Page 6 of Only in Our Dream
Chapter 2
Melanie
If there was one thing Melanie needed to learn, it was to keep her feelings and emotions in check. She had no clue how she could keep such a poker face in any delivery room and yet couldn’t do the same in front of her best friends. Maybe it was because they’d all known each other for over half their lives. Melanie, Cameron, and Vera had been with each other through marriages, heartbreaks, and babies. There wasn’t a milestone they hadn’t celebrated together; no loss they didn’t grieve together. Along with Isla, they were inseparable.
Even though life often got busy and pulled them all in various directions, Melanie was perfectly content to help however she could. As her friends were raising their babies, she’d babysit or pick up dinner whenever they needed it. And they did the same for her when she broke her leg and was out of work for eight weeks.
She only wished Rob had been there for her as well.
She’d met and fell in love with Rob Sullivan during college. He was such a sweet guy—a little dorky, but so fun to be around. Rob made her laugh all the time, which Melanie loved. They had gotten married at a small church in their college town soon afterMelanie graduated. It wasn’t long after that Melanie took the job at Taylor Memorial Hospital and they moved to Maine. Rob took a job at the local school district as their IT interim while Melanie began working with Vera.
It didn’t take long before Melanie found her core group of friends in the Cove. Back then, Rob loved her friends as much as she did. Every one of her friends’ kids loved their Uncle Rob, making Melanie’s desire to have children even more prevalent. They had both talked about how they wanted kids before they ever got married, so Melanie knew on some level Rob wanted that too. But after years of trying and more failed pregnancy tests than Melanie wanted to think about, they had turned to fostering.
Over the years, they had fostered several babies, mostly from Taylor Memorial that needed someone to look after them until a next of kin could be found. They had talked about adopting one of the fosters when they felt they found the right fit to their family, but at least for Melanie, she never felt that connection with any of her fosters. Another reason they didn’t adopt was they became too comfortable in their lives to add a baby full time. Melanie was thankful for her friends’ babies she could love on, but it never changed the deep repressed desire to have her own baby.
Melanie sighed.
It was too late now to change any of that. She was forty-five now, and although she’d seen women older than her have babies, Melanie also knew the complications that could arise too. Isla had reminded her foryearsthat she had Everleigh at forty-three, but Melanie just waved her off. Kids weren’t in the cards for her.
Looking back, Melanie didn’t know when their relationship really started to fall apart. Rob had grown distant over the years, spending more time away from her and the Cove workingwith start-up companies to set up their IT departments. Melanie hated to admit how much she loved the solace of his absence in their house.
Which was why she sighed as she pulled into the two-car garage. Rob’s car was still in the garage, meaning he hadn’t left for work yet. He’d been working with a local company for the past few months, so he had been home much more than usual the past few years. She tried not to linger onwhyshe was upset her husband was still home as she made her way inside the house.
They’d purchased the house a little over ten years ago. It was a small two-bedroom, two-bath house with a large backyard. Their pets, Lucy and Hank, loved the sunroom and Melanie loved the large oak trees that held up her favorite hammock. In recent months, she and Rob had slept in separate bedrooms. They had blamed it on their work schedules, but Melanie knew the truth.
She and Rob didn’t love each other the way they once used to.
Melanie mostly blamed herself. She had been dealing with parts of herself she’d been denying since her college days. And in true Melanie style, she’d been processing those feelings alone. Or, well, she had a weekly therapist appointment. But otherwise, no one else knew Melanie was struggling with her sexuality.
Back in college, Melanie had been interested in both men and women. She thought nothing of it back then; it was just experimenting in college. Everybody did it, or so she’d told herself. But then Melanie met Rob and she suppressed the curious side of her to embrace the life she thought she was supposed to live.
She’d been mostly successful, thanks in part to the fact she truly loved Rob. He was a good man, and she would never do anything to intentionally hurt him. That was why she hadn’t told Rob the secret she’d been struggling to keep for years. Usually,they were always open with each other and Melanie didn’t know why it was different now.
That’s a lie.
Melanie knew.
She didn’t know how to tell her husband that she was bisexual. Even saying the word aloud to herself made her feel she’d been lying to everyone for decades. Melanie wasn’t sure what she hated more: continuing to lie to herself or to her friends. The latter made her sick to her stomach every time she thought about it.
There was no doubt in Melanie’s mind that her friends would still love her and support her if she ended her marriage because she had finally accepted her sexuality. Most of her friends were gay, so that wouldn’t be a big deal for them. Hell, most of the Cove was gay, it seemed. Melanie wouldn’t have any trouble transitioning from her current life into her new one.
But Rob would.
And that was what was holding her back more than anything.
Rob was Catholic and regularly attended Mass. Although Melanie knew divorces wereallowedin the Catholic church, she knew it was heavily frowned upon. It was part of the reason she’d never brought it up to Rob. Not even when her therapist told her it sounded like what she needed.
Melanie couldn’t argue with that. It had been over three years since she and Rob were intimate with each other. They rarely kissed anymore; maybe a peck on the cheek as they left the house or something. With Melanie working night shifts, they barely saw each other for more than an hour a day, if that.
Her therapist had, of course, called Melanie out onwhyshe had traded for the night shifts. As one of the most senior nurses on the labor and delivery floor, Melanie could have her pick of schedules. Until the last few months, she’d had the coveted Monday to Friday, nine-to-five shift. But when things changedbetween her and Rob, Melanie switched to the night shift instead of confronting the problem. Looking back, she should have handled it differently for her mental sake.
Ugh, she sighed as she pushed open the car door and headed inside the house. Hank and Lucy greeted her with wagging tails and head butts to her shins as she kneeled to greet them.
“Hello, my babies. Mommy missed you.”
Hank was a large gray cat that Melanie had rescued from an abandoned barnyard a few years ago. He had three legs, but that didn’t stop him from climbing on the counters and cabinets all the time. His sister Lucy was a timid Greyhound that had been abandoned at a shelter at just six days old. Melanie had fostered her for a few weeks before officially adopting her. Lucy and Hank made a goofy team, and both seemed to be part dog, part cat in how they acted after being raised together.
She kissed each of them on the head before standing. Melanie looked around the kitchen for Rob but didn’t see him. He usually would be in his home office in the mornings, so Melanie wasn’t surprised to find him there. Rob looked lost in his own world as he squinted at the laptop while his reading glasses sat perched on his head.
