1. Avery
“I think it’s time for us to consider divorce, Evan.” I say this with a quiet evenness that surprised me considering how erratic my heart was beating. I feel my eyes prickle, but I refuse to show the man in front of me any type of emotion that would give him the upper hand again.
I stare at the man I have loved for the last 3 years. I study his neatly groomed hair. When the light hit it just right, it looked dark blue. I try to avoid looking into his brilliant pale blue eyes that contrast with his otherwise dark features. His nose, so regal and straight, leading down to his full lips. His lips. So sexy.
He was gorgeous on top with a perfectly sculpted bronzed tanned body—broad shoulders, well defined arms and chest, a six-pack, narrow hips, and that V that led to the most intimate part of him. He was and still is my everything. All 6’3 of him.
“Divorce? Where is this coming from? I really don’t have time for this, Avery.” He looks down at the papers I had handed him and then looks back at me with annoyance and proceeds to walk out of our bedroom, papers still in hand. I couldn’t believe that he would just walk away. This has been an ongoing pattern for the last two years of our marriage. He didn’t even care enough about our marriage to have a proper discussion with me.
I feel tears prickling my eyes, but I refuse to let him dismiss me like I was some sort of nuisance in his life that he could just keep swatting away. I square my shoulders, walk out of the bedroom, and march toward his home office down the hall. Suddenly, this NYC penthouse with all its luxury feels like the loneliest place in the world to be. I realize now that it wasn’t a home. It was a barren place just like our marriage has been.
I pause, staring at myself in the decorative mirror that hung in the stark white hallway. Medium brown shoulder-length wavy hair. Hazel-green almond-shaped eyes. Button nose. Pink round lips. I may look the same as always, but if I look carefully, I can see that my once bright twinkling eyes were now sunken from lack of sleep and some weight loss. I rub my eyes and continue my march down the hall.
Opening the office door without bothering to knock, I start with more bravado than intended, “Listen, I know you may think that you don’t have time for this, but I am letting you know that you don’t really get an option here.”
He is on the phone and pauses what he was about to say to the person at the other end. He looks at me with an irritated expression before muttering, “Lena, I’ll call you back in a bit.” He hangs up and places his phone screen down on his desk.
Lena. No surprise there. Elena Alvarez or Lena for short is Evan’s lifelong friend. Their parents were best friends and business partners throughout their whole lives. I wish I could say she and I became close friends, but it was the opposite, much to Evan’s dismay.
The thing is that I tried to befriend her in the beginning, but that soon went out the window when I realized that she didn’t just see Evan as her childhood friend. She wanted him as a lover. She wanted him as her husband. I never right out confronted Evan about this fact, but I knew to keep Lena at arm’s length. I was right to do so because after a while it was clear to me that she wanted to sabotage me. Little things here and there, but never enough that it would be noticeable to anyone else but myself.
I thought that my relationship with Evan was rock solid, but as time went on, it was clear that wasn't the case. For some reason, Elena’s opinion mattered more. Elena’s emotions mattered more. She mattered more to him than I did. I was a distant second compared to Saint Elena.
The last couple of months have been an emotional rollercoaster as Evan worked late into the night and sometimes never came home from the ‘office.’ If he went on a business trip, Elena always tagged along as well.
I hold my ground. “This isn’t working out…” It came out in a whisper instead of the brazen voice that I had imagined in my head.
I was just so tired. So broken. I want to yell and make a scene. I want him to care more than he does right now. I want him to know how much I am hurting. But the truth is that he never bothers to truly care about my feelings. Not after my miscarriage, which inevitability changed the dynamic of our relationship two years ago. Not when things started to get tough in our marriage after that faithful day. Not when I brought up how he spent more time with Elena than me. No—according to him, I had too much time on my hands and was jealous for no reason.
There was just so much wrong and truthfully, I love him enough to overlook the gaping hole in my heart and keep driving on as long as I knew he was still willing. But there were so many little signs these last few months that alerted me that he and Elana had gotten much closer. For instance, there were times when I had called him during his business trips late at night, and she would answer his phone claiming he was in the shower. The icing on the cake was the business trip he had attended on our second anniversary.
Of course, he had made sure that flowers and jewelry were delivered to me, and I had received a call from him albeit rushed. He has claimed that he was “putting a fire out.” I did try to be an understanding wife since I knew the demands of running a multi-billion-dollar empire. The problem was the fact that Elena also made sure to give me a call to ask how I liked the jewelry she had picked out for me.
Within seconds, I find him within an inch of me. He grabs my left wrist and squeezes it enough to make me flinch. He brings me closer to him – pressing my body against his. I feel the heat radiating from his body. His hardness. He looks down at me with an icy glare.
“I don’t know where you are getting this idea that you can dictate when our marriage will end, but understand that you don’t get to.” His voice is uneven glaring at me with intensity. He brings his lips harshly down on mine.
