Hitched(42)

And love it.

And nurse it back to health.

And name it Jane, because at four I named everything Jane, even a boy puppy destined to grow into a massive golden mutt with the deepest bark you’ve ever heard.

And then Jane was joined by two kittens I found in a garbage can in second grade—Oscar and Weiner, because at eight that was hysterical—and by the time I graduated high school I had three dogs, four cats, and a ferret. All someone else’s castaway creatures that I’d rescued from one miserable situation or another.

All creatures that I never hurt the way I broke microwaves and ceiling fans, who made me feel normal when I knew I was anything but.

I had a hell of a time rehoming them all before I went to college.

I didn’t want to rehome them. I wanted them to stay in their cushy digs in the back yard, in the swanky shelters and play yards I’d built for them with my own two hands because Mom refused to have animals in the house.

But I knew my parents wouldn’t take care of them. They would feed and water them, sure—they aren’t monsters—but they wouldn’t play with them, listen to them, or spend time soaking up all the priceless wisdom animals give away for free if you pay attention.

They wouldn’t truly care for them so the best thing I could do for my fur friends was to find people who would.

Letting go of Jane was the hardest. He was so old by then, rickety in his bones and so sore some mornings I had to squat down, leverage both hands under his hips, and deadlift his one hundred and fifty-pound body into an upright position. But I finally found someone wonderful—a CrossFit teacher a few towns over who let him hang out at the gym with him and his buddies all day and fed him way too many treats—and I let him go.

Because I loved him.

Utterly. Completely.

Unselfishly.

As I push into a seated position on the hard floor where Blake sleeps peacefully on the sleeping bag beside me, there are tears in my eyes. Even though I know by now that I’m not a little girl anymore—I’m not trapped in the pantry or in a house where I can’t beg, borrow, or steal enough love to keep from starving—I’m still haunted.

My mother’s second voicemail today didn’t help.

I’m letting them down again and embarrassing them and causing headaches that could be handled so much better, according to her.

All this time, since the morning I woke up in Blake’s bed in Vegas, and realized I’d gotten married in a pheromone-wasted stupor, I’ve been telling myself that it was a mistake because I don’t believe in marriage.

I am anti-marriage and Blake is pro-marriage, a simple formula that explains why it can never work between us.

Horse plus cow can never equal goat.

It’s against the rules of nature.

But here in the dark, with nothing but the two of us and a big empty room filled with the echoes of all the sweet things we did together a few hours ago, there’s nowhere to hide from the truth.

It isn’t that I’m anti-marriage. It’s that I’m terrified to let him love me.

I don’t know how to be loved.

Even if he were the kind to be happy with something more casual—a girlfriend or a friend with benefits—I still would have pushed him away.

Because I learned the hard way what it’s like to beg for love and be denied, to hurl myself at the shut doors of my parents’ hearts again and again until I was bruised all over, and to keep going back for more punishment because I was a child who needed love like I needed air. I needed their arms so badly it took years of dutiful snuggles from Jane before I felt anything close to okay.

And I know I could come to need Blake’s arms even more, so much that, if he decided to let me go—and he would, because I never learned how to love any better than my parents did—it would destroy every tender thing left inside of me.

I would fall and fall and never quit falling.

The thought of that deep, dark hole of guilt and ineptitude, the one that would suck me in and devour me for the rest of my life, wrenches a sob from my throat. I smash a fist to my mouth, holding my breath as Blake stirs, mumbling sleepily as he rolls onto his other side.

But after a moment, it’s clear he’s still asleep.

I wait another long minute, ears ringing and heart racing in the loaded silence, and then I quietly dress, putting everything on except my shoes, which I hold in my hands until I’ve shut the tasting room door softly behind me. It isn’t until I’m almost to my truck, however, that I realize I left my keys inside, somewhere in the darkness where they will be impossible to find without disturbing Blake.

And I can’t fathom going back into that tasting room right now, back into that place that will always be home to one of my most beautiful memories and a terrible, stinging sadness. It will forever be the place where I realized how broken I still am, how broken I will probably always be.

Because better to be broken than tumbling forever through infinite sadness.

“Isn’t it?” I ask, hot tears spilling down my cheeks, but going cold before they reach my chin. The spring night is cool, almost chilly.

The perfect night to run away from my problems.

Even though I know they’ll chase me to the ends of the earth.

They always have, but this time, I won’t drag Blake down with me.

Any more than I already have, anyway.

Without another thought, I jog off through the fields, taking the shortcut from Blake’s place to mine. It’s five minutes by road, but not much more by foot. Half the time, he’ll walk over to fix my toaster or patch up my hard drive, if the job is small enough that he doesn’t need his big toolbox.