In Another Life

It’s Sunday morning, on a calm, cloudy day. I’m sitting by the lake, watching the rain drizzle over the water and enjoying some coffees with my best friend, Alyssa. It’s been a tradition of ours ever since I got married. “So! How are things with you?” I say to Lyssa, turning to her. “Uh, things are okay. Things are great with me, but I’m just dealing with family drama.” She pauses, looking at me thoughtfully, “Tim’s been having a lot of issues lately. I’m just worried about him.” She says his name and my breath catches. Timothy. My ex-boyfriend. The one who got away. I shake it off and set my coffee down. “What’s wrong, is he okay?” “Yeah, yeah, he’s okay. Just that b***h wife of his.” She shakes her head. Tim married a monster who cheated on him right before they got pregnant with their first child. Lyssa has been pushing for him to get a paternity test, because we’re almost positive his daughter isn’t his. In fact, I’m almost unsure about whether his son is his, even though there’s no proof that she cheated again before getting pregnant with him. But she got pregnant after a short separation so, it’s just logistically not quite possible. Not knowing what to say, I just shake my head. Lyssa knows all of this, she’s knows how I feel about all of it and she feels the same way. We sit in a comfortable silence for a bit, looking out over the lake. Then we talk awhile about everything, just catching up a little. Finally, we hug and say our goodbyes. “Hey Lyssa,” I say as she’s walking away, “if you need any help with Tim, or if you ever just need to talk, you know you can call me anytime, right?” “Well duh! I promise, I’ll call you if I need anything.” She smiles as she waves goodbye. I drive home and say hello to my husband and greet my dogs as I walk through the door. Then I take a quick shower and sit on the couch to relax. I play some games and then read while watching the sunset. After dinner, I open f*******: and scrolled through the feed for a bit. But I felt an itch I couldn’t resist. I went to Tim’s profile and snooped a bit, then snooped his wife’s. Her profile looks like they have the most picture perfect family, and I think yeah right, I don’t buy it at all. Then I circle back to Tim’s- his profile is quiet, he doesn’t post much anymore, so I could interpret that as depression, or not wanting to talk about his life, but it could just mean he doesn’t go on f*******: much…like me, actually. As I’m scrolling, not realizing how deep I’ve dived, I come across a picture of him and I together, and the memory comes flooding back. Two years ago: We were at a beautiful lake in Texas, we had watched the sunset and there was a huge full moon. We laughed and laughed and had so much fun together. Tim’s gorgeous sky blue eyes were piercing, staring into my grey eyes. I ran my fingers through his dirty blonde hair, shining dimly in the moonlight. He twirled his fingers through my long reddish-blown curls, before coming back up, and cupping my cheek and kissing me deeply. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close, then turned in his arms with my back against him. I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the moon shining over the lake, then I turned us around and took a selfie of us with the moon as our backdrop. Back to today: I smile, thinking fondly of the memory. God I miss him sometimes. I really hope he’s doing okay. Even though I know I’m happily married, and I wouldn’t leave my husband for anything in the world, part of me will always love Timothy. We were so close, so in love. We had made so many plans for the future but, it was a “right person, wrong time” sort of thing. Tim was going through something, and as hard as I tried, he had to go through it alone. So we broke up. I took it really hard, and apparently he did too. I went through a reckless phase, lots of alcohol, I even experimented with some drugs. I was doing anything to not feel the pain of losing him. Meanwhile, he was pushing everyone away. He moved into a place by himself, he also drank a lot, and he barely did anything besides work. A few months after we broke up, he’d texted me. We talked for hours, and then when we said goodbye that night, we just never really spoke again. A few months later he met his monster of a wife and they started dating. I didn’t understand it. She wasn’t his type at all. But that’s when they supposedly “accidentally” got pregnant, and he followed through with what he’d always told me. If he ever got a woman pregnant, he would marry her. It broke my heart, you could see in the pictures of them that he wasn’t happy. But he kept trying, for the baby. She was about eight months pregnant, it was right before their wedding, when he found out she had cheated. Lyssa wanted to kill the b***h, she said, “I don’t care if she’s pregnant or not, I’ll beat the life out of her for this”. And I felt similar. I just wanted to go abduct Tim and save him from getting any further entangled. But Tim told Lyssa he wanted to go ahead with the wedding, for the baby. A couple weeks before the wedding, Tim texted me. He asked if I was okay, and sent a really cryptic text about how he messed everything up. I replied telling him it was never too late to fix things, and that if he ever needed my help, or needed to talk, I would always be there. But he never replied. Next thing I knew, I was seeing him tagged in their wedding photos. And that was it. We never spoke after that, but Lyssa always found a way to tell me about Tim, and to tell Tim about me. I’ll never forget, about a month or two before my wedding, she was on the phone with Tim and mentioned she was hanging out with me. He asked “is she for real getting married?” And Lyssa said “yeah, why?” And I heard him say “f**k. Can’t you convince her to call it off?” She laughed and said “nope, she’s doing it.” I remember feeling angry, like who the hell does he think he is? My husband is one of the greatest men I’ve ever met, I’m extremely lucky to be his wife. And at any rate, Tim knows nothing about what my life is really like. But that anger turned into curiosity. Was he wanting me to call it off because he still wanted me? Even if that was true, he’s married too. What, was he wanting to break up two marriages to get us back together? That would be insane. It just didn’t make sense to me. I closed the app and set my phone down, thinking, that’s enough memory lane for tonight. I snuggled with my dogs for a bit while watching some TV, then I headed to bed, doing my best to clear my mind.