Burned(15)

I mean, it was a mistake, right?
This was the first time I’d laid eyes on Collin since graduation and I’m sure it will be another decade and a half before I see him again. We can probably just chalk this up to a lapse in judgment due to an overabundance of alcohol.
Right?

Chapter 6—Playing With Fire

IT’S OFFICIAL.
It’s done. Jordan has been served the separation papers and my cell phone has been ringing non-stop since it happened. I know I’m being a coward by sending his calls to voicemail, but I really don’t give a shit. He’s had plenty of years to change, plenty of years to be the man I needed him to be.
Too little, too late.
There’s not one single thing he could say to me now that would make me change my mind. This wasn’t a rash decision. I took these four weeks away from him to really sit down and think about our life together. I was with him for so long. We grew up together and he’s all I’ve ever known. It’s a scary thing to realize that I stayed for so long because I was in love with the idea of our relationship, not with him. I was seduced by the idea of showing everyone that we could defy the odds, that a couple who met and fell in love in high school could live happily ever after. Walking into the courthouse today, I knew I’d made the right decision when I didn’t mourn the future we might have had if things had been different. Instead, it made me sad to think about all the time I wasted trying to fight for something that was clearly never meant to be.
After a few hours of work, I suck it up and head into an empty conference room to listen to his voicemails. The first couple of them were just as I expected. Jordan pleading and apologizing for screwing up, promising that he’ll get help and he’ll make it up to me. Each one grows increasingly more desperate until I can pinpoint the exact moment when he stops being upset and just gets angry. He calls me every insult he can think of, curses and yells and then apologizes for his behavior the very next message. It’s an emotional tidal wave that I’ve dealt with from him for years. His words cut like a knife and he thinks that an apology can staunch the bleeding. He has no idea that those words have piled up until the scars on my heart are so jagged there is no sewing them back together.
I feel like a fool for the guilt that’s consumed me since Collin’s kiss and my almost-orgasm Saturday night at the bar. Once the residual effects of tequila overload dissipated, I was filled with regret over my response to Collin on what was my first night out without my husband. Even though I feel nothing in my heart anymore for Jordan, he was still my best friend and the man I’d loved for half of my life. I was more than a little ashamed at having let things get so out of hand with Collin, even though I knew the combination of tequila and nostalgia were mostly to blame. Seeing him again brought back a lot of memories and took me back to a time when I was young and carefree and had my whole life ahead of me. It made me remember what it felt like to get butterflies in my stomach during a first kiss and how exciting it was to experience all of those firsts.
Listening to Jordan berate me and call me a heartless bitch almost makes me wish I would have dragged Collin into a dark, empty room at the bar and let him f*ck me up against the wall. Hearing Jordan’s last voicemail announce in a threatening voice that he spoke to his attorney and I can’t keep him out of his house has me storming out of the conference room with my phone clutched so tightly in my hand that I’m surprised it doesn’t snap in half. The loud, high-pitched shriek of the building’s fire alarm starts to blare through the office right before I make it to my desk. I look around to see everyone grabbing his or her things and making a hasty exit towards the stairwell. Usually, we get some sort of notice from building management when we’re going to have a drill. The shocked look on everyone’s faces has me quickly snatching up my purse from the bottom drawer of my desk and following behind them, down four flights of stairs to join the few hundred other people out on the sidewalk from various companies throughout the building.