His Favorite Mistake

Chapter 11

In the dream, he was saying his vows.

“I take you, Esther, to be my wife. To have and to hold, from this day forward…”

His voice was steady. Certain. He looked at me like I was the only person in the room. His hands were warm around mine. I could feel the slight tremor in his fingers, the same tremor I had felt the night he proposed. Around us, the hall was quiet except for the soft sound of someone crying in the front row.

I turned my head slightly and saw my mother. Tears were running down her face, but she was smiling. The kind of smile that made her eyes disappear. Beside her, Frederick’s mother, Zelda, held a tissue to her lips, her shoulders shaking with quiet emotion. And a little further down the row, Maya sat with both hands pressed against her mouth, eyes shining. Even though she had not fully supported the marriage, even though she had argued with me the night before and begged me to wait, she was smiling at me now. Truly smiling. As if, for this one day, she had decided to set her worries aside and be happy for me.

Frederick squeezed my hands.

“I promise to cherish you,” he continued. “To choose you. Every single day.”

I was smiling in my sleep. I could feel it. My lips curved even before I fully opened my eyes. In the dream I could still smell the flowers, still hear the soft rustle of my dress, and still feel the way he looked at me like I was something precious.

Then I woke up.

The living room was dim. The clock on the wall showed 1:37. My neck ached from the way I had slept sitting up. The house was completely silent. The door remained closed the way I had left it. No car in the driveway. He had not come home.

The smile disappeared.

I was still wearing the same jeans from the evening before. The fabric had begun to itch against my skin, a dull, persistent irritation that grew stronger the longer I sat still. I noticed it, but I did not move to change. For once, I could not bring myself to care about my own comfort. The helplessness sat too heavily on me.

I sat still on the couch for a long time, staring at the dark television screen. The dream was still clinging to me. I could still see my mother’s tear-stained face, the way she had cried and smiled at the same time. I could still see Maya standing beside me in the dressing room, gently adjusting my veil and whispering that she loved me even though she was afraid. That version of my sister felt like a distant stranger now.

What stayed with me most was Zelda. That was exactly how she had smiled at me on our wedding day, warm, almost proud. Now I could not understand why her face had changed so completely. She no longer spoke to me with any softness. She would not even try to speak to her son on my behalf. The woman who once wiped tears of joy at our wedding now looked at me as if I were a problem that needed to be managed.

I wondered if the man who once promised to choose me every day still existed somewhere inside the one who now left lipstick stains on his shirts and captions that the world believed were about me. I wondered if my mother would still smile the same way if she could see me sitting alone on this couch at nearly two in the morning. I wondered whether anything could still be fixed, or if I had already stayed too long in a place that no longer had room for me.

Those questions sat heavily in my chest. I had no answers for any of them.

Her voice rose in my memory without warning.

“Esther, if Frederick is really holding onto you even as a friend, do not let him go. Remember, you aren’t getting any younger. A woman’s value fades with age.”

She had said it more than once when Frederick and I were still only friends. We had started simply. Conversations. Shared laughs. Nothing serious. I was living well then. My life felt full and quiet and complete without a man in it. I did not wake up thinking about marriage. I did not feel empty. Somehow the friendship shifted, and before I fully understood how, we were engaged. I had been twenty-six, almost twenty-seven, and my mother never let me forget it. Every conversation somehow returned to my age, as if marriage was the only thing standing between me and disappointment. I had listened then. I had believed her urgency. Now the words felt different, heavier, almost cruel in the quiet of this empty house.

I needed the thoughts to stop. I needed a sleep that would not bring back his voice or my mother’s tears or Maya’s complicated smile or Zelda’s changed face. I needed the kind of darkness that came without memories.

I stood up. My legs felt unsteady. The itching from the jeans followed me as I walked, but I ignored it.

I went to the bar in the corner of the living room. Glass bottles lined up neatly on the shelf. Expensive labels I did not recognize. The kind he brought out when clients came over. The kind he once told me never to touch because I would not appreciate them.

I reached for the darkest bottle.

The heavy glass was ice-cold against my palm. I didn’t bother looking for a glass. I carried the bottle back, sank onto the cold floor, and rested my back against the base of the couch. For a long moment, I just stared at the dark amber liquid. Then, with trembling hands, I twisted the cap off and brought the rim directly to my lips.

It burned instantly.

The liquid scraped down my throat and settled hot in my chest. I coughed once, hard, then forced myself to drink again. And again. Each swallow hurt less than the last. The burning slowly turned into a dull warmth that spread through my body. The sharp edges of the dimly lit room began to blur. The thumping pressure behind my eyes eased, just a little. Even the itching from the jeans faded into the background.

I kept drinking.

I wanted the kind of sleep that came without dreams. The kind that would erase the sound of his promises and the look of reverence he used to give me. I wanted the oppressive silence of the house to stop pounding against my ears.

The bottle grew noticeably lighter in my grip. My thoughts drifted, untangling from one another until they no longer made sense. The small power light on the TV looked farther and farther away. My head felt impossibly heavy. I leaned it back against the cushion behind me and closed my eyes for what felt like a second. When I forced them open, the ceiling listed sideways.

I took one more long drink.

The burn was almost gone now. Only a thick numbness remained. My fingers loosened their grip, and the bottle tipped slightly, coming to rest against my thigh, still half full. The house remained dead quiet. The driveway outside remained empty.

I let my eyelids drop once more.

This time, the darkness swallowed me whole.