.
I should go after her and tell her that she can’t talk to me that way, but I am exhausted. Not from my life, but from this conversation. No matter how many times I try to explain to her that I love her and that I will always be there for her, she refuses to believe it. My ex has her so convinced that the only way our lives work is if we are together. I didn’t hate Billy when we divorced. I simply no longer loved him.
I’m starting to learn to hate him now.
I hate that he uses our daughter as a weapon. That he only cares about himself. His selfishness knows no bounds.
Yet, I can’t keep her from him. The courts gave us joint custody.
It’s a catch-22. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.
I only hope that one day she can see this situation for what it truly is.
The last year has been both a blessing and a curse.
I finally have Sami to myself. She is all mine, but not in the way I truly want her.
