Leaving Amy (Amy #2) Read online

  Leaving Amy

  Copyright © 2016 Julieann Dove

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons –living or dead –or places, events, or locales is purely accidental. The characters are reproductions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Cover designs by Corey J. Green

  Formatting by Dallas Hodge, Everything But The Book

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  Dedication

  For my dear Amanda---New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.

  Chapter One

  I looked around the apartment at the empty walls, the stacked boxes, the cable wires sticking out from the sockets, and wondered whether I was doing the right thing. I had signed a six-month lease when I moved in and now the landlord was forcing me to sign for another six months or I’d have to leave. Mark seems to think it’d be ridiculous for me to continue paying rent considering he had a large three-bedroom townhouse I could share. And this way, when he got off from his night shift, I’d already be at his house. He wouldn’t have to drive over to my apartment to see me. So he talked me into giving my notice to vacate.

  It’s funny; my stomach clenches just thinking about living with him. Sure, I’m over there a lot, but until I’m formally divorced, I didn’t want to push my clothes in a drawer and cozy up my toothbrush next to his. My attorney is waiting on Wesley to sign the paperwork. I don’t know what the holdup is; I signed over my interest in the house and packed what I wanted before I took a last look around and pulled the door shut behind me. It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. For four years, I lived a life I thought I’d be living for many more. I imagined that babies one day would be crawling around on those floors. I even reserved the back of the pantry door for growth charts. Mom had one for me and Ashley where the washer and dryer was.

  Wesley never once showed up to pack things when I was there. I rummaged through some drawers and noticed he had already taken his underwear and suits from the closet. I touched the inside of the empty drawer in the bathroom that once held his deodorant, razor, and Q-tips. He must’ve cared less I was hiring a moving truck to come and take the living room furniture to my new place. From what I’d heard, he was living in Nevada with his new honey. She was so short and dark-haired. No one remotely similar in looks to me. Someone I definitely would’ve never thought he’d have gone for. Ashley and I were both strawberry blondes. I guess nothing would surprise me, now that I’d been dumped and mugged.

  None of our old life or routine mattered to him. I bet he didn’t once shed a tear over closing the door and memories of our house. Me, on the other hand—it was two weeks before I stopped taking a right-hand turn at the intersection of Sycamore to go home. But now I don’t anymore. Well, at least I don’t by accident. Now if I turn right, it’s for pure self-punishment. To kick myself in the butt for not seeing what was right in front of my face. One day I’ll cut myself some slack and realize the broken road took me to Mark. Where I’m pretty certain I belong. That’s why I didn’t sign the six-month extension on the lease, right?

  Knock, knock, knock.

  I stopped folding my pajamas from the laundry basket and looked at my watch. Mark had told me on the phone earlier he’d be late tonight. I wasn’t expecting him for at least another hour. I dropped my gown on the sofa and walked to the door.

  “Who is it?” I asked the painted inside of the door. For some reason, there was no peep hole to look out. Reason number two not to sign the lease. Not the safest apartment complex in the city.

  I heard someone clear their throat. My eyes darted back and forth as I waited for the response.

  “Wesley.”

  A shiver rippled up my spine. I hadn’t heard his voice in at least eight months. All of our negotiations about things in the house had been done through text messages and my attorney. My body jolted at the reality that he stood within five feet of me. The guy who hurt me eternally by cheating on me, my friend…my husband. I slowly opened the door. What I saw wasn’t who I remembered.

  “Wesley, what’s wrong?” I fought the urge to reach out and touch him. To comb over his messy hair. What was it doing being longer than Bon Jovi’s when he was touring with his first album? Okay, so I was exaggerating. But it seemed as though he hadn’t had it cut since the last time I’d seen him. Totally not Wesley. And was that smell of a distillery coming from the pores of his skin? My eyes moved to his outfit. His shirttail hung out of his pants, and the collar on his jacket was tucked in on one side while the other looked as though it was saluting the empty air. Lumberjack never looked good on this guy, either. Tom Hanks looked better at the end of his stay on the island in Castaway.

  “Can I come in?” He almost stumbled in while asking the question.

  “Yeah, sure.” I stood back and watched as he headed to the living room. I noticed he wore his tennis shoes with his dress pants…his wrinkly dress pants. I don’t remember taking the iron.

  “Have a seat.” I moved the laundry basket and stuffed the unfolded pajamas on top. “Can I get you something? Have you eaten?”

  I know: stop trying to fix every stray that comes knocking. Especially if they’re wearing a collar that reads: “two-timer, soon-to-be ex.” But that’s just who I am. I’m a doctor of all who are sick. No matter what they did to me. And the time we’ve spent apart has certainly helped me forget the initial sting. Maybe in his convoluted, cheating way, he did both of us a good deed. I certainly felt happier in this life versus how the old Amy felt: listless and meandering, sitting in a giant waiting room called our marriage, waiting for things to get better.

  “God, I’ve missed you.” He looked at me with a drunkenness in his eyes, but with sincerity in his tone.

  My posture straightened and I nonchalantly inched away from him, grabbing at the back of my neck. A sure sign I was uncomfortable. I hope he didn’t notice. The last thing I needed was this kind of drama in my life. For the past six months, I’d been in a really good place. It turned out Mark could be monogamous and has been with only me. At least I think he has; I totally missed the signs of cheating with Wesley. With Mark, though, he’s always texting me, trying to see me, or sending me flowers. Okay, just once I got flowers from him, but it’s one more time than with Wesley. And so what if they were sent as an apology for him working late and missing another date? The walls to his heart have, I feel, officially melted away.

  “Wesley, have you been drinking?”

  He ran his fingers through his unruly hair. I saw one finger straggle a knot before it broke free. His eyes squinted from the overhead light and focused on mine. “I stopped by the bar on the way over here. I needed a shot of courage in order to see you.”

  “A shot of courage? To see me?” I palmed my chest the way Vivian Leigh did in Gone with The Wind. Little ol’ me? The one who he slept nightly next to for the past four years? Seriously. The cat was already out of the bag of what a liar he was. I hadn’t sought retaliation thus far. He knew I was a bigger person than that, I hoped. Never mind the thoughts I had right afte
r it happened that all his hair would fall out spontaneously and his teeth would rot out of their roots. But I’m over it. Truly.

  “Yeah, it actually took more like five or six shots of courage. I had to take a cab.” The more vowels he enunciated in the air, the more I realized bourbon was his choice of courage.

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “I saw the return address on the attorney’s copies you had mailed to me.”

  “Well, I can hardly wait to hear what you’ve come all this way for. Isn’t it a couple hour plane ride just to get here?”

  “I’ve sort of been living here for the last three months. I only took leave from the office after the accident and never formally quit, thank God, so I got my job back. And of course, since you left me the house, I’ve been living there.”

  My head was reeling. What was going on? This was certainly not a part of the plan. Wesley was supposed to have moved far away with the bimbo and live a miserable life, realizing every day what a mistake he made, although still functioning enough to think he’s currently happy. And I was supposed to be packing tonight, waiting for Mark to bring dinner and then moving in with him next week. To outside appearances it seemed sensible, but to me and my dear ol’ Reverend, it probably sounded like bed-hopping. No marriage certificate to validate such behavior was slightly driving me crazy. Like a mosquito that kept buzzing in my ear at the most fantastic outdoor party I’d ever been at. Not that I wanted a proposal; that would really seem presumptuous. Anyway, his coworkers and the Willises thought we were already married. I could conjure up the same kind of lie in my head to help me sleep better at night next to my live-in boyfriend. At least that’s what I was hoping.

  “Where is—?” Her name shot from my memory like a stray bullet. I purposely willed both her name and her face from anywhere it could hide inside my brain. I couldn’t torture myself about what their life was like together and how little I meant to Wesley after so much time together.

  “Violet? Hell if I know.” His head swung low. The very mention of her name seemed to have taken out the top vertebrae of his spine and left his neck dangling in midair.

  “What do you mean? Isn’t she living here, too? I mean, if you are?”

  The very thought of that homewrecker in my house, washing my dishes, sleeping in my bed, taking showers in my bathroom, boiled my blood to a dangerous level. Not that I wanted to be doing those things, but I wasn’t, so no one else could. It put me at ease that I knew Wesley had left the state to do all of those sorts of things with whatever-her-name-is. Great! Now that I was reminded it was Violet, I’d never be able to buy that flower ever again. That’s okay; they’re slow bloomers anyway.

  He rubbed his pants with the palm of his hand. It’s a shame it wasn’t hot enough to press out a few of those wrinkles. “It’s a long story, Amy.”

  “Well, we have a few minutes. Spill it. And we wouldn’t want all that bourbon go to waste. Isn’t that why you stopped for a drink before coming over?”

  He spread his legs apart and lunged over them in a going-to-get-sick position. I kind of felt sorry for the guy. Obviously he was in pain about something.

  “It’s over with Violet.” His stare never left the carpet patch his shoes were resting on in front of him.

  A second of happiness coursed through me. Did that mean I was jealous? I thought I was just hurt. Jealous meant I still cared, didn’t it? Hurt was for the past. The times I thought we were in the hopeless marriage together. For better or worse. But jealous? I tucked my hand between my legs. Maybe it was to stop from rubbing the shoulder of his jacket. I wasn’t sure. I just needed to keep to my side of the sofa. This guy was no longer my affair. Didn’t he have coworker friends he could go out and get drunk with and cry in his own beer? Why bring his mess to me?

  “I don’t know what to say, Wesley. To be sorry that your extra-marital affair that destroyed our marriage broke up is a little out of my comfort zone. I suppose I’ll just say that I’m sorry you’re so torn up by it.”

  Was he this broken up about us? Did he go and cry to Violet that we were over? Did I? I think I just sat there for a while with a confused look on my face. Like the people you see in movies wearing a straitjacket. Why couldn’t he have just driven some place different tonight? Why did I have to be home? I can’t deal with this. I don’t know how. One more week and he couldn’t have found me here. I’d safely be tucked in at Mark’s house. At Mark’s house…would I ever think of it as my house, too?

  He sat up and looked at me with all the intensity of trying to figure out if I was speaking Japanese or English.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Amy, are you blaming my affair for the reason we broke up?”

  I cleared my throat. Are you kidding me? Wasn’t the brown-haired, skirt-hugging bimbo, standing over his hospital bed, gushing over him, the reason we broke up? I needed a second. I’m pretty sure I’d diagramed this one correctly in my head. What else was to blame? Who else, for that matter?

  “Amy, we were practically strangers the last year we lived together.” Suddenly he had sobered up from his five shots at the bar. “We hadn’t had sex for six months. I even spent my birthday on a business trip. When I got home, you handed me an envelope with a gift certificate in it for the golf course.” He situated himself to the edge of the sofa and gestured with his hands. “I don’t even play golf, Amy.”

  Suddenly feeling on the defense, I raised my voice. “I was giving you a new hobby, Wesley. Forgive me for trying to spice things up in your life. The sport of television-watching was putting a few pounds around your waist.” So it was a cheap shot; I instantly regretted saying it.

  “Golf? You think golf spices up things, Amy?”

  Okay, so now that he said it like that, it certainly didn’t. But, I was grasping at straws with how to make him happy. Marion, from work, said her husband always came home from playing golf a happier man. I just wanted Wesley to be happy again.

  “Let’s face it, Amy: we were the reason our marriage ended. Violet was just the next step in making it final.”

  More than a slap to my face, his comment punched my gut, too. “Oh, really? Well, I wish I was privy to the knowledge you’d moved on. It would’ve been nice to have had that told to me instead of reading a note on the stupid refrigerator that you didn’t love me anymore.”

  He inched closer to me, raising his index finger almost within inches of my face. “Now you hold on one minute. I never said I didn’t love you anymore. Short of you cutting out my heart and handing it to me on a plate, I would never stop loving you.”

  Well, well, well. That certainly took the wind out of my sail. My gun was empty of ammunition. Why would he say something so stupid? So utterly stupid. Did this mean he still loved me? Because until a few seconds ago, I never allowed myself to define what I felt about Wesley. I didn’t have to. He was out of my life. Someone else’s problem. Somewhere else.

  Currently, however, he was now here, in my living room, in my face. Throwing around a finger, saying he loved me. Or was I just reading more into it than what it was? He was just lonely and confused. Who wouldn’t be with all that extra hair and crazy outfit? I swallowed hard and resurrected my self-assertive posture. “What did you come here for, Wesley?”

  “I’m sorry, Amy.” The hinge on his neck broke again, leaving it to hang between his shoulders. His imposing finger joined his others and held on to his other hand.

  “It’s over, Wesley. Let’s get past it. We both were at fault, but you more so for having an affair behind my back. At least I never gave up on us. That night you wrecked, I was home waiting for you in this godforsaken lingerie I’d bought at the mall. You would’ve gotten a laugh if you’d seen me come through those doors of the hospital, pulling closed a trench coat I’d pulled from the closet on my way out the door.”

  He looked up and grabbed his mouth. “You didn’t! Amy! You bought lingerie for me?”

  “Wesley, you missed the point that I was wearing i
t in public.”

  His eyes changed. They were full of sober sincerity when he looked at me now. “I’m just touched that you bought and wore lingerie for me. I know how you think it’s trashy to see girls in those kinds of things.”

  “My mother taught me that. I was just self-conscious of what I looked like in it. I never thought I’d be pretty in something that showed so much of my body.”

  His hand roamed over to my knee and rested on it. “Amy, you’re beautiful.”

  I couldn’t move. How was his hand controlling my ability to breathe in and out? I’d never once felt uncomfortable with Wesley. Somehow not even when I accidently tooted in the car on the way to the movies that one time. I just shook my head and smiled, knowing he’d heard it but would never give me grief about it. I had enchiladas and beans, for goodness’ sakes. No one is perfect when it comes to beans and gas!

  “Well, I’ve got packing to do. And Mark is on his way over here.”

  I stood up and hoped he’d do the same. Instead, he broke down. His face buried in his hands, he wept. I knelt and took him into my arms. All of the discomfort of his visit disappeared when I saw him crying. Jim Beam-scented air puffed from his mouth as he spoke into my chest.

  “I screwed up, Amy.”

  Slightly rocking him like a baby, I smoothed back his coarse hair. “We screwed up, Wesley. But life goes on. You’re going to be fine.”

  He pulled back and looked at me with hurt in his brown eyes. “I’ve lost everything. Not just you, but Violet took all my money and I haven’t been able to find her.”

  I backed up from him. “What? What do you mean she took your money? Certainly you mean the money in the checking account. Not your money in the trust fund? Tell me you didn’t give her access to that, Wesley.”

  We had a deal from the beginning: Wesley kept his trust in his own account and I kept mine in my separate account. At one time I had an account for Ashley, but she burned through that years ago.