Page 5 of Shameless
During the drive to the airport, I checked my phone countless times, hoping I missed a text, a call, an email, and praying I would hear from Stacey, but, of course, nothing. What the fuck was I doing? Who gets stood up at their wedding and still goes on their honeymoon? Who the fuck expects his runaway bride to show up and pretend nothing happened?
Me.
I was the idiot who held out hope, so I sent one more text to her as I waited at the gate:
Boarding in 42 minutes
Despite the amount of alcohol I consumed the night before, I headed to the bar for a drink before the flight took off. It no longer only numbed my confused state, but it also tamed the anger I knew would boil over if I sobered up and let myselffeel.
Draining my drink, my phone dinged with an incoming text and I hurried to see if it was Stacey who had messaged.
I’m sorry
I’m sorry. That was all she could say?
My fingers itched to type out a response, but as I hovered over the letters on the screen, I knew no matter what I said, she wasn’t coming, and we were over.
“Another?” the bartender asked.
I turned my gaze to him and I sighed. “Yeah, man, and make it a double.”
As he poured my Jack and Dr. Pepper, the gate attendant announced it was time to board. I quickly downed the drink, paid my tab, and made my way to the gate as a single man once again. I wasn’t going to focus on how angry I was with Stacey—even though I was. Instead, I was going to go to Cabo to have the best fucking time I could. Fuck Stacey and her two-word text. I would deal with moving out of the apartment and all that shit when I got back after a week in Mexico.
I sent a text to my parents and Brandon letting them know I was leaving.
Still going to Mexico. Shutting off my phone for a week. I’ll call when I get back. Love y’all.
Turning off my phone, I stuck it into my carry-on, and when it was time, I boarded the plane. I thought mine and Stacey’s song was “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell, but really our relationship was more like “The Dance” by Garth Brooks.
* * *
The placeI’d booked for the honeymoon was an all-inclusive resort on the water. Stacey and I had planned to stay on the property, swim, eat, drink, and fuck, and I was determined to do the exact same thing. My entire life, I never thought I would settle down, but then Stacey worked her way in over the years. I should have known better and stuck to my ways, the ones that didn’t allow one woman to hurt me. Maybe her leaving me was a blessing in disguise.
A shuttle for the hotel took me and several couples from the airport to the resort. By the glances they kept giving me, I knew they wanted to ask why I was alone on vacation, but I wasn’t ready to tell anyone my business. I had more pride than that.
Even the woman at the front desk was on the verge of asking—I was certain it was in her notes that I had booked a honeymoon suite—but she didn’t. Instead, she handed me the keys and directed me to where a golf cart would drive me up a steep hill to my room.
Once in the suite, I changed into my swim trunks, and headed up to the pool closest to my room. It was packed with people, and I made my way up the bar and ordered a margarita. I wasn’t much of a tequila man, but given I was in Mexico, I might as well partake in what the place was known for, especially at an all-inclusive resort.
As I watched the bartender make my drink, I realized it had been almost two days since I last ate. Grabbing the bar menu, I scanned what they had available, my stomach growling as I read each item. The bartender placed my cocktail in front of me.
“And let me get—”
“Blake?”
I turned to see a blonde in a smokin’ hot bright orange bikini approaching—a blonde I hadn’t seen in over ten years. I smiled. “Sarah?”
4
Sarah
After threelongyears of marriage, I was finally a single woman again. I never thought I would be a divorcee, but Trey had a wandering eye that led to him having wandering hands and a wandering dick. Luckily, I found out before we started a family, but that was only because he wanted to wait a few years until we were both established in our careers.
We met on our first day of veterinarian school. I had transferred to Cornell from Columbia University after obtaining a bachelor’s degree in animal science. Becoming a vet had always been a dream of mine because of my love for animals. The people I went to school with assumed I had grown up on a farm because I was from Texas, but the only ranch in my family was the apple farm my Aunt Deb owned, and she had no animals. The truth was, I had grown up in San Antonio and still found plenty of hurt birds and stray dogs to bring home. I knew from when I was a little girl that I wanted to help them all.
Trey and I fell in love, got engaged right after we graduated from Cornell four years later, and married a year after that. We wanted to open our own practice, so we moved to Las Vegas where he was from a month after we became husband and wife. Since we’d had no money and student loans up the wazoo, we each found a job at local veterinary clinics. While I was saving money and building my credit, Trey was spending his paychecks on an assistant at his work. He used to tell me he had to work late because of an emergency surgery, or to monitor a sick cat overnight, or that he was on call and needed to sleep at the clinic. I got suspicious and when I went to his clinic to take him dinner one night, I found him half-dressed and breathless with the assistant.
The day I filed for divorce, I called three of my friends from college who still lived in New York and told them we needed a girls’ trip to Mexico to celebrate the dissolution of my marriage. Since a divorce takes less than a month in Nevada, we booked the trip for a month out. At first, I struggled with the fact that it would only take about three weeks legally to split from someone I had been in love with for over eight years. Nearly a decade of attachment was gone in the blink of an eye and I'd had no time to process the change.
