Divorced but still yours

Signed off

Chapter 4

Danny's POV

I didn't look at Melissa when she walked in. It has become harder to look at her these days. She had become cold, walked around the house like a ghost, looking pale, with eyes that seemed to look more into the distance than at her surrounding. She never tried confronting me about the divorce matter anymore. It was almost like she had forgotten about the matter. She had stopped preparing her usual meals all together. I couldn't blame her for that, she'd put so much energy into making those meals for me and I just cruelly ignored them. I doubt if she made anything for herself either.

The only normal activity she did around the house was typing on her laptop. She spends hours just typing, sometimes she sleeps off in the living room. I never had the courage to get close enough to see what it was she was working on. Maybe something for the firm she worked with, I couldn't tell.

I had asked her to quit when we got back from our honeymoon. The workload from clients were so much I was scared it would break her. But even more, I was scared it would put her in danger. I couldn't stand the thought of losing her to some risky case. Or to that one risky case I feared the most. The guilt of the situation was getting heavier by the day that I just wished she'd sign and relieve us both from it all.

I wondered if she was fine. Damnit! How could she be? No one would be. Not with the way I presented this, without warning, without explanations.

“Hey,” she called, her voice low, soft but resolved.

I took a few seconds to prepare myself mentally before turning to face her. “Hi” I glanced up from my laptop briefly, then returned to it quickly. I didn't have the moral courage to look at her longer.

“Here,” she stretched the envelope. The same envelope that had sat on our dining table for a week, the divorce papers. My heart leapt with fear, with anticipation of what she was going to say next. It was the first word she was uttering to me in the last three days. I knew I deserved it. All of it.

“I signed them, and I'd be leaving tomorrow to my mum's. I wish you good luck." She didn't wait to get a response, didn't wait to see a reaction, just handed it and left. The impact of her response dawned heavily in the living room. For the first time since this started, I could hear the silence loud and clear. I could feel my strength sipping out of me.

My heart dropped, sinking deep into the pit of my stomach. Anger sparked within my nerves. I thought this was what I wanted. This answer, this paper signed, her absence—I thought it would fill me with relief to know that she'd agreed with my decision. But everything happening within me proved different. I felt the urge to throw my laptop against the wall, to stamp my fist into the table and shatter those flower designed glasses.

A stronger urge to run after her and tell her she had no right to agree so easily to this, to look so okay with saying yes to our non existence. But that would only make me more of the demon I already was in her life.

The rest of the night slipped by unnoticed, because I was numbed into a statue, I couldn't dare to hurry out of the house like I always did. My body felt rooted to the cushion. The possibility of living a normal life after this, drowned me into an abyss of thoughts.

I could only manage to grab a bottle of whiskey from the wine shelf. Whatever happened after then was cemented between my imaginations and drunken reality.

****

I woke the next morning with a hollow feeling in my chest and a terrible banging in my head. The empty bottle of whiskey brought back the memories of what had happened last night. Remembering it all worsened the banging in my head. I sat still for a few minutes, then for an hour, yet the house remained quiet, almost too quiet, it made me worried.

I forced myself up, staggering up the stairs into our bedroom. The same bedroom I had discarded and avoided for weeks now, treating it like a curse. The open doors of the closet hit my memory first, then the absence of luggages, Melissa's luggages..they were gone.

I turned sharply to the dressing mirror, it was empty, no perfumes or body lotions or multiple bottles of skincare products. Nothing, except for the brown envelope, that now looked like the poster of a horror film. I headed for the bathroom, temporarily forgetting my headache and throwing the door wide open in a fleeting rise of anger. That too was empty, no toiletries, or the sight of her towel. Then it slowly hit me. She was gone. Just like I wanted, except that I didn't want it. I never really wanted it.

I reached back to the table, my breath heaving, my hands shaking, then as if the torture was not enough, I saw her ring. The only thing she'd left behind, not a goodbye note, not one last glimpse at her sweet face, just a fancy piece of metal I had placed on her fingers before a congregation of family and friends that thought what we had was beautiful enough to have been present. It was placed carefully on top of the envelope, like it mattered enough not to be tossed away.

That was all it took to break me.

I had asked for this, begged for it even with all that avoidance and cruel silence and half truth. And now that I had it, I understood something far worse than anger. I felt abandoned, felt empty, felt the pain of losing something precious.

She had every right to hate me, to never want to see me again, and I had no single right to feel all of this anger and rage I was feeling, but that didn't make it go away. I should have known, signing those papers were never going to free me.

The papers were signed, but somehow

I was the one being left behind.