Page 112 of Tomorrow Belongs to Us
I’ve been out of sorts ever since I broke up with Lance. I’m not happy and I can't stop thinking about him despite knowing the truth.
I hate myself for trusting him. He's such a good liar. He had me believing his lies and bullshit.
Are men really so deceitful?
That’s why I avoid long-term relationships because they're so hard and demanding and require so much honesty and integrity to work.
Most people aren't honest, or decent, in my experience. A part of me now second guesses whether I want to move all the way to a new town. I'm not good with change.
A new town, a new job, new friends.
I don't want to give up what I have here, now. What I've finally found. A sense of belonging.
I looked down on women who needed a man to ground them, or bring them happiness, but I am now one of those women.
I hate that, but maybe it's not so much that I depend on Lance as the idea that he completes me.
I was safe and happy with Lance, and I'm giving it all up, pushing him away, because it's the right thing to do, for him, for his daughter, for his peace of mind and for her happiness.
It's in the middle of this restlessness that I get a call from another agency who tell me that a smaller firm, an hour away from Boston, is interested in me. I've been headhunted.
Do I want to have an interview?
I think about it. Would it be so wrong to go, even though I’ve accepted the new job?
Sure, I tell the agent. It can't hurt to look.
Arla wants me to meet Chris, the guy from the gym. The one who made Lance feel old and not good enough. Because I am struggling to forget Lance, even knowing what Arla told me, I go along with her and Scott one evening.
We go for drinks, but I find him so boring, and cannot relate to him. I don't feel how I felt when I was with Lance.
I don't feel with him what Lance made me feel—special and wanted. He looked at me as if I were his world. Chris looks at me as if I’m his for the night. I threaten to skip dinner until Arla leans into my ear and reminds me that Lance is a cheater. That I’m not the only one whose caught his eye.
Her words stab like a knife. To know that it wasn’t just me. That he does this routinely. I start to see Vivian with sympathy.
I was on the verge of leaving after dinner, and not going to the movie they’ve decided to watch, but I’ll be going home to what? An empty home, staring at four walls, with an emptiness that’s consuming me.
LANCE
I’m living in hell, being back at the house I tried to leave, under the same roof as my ex-wife. The only saving grace is that I can see Cassie every day.
This is how it used to be before, with me doing mostly everything for her, the school runs, and homework and spend my evenings with her. We hang out at the mall on the weekend and we watch a movie. Her friend is having a birthday party at an ice-rink so I take Cassie there, then vanish for a few hours until I have to pick her up again.
I love this part of it, and it makes being under the same roof as Vivian’s parents slightly more bearable.
But a life without Megan is hard to come to terms with. I can’t accept that she has broken up with me, and if I wasn’t here, dealing with Vivian and her parents while trying to take care of my daughter, I would have given into my temptation and gone over to Megan’s place to tell her that splitting up doesn’t make sense.
It’s not fair that she can make the decision to split up because she believes it’s the right thing for Cassie. It’s noble of her to think of my daughter’s wellbeing but I don’t fully believe it.
Megan is scared, scared of commitment. Scared of getting hurt. Scared I’ll walk out on her, again. Scared I’ll be like her father.
I want to make a stand. I want to make her see. I want to win her back.
Megan doesn't get to make a decision about my life.
She didn't break up because it was the right thing to do for 'us'. I don't buy her reasons for it. What does she care about Cassie? I'm the one who decides what's best for Cassie, and while my daughter scared me to death by her notions of wanting to run away, now that I've been here, living this lie for a few weeks, I can't do this forever. I'll wait for her. For however long it takes. For Cassie to grow a little older and find her wings.
I can't, I won't walk away from Megan again. I did it once before and it was a mistake I've long regretted.
