Page 1 of Waiting for Her

Bri

My legs pumpharder and harder as the tears burn a trail down my cheeks. I hate running. It’s never been cathartic to me like it is for some people, but right now I just need to do something to get rid of the energy inside screaming at me. The fact that right now I’m doing one of the things I hate most, because it feels like I have no other choice, only fuels my anger even more.

In the last thirty minutes, I found out that my mom, mybestfriend, has kept a secret from me for seven years. My dad was my hero. I was only thirteen when I watched his body slowly give up on him. I was so innocent thinking it was the crippling disease that took him away from us. Now I learn it was more than that. It was his fear, his curiosity of what he was missing out on. Everyone says Fuck Cancer. It’s even a hashtag! Losing my dad at such a young age crushed me.

Seven years later, finding out the man I looked up to and compared all other men in my life to, leaned on someone who wasn’t his wife, it’scrippling. Everything I’ve ever known about love feels like a lie.

Yeah.

Years later, I still feel cancer’s tentacles wrapping around me. Sucking the life out of me.

How can one word, just six letters, have so much impact that it feels like my world is crumbling all over again. But really, cancer was just an excuse for his own stupidity. So yeah, fuck cancer for giving him an out.

“Please, understand, Bri. Your dad had a momentary case of douchery.” I choke out a laugh/cry and swipe with the back of my hand under my nose. “He had also just found out he had cancer. And here was this younger woman acting desperate for him. In the short moments after finding out he wasn’t going to live much longer, he clung to something that made him feel young again. If only for a moment.”

“Doesn’t make it right,” I mumble.

She shakes her head, understanding in her eyes. “No. No it doesn’t. But it makes it… I don’t know. Understandable?”

“I’ll never understand, Mom. I love you, and I understand why you didn’t want me to know. I do. It still hurts to know you kept it from me.”

I come to a stop at the end of the path and stare at the stone in front of me. Why would I expect to have ended up anywhere else but here? I let out a growl of frustration, my hands linked together behind my head as my chest heaves up and down.

My arms feel too heavy to hold up so I drop them to my sides and grip the hem of my shorts. I’ve been home from my freshman year of college for a week, the main item on my agenda, spending time with my family. I didn’t expect part of that family time would include a bombshell being dropped in my lap.

“How could you?” I whisper, hot tears are still streaming down my face, and angrily swipe them away and repeat my whispered words only this time, I shout them to the night sky.

I fall to my knees, the soft grass beneath me bright green and plush. I stare at the gravestone my mom and I fretted over when picking it out, wanting to make sure we found the perfect one.

Beloved Husband

Devoted Father

Even then my mother knew not to engrave a lie and swap the words.

No devotion there.

“I trusted you. You were my everything. And she… what? Was thereonetime?”

I drop to my butt and sit with my knees tucked against my chest, letting all the emotions pour out of me. Hot tears roll down my cheeks as the anger boils and churns in my gut. There were certainties in my life, like my dad loving my mom since he was a teenager.

It’s been seven years since we said goodbye to Dad, and I’ve never been as confused as I am right now. I can’t make sense of why, in his lowest moment, would he reach to another woman rather than his own wife? One time or thirty, it doesn’t make it right.

Was it all a lie? Did he ever love her? Did he get bored with her because she was his one and only, just as he was hers? Was he only with her to the end because she was caring for him in his time of need, as the disease got the best of him?

Mom can explain it away all she wants. He was upset because he’d just found out he was dying. He had just found out he had cancer and had a moment of weakness. Cancer took away a lot from my life, but I never expected it to have a hand in stripping away the trust I had in my father. He was a good and loyal man to my mom until the moment he took his last breath.

Unease wraps around my heart and squeezes tightly.

The similarities to my mom and dad’s relationship and my own with my boyfriend Grady isn’t lost on me. We fell in love after years of friendship. The total cliché high school sweethearts. Friends to lovers. Just like my parents were. Maybe first loves aren’t meant to last. What if Grady decides he missed out on something by only being with me? We might have only been officially together since we were eighteen, but we fell in love with each other long before that.

I never imagined love just might not be enough.

Grady

Six years later

Staring up atthe tall glass building, I inhale a deep breath. The warm air around me carries a hint of freshly cut grass and, despite it being one of my favorite scents, my stomach churns as I tug open the heavy glass door that leads to what could be a future I’ve never imagined for myself. When I first went to college, I had a very specific vision.

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