Page 1 of Irresistible Second Chance

Chapter 1

I looked at the half-full bucket of rainwater in front of me and wondered why my day was going from bad to worse. It wasn’t actually even a proper bucket. It was a pail that kids used to make sandcastles at the beach. One of my nieces had left the colorful beach pail behind when my sister had come up for a visit last summer, and I couldn’t bear to give it away. Thankfully, I hadn’t, or my precious wood floors would be ruined, I thought to myself…sort of like my life. I wasn’t one for hyperbole, but my life, like my roof, was falling apart.

I placed my hands on my hips as I looked up at my vaulted living room ceiling, which I loved for its architectural interest, and sighed deeply. A large wet spot was slowly starting to form on the ceiling right above my head. It seemed to get bigger and bigger as I stared at it chewing on my lip wondering what shoe would drop next. Something brushed up against my leg and I yelped, startled. With a hand on my chest, trying to get my breathing under control, I shot a mean glance at my father’s cat, Mr. Ashley. Not that he noticed my anger, he was just as startled as I was. As soon as I yelped, he jumped into the air, legs flying in all directions as he darted away from me, ran smack into the bucket, and then scurried away under the couch. He peered at me from his dedicated safe space as if I were the guilty party who had wronged him. It seemed quite a few people shared his attitude lately. I sighed, yet again, picked the bucket up, and went to retrieve a towel to wipe up the now spilled water. More water gathered, drop by drop, spreading further across the floor now that the bucket wasn’t there to catch it. From the sound of the rain beating against my windows, I was sure that the storm wouldn’t let up any time soon, so the leak would continue to grow larger by the minute. I hadn’t discovered the leak until I’d arrived home. My day was going so badly that technically the leak was the high point.

My dad walked past me and shook his head, holding out his hand for the towel.

“It’s ok, Dad,” I said bending down and wiping it up. “Just go rest. I got this.”

“I’m not completely disabled you know,” he grumbled, his normally warm voice sounding cranky and dismissive. He was in a particularly bad mood because his physical therapy session hadn’t gone as well as he’d wanted it to. He’d had a stroke a few months ago, and luckily it had been a relatively minor one, but he was still working on control of his right hand. He would get frustrated sometimes because he couldn’t fully do all the things he wanted to do. He was an avid guitar player; however, it seemed that no matter how much physical therapy he had, the chances of him playing the guitar again as effortlessly as he had done before were pretty slim. I felt sad for him, but never mentioned it. He wouldn’t have appreciated the sentiment. After the stroke, when his doctor had told him to take it easy, he had been irritated by the mere thought of slowing down. My dad was always on the move. After years of being a truck driver, staying in one place was hard for him. He liked to stay busy. I got that from him. So, I understood his grumpiness. He wasn’t back to one hundred percent and probably never would be, and I’m sure he was blaming and beating himself up over it. His stroke had really shaken me. I, of course, had reacted to the news by taking on more and more work. Then today, my world had come crashing down, thanks to a lamp and bad electrical wiring.

Technically, my world had come crashing down before the lamp incident, but I was too stubborn to admit that. I couldn’t acknowledge the other thing that I was ashamed of. I’m pretty sure everyone at work had already heard. Perhaps I should have been grateful to my boss for sending me home to take some extended administrative leave. I never took any time off, which was part of the problem, right? After all, I was at work when Mark confronted me. I had been in the process of editing a presentation and had been running late to our longstanding lunch date. We always had lunch together. It was our version of date night. Like always, my administrative assistant escorted him to my office, but this time, instead of sitting across from me and waiting for me to wrap up my project, I had looked up and saw him standing there, staring at me as if he hadn’t truly looked at me in a while. From the look in his eyes, it was plain to me that he didn’t like what he saw. Mark then said words I never thought I would hear from him. In retrospect, I reacted quite badly and sort of lost it at work.

I shouldn’t say “lost it”. I had only tried to throw a lamp at him. The lamp hadn’t gotten far because it had been plugged in at the time. Consequently, my stupid attempt to rip the lamp from the wall had somehow shorted the outlet and sent all the offices on my side of the building into darkness. Robert, my boss, had then shown up, overhearing the commotion I caused, and caught me standing there with a lamp on the ground and looking for something else to throw, tears running down my face, as I screamed at my husband for his betrayal. As a young girl, I’d been the type to get riled up easily. Over the years, I had grown and matured, and that spitfire young girl was no longer me. I tried my best to be even keeled even in the most challenging of situations, but every now and then that rambunctious inner child reared her disruptive little head. Honestly, I had a temper, and I hid it pretty well, for the most part. I hadn’t done well this morning when Mark had taken a deep breath and told me as I reached for my purse that he needed to get something off his chest. That something had been me or our marriage. Could one really be separate from the other? Without preamble, he had said that he wanted more from his life, that I worked too much, that our marriage wasn’t what a marriage should be. He said that he didn’t want to upset me, but he couldn’t live a lie anymore.

I looked up from my presentation and just stared at him. At first, I thought it was a joke. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Mark slowly shook his head, and then reached into his pocket. He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and slid the papers to me. I took them, my hands shaking. I read them silently. Then I placed them down on my desk and looked back at him.

“You’re divorcing me?” My voice shook. It was less a question and more a statement of the obvious as my mind tried to process the words.

He nodded, solemnly. To his credit, he looked sorrowful, but my dad always said Mark reminded him of a cat caught in the rain ---- disappointed in nature and really sour.

My colleagues were walking around, none the wiser, smiling, talking among each other as they passed by my office. How could they smile when my world was falling apart?

“No,” I said to Mark.

He cocked his head to the side, as if a different head position would help my words make sense.

“Sydney---”

“No,” I said again. I was standing up now. “You can’t just walk in my office and tell me that our life together is a mistake. No.” I knew I sounded insane, but I felt crazy. We’d only been married two years. I was a late bloomer and commitment shy; I’d told myself, but then I’d met Mark and I’d felt it was the right time and he was the right man. Statistically, our marriage, since both of us were in our 30s and mature enough to make a lifelong decision, should have withstood the test of time. Right? Mark’s commitment to me hadn’t even lasted past the two-year mark. I had socks that were older than my marriage.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” I could feel tears threatening to fall again and I let them.

“I didn’t want to do this. Especially not here, but I couldn’t live a lie anymore.”

His words fell on deaf ears. “Who is she?” I whispered.

He looked away, “Does it matter?”

“Yes.” So, he wasn’t going to try to lie and tell me that there wasn’t someone else. I didn’t know how I felt about that. Was I not worth lying to? My thoughts were irrational, but I was done being rational. After all, where had that gotten me?

I had done everything right. I had married someone responsible and reasonable, someone who was ruled by logic instead of emotion. I had married someone who liked to fly under the radar and not cause any waves. But now, he was causing quite a few waves, tsunami sized waves, with my heart.

“Mark, just talk to me. Tell me what’s going on. Where is this coming from? You can’t mean it. We’re a perfect match. We like the same things. We know the same people. You’re just experiencing a two-year itch.” That sounded lame to even my own ears. There was a seven-year itch, but a two-year itch was a concept I just made up on the spot. I knew I sounded desperate, but I was. I was desperate to keep my marriage from falling apart. I was desperate to not lose my husband to someone else. I felt sick at the thought.

He shook his head, “You don’t get it, do you?”

“What don’t I get?”

“I’m not like you. I need more than this. I want adventure. I want passion.” I didn’t recognize the man in front of me. The man I married considered venturing to a library in the neighboring county an adventure. And passion? Ha! The only thing I’d seen him passionate about was the new scone flavor at his favorite bakery.

“I can give you passion!” I found myself yelling. A few onlookers now stopped to look into my office. I ignored them and wiped a frustrated hand across my face to get rid of my tears.

He sighed deeply and shook his head yet again, “This is the most passionate I’ve seen you since we’ve met.”

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