Page 42 of Roll With The Punches
As he’d finally forced himself to admit the truth he’d avoided all along about his sexuality, he had started slowly untangling himself from her and their marriage.
He didn’t think Pat was kinky or a Dominant, more a domineering asshole, although Brandon had never had that discussion with Tracey.
It wasn’t exactly a conversation he felt he should have with her about Pat. Once he’d made the decision to divorce her, the only say he got to have in Tracey’s personal life fell within that Venn diagram intersection between whoever Tracey was with and how they interacted with Emma. Without a college education, Tracey had always struggled against her low self-esteem in her family. She’d been the only one of her four siblings who hadn’t gone to college, born to parents who both had doctorates.
And neither they nor their parents had let her forget it.
They might have all been smart, but they were also assholes.
She worked for a grocery store chain as one of their office managers, having worked her way up from checkout clerk. She’d met Pat through his job, because the restaurant he worked at was in the same parking lot of the grocery store where she worked. She’d eaten lunch there on a regular basis.
Tracey was sweet, but in all honesty, she wasn’t very ambitious. Which was fine in the beginning of their relationship. But as Brandon had grown and matured during their marriage, strived to improve himself while she hadn’t, it’d been one more wedge between them.
In fact, as his career had advanced and he’d told Tracey he wanted to get his college degree, she’d actively begged him not to, claimed that they couldn’t afford it, that it would take too much time, that he didn’t need one.
At the time, he didn’t understand why she’d felt like that, or why when he’d suggested a couple of years earlier that they could put her through at least community college, she’d shot down the idea fast and hard and refused to discuss it.
As he’d finally learned, he couldn’t save the world. He damn sure couldn’t save someone who had no interest in being saved. He suspected the fact that Pat was fourteen years older than himself had played a large part in Tracey attaching herself to him so quickly and clinging tightly. She’d falsely equated “older” with “safety.”
Brandon hated to admit it, but Emma was way smarter than her mother.
She still awaited his answer. “Sure. I won’t force—”
“No. No, I don’t want that. I just…” She sighed again. “She finally re-added me on Facebook last week, and I saw the pictures she’s been posting. Of the stuff she’s doing. How happy she looks in the pictures with the three of you, or over at Grace’s. She’s never looked happy like that in the pictures with us. I want to make things right with her.”
This was a new development. He knew Emma had unfriended her mom after the cruise incident, but she hadn’t mentioned re-friending her.
Tracey continued. “I know she’s happy living with you. I want to try to repair my family on this end. I’ve done the best I can with what I have.”
And whose fault isthat?
But he didn’t say it. He didn’t remind Tracey that he’d wanted to try to send her to college while they were together, to better herself, if for no other reason than to allow her to ascend the corporate ladder there at the grocery chain, at least, instead of her watching people with two-year degrees and less time there get promoted over her. Which would mean she wouldn’t feel dependent upon Pat’s income to survive.
“I’ll try. I can’t promise more than that. But if she doesn’t feel you’re putting in effort, nothing I say to her will matter.” Brandon had pulled over into a shopping center parking lot so he could park and talk and focus.
“I know. I’m going to try to go to that Wednesday afternoon practice meet in a couple of weeks. I already put in to take the afternoon off.”
It was two weeks from that Wednesday. “I won’t be there. I have to be out of town at an annual meeting up at corporate, but Jeff or Stuart will be.”
She went quiet for a moment. “I…looked at some old pictures of us the other day.”
He didn’t know where she was going with this, but he wished she’d hurry up and get there. “Yes?”
Another long pause. “I can see the difference in you, too, now,” she quietly admitted. “I can see your smile is so much more…real. Except in pictures when Em was a baby, you never really smiled like you do now that you’re with them. Not even in our wedding pictures.”
He struggled to shove aside the tight feeling in his gut. “Like I said, I’m really sorry I put you through that. I never meant to hurt you, but we have Emma. I’ll never regret us having her.”
“I know. I…I wish you nothing but the best with them, Bran. Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake marrying Pat so fast. Maybe I should have held off. But it’s done, and he’s my husband, and it is what it is.”
Phone in his right hand, he rested his left elbow on his door and rubbed at his forehead, trying to stave away the start of a tension headache. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Did you really love me?”
More guilt, and the last stop-gap that would likely always prevent him from being a total asshole to her. “I loved you the best I could, honey. I was young and dumb and scared of things I thought about myself. You are a wonderful woman, and you were a great wife. It wasnotyour fault that I had to divorce you. It wasn’t fair to you for me to keep lying about who I was. When we got married, I thought I had to live up to my family’s standards. Be a good son, marry a good woman, have good kids, the end. You know my family. If it hadn’t been for Emma, they probably would have disowned me when I came out and told them I was divorcing you.”
Another long, uncomfortable pause. “I know.”
“But I couldn’t keep lying, to you or to myself. And I didn’t want to raise my daughter while I was living a lie. I also wanted you to have a chance to find someone right for you. Who could love you better than I could.”
