Fifteen Years

  Fifteen Years

  ALLISON RIOS

  Copyright © 2018 Allison Rios

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0989302431

  ISBN-13: 9780989302432

  DEDICATION

  To all my high school friends. Oh, the fun we had!

  While life took us in many different directions,

  our memories will always be in my heart!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my wonderful beta readers over the last year: Beth, Denise, Ramona, & Deb. You ladies certainly helped shape the story, corrected plenty of mistakes, and provided valuable feedback. You are amazing.

  Thank you to the beautiful cover model, Mia.

  You’re going great places, girl!

  Special thanks to my dear friend Katie from high school, a kind, forgiving, funny, beautiful, and thoughtful woman. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss you like crazy. I passed on our love of cheesy popcorn and bad comedies to another generation, and I also regale them with stories of our shenanigans. Love you always.

  Thanks to my sweet and encouraging husband, who always supports my writing. Love you.

  And to Dad. Thanks for always believing in me. Always.

  I love you and miss you.

  Chapter 1

  Saturday, December 8, 2003

  “Ma’am, are you sure you don’t want to see your baby?”

  Rae Pinemore’s life all but ended on a cold December day, the moment she gave up her foray into motherhood.

  In a long and carefully thought out decision, she allowed the nurses to place her newborn child in the arms of strangers without even a glance at the beautiful life she’d helped create. She left the child to begin his or her life with a lie, leaving blank the name on the birth certificate where the father’s name should have been.

  In the brightly lit hospital room, the cries of a baby dimmed, and tears threatened to fall from the eyes of a young woman tired of hiding secrets. In a day, she’d escape the confines of the hospital, but Rae would never escape the consequences of her lies surrounding the birth.

  As her mother, Lorraine, tried to sooth away the pain as any mother would, Rae knew she should be doing the same for her baby. It was instinct; a need to protect. Her mind overtook her heart, however, and she turned away from the increasingly louder cries.

  A sudden and frantic beeping screeched out over the voices. The commotion drew Rae’s attention away from her own sadness and morphed to immediate concern.

  She reached down to sooth the cramp she felt underneath the wilted bubble that until just a short time earlier housed another living being.

  The sheet under her legs grew warm and wet, though it didn’t quite register why. When she lifted her hand up, the unmistakable smell of blood permeated her nostrils.

  “Is the baby okay?” Rae tried to sit up, and she found herself too weak to grip the sides of the bed and move. Her mind clouded and that terrible feeling of fear rose from the pit of her stomach.

  “That’s not the baby,” the doctor responded. He barked out orders to the staff and instructed a nurse to stay with Lorraine. Metal clattered as side rails and brakes simultaneously lifted. Rae dropped her head against the pillows while voices filled the room.

  As the blood-stained bed holding Rae was rushed out of the room, she drifted in and out of consciousness to the sounds of technology. When she awoke, several IVs were embedded beneath her skin under layers of medical tape. Her mouth almost ached from dryness and she panicked upon realizing the lower half of her body tingled with a mix of searing pain.

  “Mama,” she softly whispered.

  Her mother approached from the window, shaken from giving away a grandchild and nearly losing her daughter on the same day. The sadness in the elder’s eyes stretched beyond just loss, however, and Lorraine began to explain what had happened. A hemorrhage required emergency surgery. Along the way there were complications, but they’d managed to stop the bleeding and save Rae’s life.

  Her mother’s hesitation said everything the wishful grandmother could not – that the bad news didn’t stop there. The tears began to effortlessly slide down Rae’s soft cheeks as she wordlessly begged for the truth.

  “They did everything they could, but –”

  “But what?”

  “I’m so sorry, baby girl. They said you won’t be able to carry more children.”

  And just like that, the cries of babies weren’t the only ones resonating through the wing.

  Chapter 2

  Monday, September 28, 2017

  {14 years later}

  On an autumn night cold enough to freeze his breath, James Preston stared up at the familiar constellations in Jessup’s sky. He’d admired the flawless, bright, natural artwork since childhood. The crisp metal of his truck snuck through the thin layer of plaid fabric and tickled his skin with goosebumps, though he paid the sensation little mind. The chill brought him comfort and for a moment, offered him a reminder that he could indeed feel anything at all.

  With an empty house and an emptier heart, he turned to the stars in a last-ditch effort for answers. They never provided him any insight in all his years of wishing, but he continued to wonder if they might. Their light, which took light years to reach a point visible to man, paled in comparison to the seconds, hours, and years he’d spent in a semi-hypnotic state of sad indifference as he waited for a sign to guide him in the right direction.

  A white streak flashed to the east and he followed its minuscule trail; minuscule in contrast to the breadth of the vibrant night sky. Somewhere, he imagined the woman who held his heart might be doing the exact same thing. The light cloud in front of him diminished as he sucked in his breath and avoided making a wish this time. It had been pointed out to him in his college days that shooting stars weren’t stars at all; they were, in fact, meteoroids that entered the atmosphere and thus became meteors. The scientific explanation ruined their magical appeal.

  He knew it seemed silly for a grown man to believe in wishing on stars. Wishes were possible in the same way magic was; simply slights of the hands and misdirection that led to a solution meant to put a person at ease, but usually only causing more confusion in the end.

  The papers arrived at his door early one evening just a few days earlier. He knew immediately what the thick packet was, and he nearly signed the line beside every bright pink sticky note without a second thought before realizing the sheer awfulness of his expediency. Sending her signed papers the next day would only serve as another blatant reminder of how easily her love could be discarded. Instead, he set the papers aside on the antique cherry wood table she’d so lovingly picked out for their foyer at a vintage furniture sale. Katie had chosen it in the hopes that beautiful things could take the place of the sweet little faces they’d hoped – and failed – to fill their home with. Perhaps, he convinced himself, waiting a few days to sign would at least make Katie feel a little less unloved than she had during their marriage.

  “I figured I might find you here.”

  A familiar face emerged from the shadows. His heart jumped not so much from the sound of her voice but rather the realization that he actually missed hearing his name roll off someone’s lips. For so long, he’d feared her voice. The chirpy tone had signified sadness, regret, and anger, and the slightest hint of it sent his blood pressure skyrocketing in their final months together. He found comfort in knowing that without all the pressure, Katie’s voice had once again found a welcome place in his soul.

  “I’m that predictable?”

  “More than a decade of living with a hopeless romantic teaches a woman a few things. You always did love looking at the stars.”

  James had loved Katie, once upon a time. It was just a different kind of love than she
deserved and needed. Her stunning black hair, blue eyes, and legs that seemed never to end had only increased her appeal. Her outward appearance rivaled that of a runway model, but genuine beauty radiated from within. Men were jealous of him for the simple reason that she chose him. The guilt of having such a specimen of perfection in love with him when he couldn’t return the sentiment settled in early on in their marriage. He knew he should love her; he knew he wanted to love her. Yet somehow, he just didn’t feel for her the passion she so desperately craved. His mind always wandered to the love he’d last experienced in his early days of college.

  James’ inability to love didn’t stop him from asking Katie to marry him. He thought that perhaps the best way to forget Rae would be to replace her. After all, she’d moved on with her life. She’d gone to college, started dating, and reminded him time and again that they were on different paths until she eventually ignored him completely. Now, so many years later, he felt twice the guilt at not only having wasted so many of Katie’s years in trying to return a love he never could but in creating the disillusion within her that she wasn’t good enough. In his many discussions with Gramps, James readily admitted that Katie would always be too good for him.

  “There’s something peaceful about the sky on a clear night,” he responded.

  “Peaceful. That’s something we’ve lacked for a long time, isn’t it?” Katie asked.

  He nodded. The pressures of life and the obstacles thrown in their path had unquestionably raised the emotional toll in their household.

  For two people who’d known each other – and every inch of each other – for fourteen years, the distance and uncertainty between them made the duo virtual strangers. When they’d first met, they could spend hours on the phone talking about everything and anything without a moment’s hesitation. An endless array of topics filtered into the conversation with ease as they learned every detail about the other. The last few years had found nothing but silence slated in between words uttered in passing or shouted in anger, so much so that he’d begun to hate the person he’d become.

  “You’re here about the papers?” The moment the words slithered out from their cavern of animosity, he wanted to pull them back.

  “Wow, cutting right to the chase, huh?” she replied with a forced smile. “You’re getting pretty good at that. Actually, I wasn’t really coming to talk about those, but if you want to, we can.”

  “I’m sorry,” James replied. “I’m just mindlessly searching for things to talk about. I hate silence. I especially hate awkward silence.”

  “We’ve hit that point, I guess.”

  “What point is that?”

  “The one where we can’t sit together for three minutes without finding the only thing we have to discuss is our pending divorce.”

  “I’m sorry about that, too.”

  He wished for a moment he could erase all of the pain of their history. Despite any scientific proof that wishes weren’t real, his heart could not bear the reality of a world without the possibility of charms and miracles. He reluctantly and repeatedly reminded himself – unsuccessfully – to forget about what could happen and focus instead on what would happen.

  The seasons changed over and over for years without asking his permission, and he resented that time held no mercy for his broken soul. The summer heat turned into falling leaves until snow coated the town. Then the snow succumbed to the first blooms of spring. Over and over, time continued. The tulips in his garden multiplied, though not as quickly as his gray hair, as he slowly gave up the battle against Mother Nature in his garden and his body.

  The quiet house with four bedrooms that he’d bought with the expectation of the sneaky footsteps of kindergartners stealing another cookie and teenagers tiptoeing out in the late hours of evening sat half empty. The first bedroom housed one teenager who he loved like a daughter, but wasn’t truly his. The other bedrooms were slowly made over into sewing rooms or studies as two adults lost in their sorrows attempted to remove any reminder of the brokenness of their love; unsuccessfully. Though painted in bright colors and filled with high-end furniture, the rooms sat unused and unwanted until their owners began to feel the same about themselves.

  “You don’t need to keep apologizing,” Katie said.

  “I do, though,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to us. I do know, however, that it all sits with me.”

  “You know exactly what happened to us, James, and it sits with both of us. This is just the way life is. Sometimes what we want and what we get are two very different things. Neither one of us handled our wants or needs very well, and definitely didn’t handle each other’s right.” She leaned back against the hood of the truck they’d bought together and stared up at the stars dangling above. “You out here wishing for something?”

  “Shooting stars won’t make your wishes come true. I think you told me that.”

  “Sometimes,” she replied, “nothing will.”

  She turned to face him, and he took note of the few delicate wrinkles etched around her eyes.

  “I hope that you can find the courage to tell Rae how you feel,” she said.

  The words burrowed into him like the head of a blunted arrow. Though he’d never said as much, Katie knew the real reason behind the years of arguments and frustration; it wasn’t that Katie wasn’t good enough – she just wasn’t Rae.

  “Katie," James said softly.

  “It’s okay, James.”

  “No, it’s not okay. I don’t want you to be Rae.”

  “No,” she said as she wiped the blinding storm from her eyes. “You didn’t want me to be Rae. You just want Rae. You might have thought you hid it well all these years, but you haven’t. You may not believe me, but I understand. I know what it is like to love someone so much that your heart is never the same; so much that you’re quite ruined for anyone else who may come into your life. You wake up in the morning thinking about them and go to bed praying that they’re happy. I know what it’s like to look up there at those sparkles in the sky and make a wish on the offbeat chance that maybe, magic does exist. I know how much you love her and I know that you love me, just not in the same way. I know because you’re my Rae. You’re the one I’ll be thinking about for the rest of my life.”

  The fact that he was doing to her what Rae had done to him sent another wave of anguish through him. He hadn’t thought about his and Katie’s relationship like that before. He’d never even considered that to her, he was the one she’d long to be with for the rest of her life.

  “I’ll be honest. It scares the hell out of me. I hope for your sake that she loves you as much as you love her because I don’t wish the pain in my heart on anyone. Despite everything, what I want most is for you to find the happiness you’ve been missing for so long. I worry that if you can’t find it with her, you’ll end up alone and miserable. No one deserves that.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said.

  “I do.” Katie tilted her head again. He met her gaze. “You’re a good man, James, and I hope you find what you’re looking for. I’ve been thinking about it a long time and my initial plan was to tell you that I’ll be here waiting for you if things don’t work out.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, now I’ve decided I won’t be there to pick up the pieces. It’s not that I don’t love you, because I do. I just know that I deserve more than being someone’s second choice.”

  James shifted his gaze back to the sky because he couldn’t bear to look at her. He didn’t want her to see the tears lingering on the edge of exposure for fear the sentiment would make her think he had changed his mind. He wanted to wrap her in a hug and tell her that they should stay together but it wouldn’t be for the right reasons. It would be to protect her, and not because he loved her the way she deserved to be loved.

  “I wouldn’t expect that. You should never be treated as anything less than a perfect piece of someone’s life, Katie.”

  “I kind of wish you would h
ave realized that a long time ago,” she said with a wavering smile. “Might have saved us both a little bit of heartache. The only thing worse than knowing you can never love me enough would be allowing myself to be your fallback option. Neither of us deserves that.”

  “Do you ever wish you hadn’t met me at all?” James didn’t want to ask, but he’d been pondering the question for quite some time.

  James closed his eyes and felt the petite fingers he’d grown to know gently graze his cheek as her lips pressed against the opposite side for what would likely be the last time.

  “I am lucky for the years I’ve had with you,” she whispered. “I will always be grateful for every moment I’ve spent loving you, and while I would change how our story ended, I wouldn’t change experiencing life with you. Now it’s time for the next chapter of our lives. I hope that this one brings both of us the ending we just couldn’t find with each other.”

  Chapter 3

  Monday, September 28

  Rae sat at the oversized and unadorned steel desk and stared at a blank laptop screen. A beautiful, blue sky expanded behind her just beyond the thick glass windows of her high-rise office. The city view mesmerized many clients, winning over their hearts nearly as much as her work did.

  She loved her career. It filled the idle time when she’d be otherwise preoccupied with thoughts of everything she wanted to forget. She didn’t have kids to tend to or a husband to escape the city with, so she filled her time in other ways. She longed to arrive at the office each morning and get lost in the stories she helped condense to thirty seconds for the sake of selling someone something they didn’t need. She thrived on the challenge and wondered if she’d ever be good enough to trick herself into a different mindset.