There comes a time in life when things are just simpler, easier. A time when you no longer have to worry about retirement because you’ve saved and built enough to take care of your children until they are well beyond the age you should have to. A time when the mortgage shows a big fat zero balance; a time when you no longer have to schedule vacation around school schedules and state testing. A time when you wake up in the morning, and look beside you, and see the woman who has stuck by your side and know that there isn’t a damn thing you’d do differently, because by the grace of God, she still loves you, and you love her, too.
There are other times when you can no longer wake up every morning and run five miles without experiencing some sort of physical discomfort. When a sprain takes a little longer to heal or a strained back throws you off for a couple of weeks. A time when you look at a book, or the computer screen, and have to give your eyes a chance to adjust. And when you say “huh?” you’re not just hoping they will say, “never mind;” you really didn’t hear what they said.
Then there are times when you can’t sleep and cringe when the body lying next to you rubs up against you because she’s been fucking another man for at least four fucking years. It would be so easy to kick her ass out, tell her she was a fucking whore, and never look at the face that causes you such anger and resentment.
I force myself to look up, to beside the TV hanging on the wall, at the picture in the bedroom, at the reason that Ash is still within five miles of me.
Ava and Logan. My kids.
I can’t hurt them. I can’t destroy the lives they have by going fucking crazy on the bitch lying in my bed. She blames me. She’s convinced it’s my fault, and she will try to convince them, too.
I never want them to look at me like I’m the cause of anything that hurts them. They’re the two people in my life who I want to be proud of me. I want them to not just think but to know that their father would never walk away from them, even when they are parents themselves.
I’m just not ready to chance it.
?
Mywife, Ashley, has said several times, in some heated arguments, that the reason our family is falling apart is because I have always been in love with Tessa Ross, and that I never let her go. She blames me for her infidelity, for her more than four-year affair with a man who used to work as my father’s lawyer, for nearly fifteen years, and is now a politician. She went to seek comfort from him when I made one fucking comment in our more than twenty years of marriage. One comment that our daughter overheard me say to Tessa in anger.
“You should’ve stayed with me.”
I truly thought, when Ash and I finally talked about it, she understood it was out of anger. I was so distraught that my daughter was vacationing with Tessa and her relatives, people I trust, then her cousin’s, Troy, ex-wife and her British rocker husband, who’d been splashed all over the news, all messed up in some sex trafficking shit, had shown up at her and Collin’s Cape home, and she never felt it necessary to tell me they were there.
I never want my children in danger, or Tessa and hers, so there was truth in what my wife said—I always have and always will love Tessa Ross-Abraham. She is the reason my life changed over twenty-five years ago. She is the reason I finally became the man that Tessa and her family taught me I could be.
I am a damn good husband and a better father than I ever had. As I grew older, I learned that my father’s father had been an abusive womanizer. Therefore, my father, too, was a better father than he had. I suppose that’s what happens when we grow in knowledge and age. We realize that, instead of lugging aroundthe sins of the father,so to speak, we decide to do better. My father, Landon, never beat me or any of his wives, so he also grew from his past’s pain, just like I did. What he did do was cheat. Something I did to Tessa, too. Repeatedly.
I never cheated on Ashley. I never would have. I took my vows seriously.
I attended every function my children were involved in. I coached football and baseball. I was present in our seemingly perfect life. Ash and I had a good relationship, our sex life was consistent, we took time to go on dates, even when the kids were little. I told her daily that I loved her, and it was true. I told her that she was beautiful and constantly told her how much I loved parts of her that she took far too long looking at in the mirror that she apparently didn’t like about herself.
Her ass and tits were the parts she fixated on. I loved her ass, and I told her that every time I was in it. Her tits were a perfect handful and, even with age, I showed them appreciation with my hands, mouth, and words. When she started finding gray hairs at thirty-five, I pretended not to notice, sparing her feelings. To me, she was the woman I would share my life with. I had vowed to do so. And she is the woman who gave me children.
In the past, I lost three. One at seventeen, with my then girlfriend, Sadi, who had an abortion, and another with her when she miscarried a child that she had conceived purposely to trap me and tear me away from a girl who I knew I loved from the moment I saw her. The third child I lost was with Tessa. Another miscarriage. It crushed her and me. I built walls after that, sure that God was punishing me for all my sins.
I used to believe that Ashley and I were meant to be when she gave me her heart, knowing I was still healing from the self-imposed devastation caused by Tessa finally walking away from me. That belief was further strengthened when she and her new friend, Tessa Ross-Abraham, found out together that they were both pregnant.
The day she gave birth to Ava was truly the happiest day of my life. No other day compared. When I held my daughter in my arms, kissed her and the woman who gave me a child, I vowed to God I would never hurt them like I had hurt the many other women in my past. I was true to my word.
?
I force myself to don a normal holiday smile and fill the house with Christmas cheer when Ava and Logan walk down the stairs at around ten in the morning. Ashley is still asleep, and I decide to steal this moment with the two people in the world who I love the most.
“Merry Christmas, kids!” I greet them each with a hug and kiss.
Logan grumbles, “Merry Christmas.”
Ava smiles as she looks at the tree and all the presents. “Santa came, Loggie!”
“Nice, Ava, but I’m not ten anymore.” He rolls his eyes.
“Well, then who could have brought all these gifts?” I play along with Ava’s loving teasing directed at my boy.
“Dad …” Logan yawns out.
“And Santa.” I laugh.
“And Mom.” Ava looks around. “Where is she?”