Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 110113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110113 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
“What?” Anger grips my windpipe and squeezes. “You shouldn’t have been lifting any of that shit. Where the hell was he?”
Ava shrugs. “Working. Where else? I finally got sick of asking him to build the damn thing, so I did it myself.”
“I have no words.”
“I had a lot of them, and they all started with the letter F.”
Leave it to Ava to find humor in a very dark story.
“Did he apologize?”
“He did. He promised to do better, but—spoiler alert—he didn’t. When Junie was born, the wheels just totally fell off on our marriage. I was still trying to do everything on my own, but I couldn’t.”
“No one can. Not with a newborn.”
“Thank God I had my parents. Well, my mom, really. I was drowning in resentment, and I begged Dan to help more. We’d get into these huge fights, both of us just screaming our heads off. He’d be a little more helpful afterward, but then we’d eventually settle back into our roles. I was the doer; he was the provider. That’s one thing I hadn’t expected when I got married and had a kid—all the unspoken expectations that came with being a wife and a mother.”
“I haven’t thought about it like that—”
“I mean, marriage is kind of a trap for women. A cage that keeps you from flying too far or too high. Really, I found it to be the death of freedom.”
I blink.
“It’s why I never want to get married again,” she continues. “I had to sacrifice my freedom to keep my husband happy, and that’s a crappy bargain.”
Her words are like a punch to the chest.
“Wait. For real? You never want to get married again?”
She looks at me, her eyes going wide as the realization dawns. “Oh, wow, you definitely do, don’t you?”
“Hell yeah I do. I’ve never been married. Lizzie and me—she’s Ella’s mom—we never tied the knot. Hell, we barely even dated.”
“Talk about stories.” Ava raises her brows. “That sounds like one.”
I fight the crestfallen feeling taking hold in my chest. I am skipping many, many steps ahead here. This is my first date with Ava. It’s almost criminal to be thinking about marriage at this point.
Is it, though? Neither of us has the luxury of fucking around. We have kids. Demanding jobs. Lots of people rely on us.
I also know what I want at this point in my life. I want to have the kind of happy, respectful marriage my parents did. Have a family. Have more kids. Do it all with a partner who shows up and keeps her promises.
I want a partner who will stick around. Because this single-parent shit, it’s lonely. And hard. And I would never choose to keep doing it all by myself if I had that choice.
“Finish your story first,” I say, knocking back my wine.
Ava eyes me. “Are you all right?”
“Finish your story.”
“I mean, that’s pretty much it. I needed Dan to step up and help out more. He didn’t. Meanwhile, I quit racing because I couldn’t juggle everything. We went to counseling. Still nothing changed. I always had this secret belief that it’d be easier to raise June on my own, without having to worry about Dan and his feelings and his moods. I tried so hard to keep him happy. Keep him around. But the harder I tried to be the perfect wife, the more miserable we both were. So I let myself off the hook and moved out. Turns out life is easier when I allow myself to have some fun and put my needs first. Well, not easy—”
“Oh, I know.”
“But better. Now here I am.” She holds out an arm. “I can honestly say I’m happier than I’ve been since before I got married. But Lord, it was a broken road that led me here.”
I squeeze her knee. “It led you to me.”
She searches my face. “How can we have such great chemistry when we want totally different things?”
“Do we want different things?” I resist the urge to refill my wine. Ava can drink all she wants, but I gotta drive. “Ever think it’s not marriage that’s the problem, but the guy you were married to?”
She tilts her head back and forth. “Yes and no. Dan was a shitty partner, no doubt about that. But I also think we’re all socialized to take on shitty roles without realizing it. No one talks about these things, but we live them day in and day out. Minute by minute. It’s really hard to undo all that conditioning. I’m not sure if it will be any different in a relationship where you’re not signing marriage papers. I hope it will be, but …”
“Do y’all split custody?”
“We do. Well, we’re supposed to. I have June during the week, and he’ll come grab her every other weekend. It’s about all he can handle, even though his parents help him out a lot when he has her.”