Gravity
______________________________________
by
L. D. Cedergreen
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Gravity
Copyright © 2014 by L. D. Cedergreen
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author/publisher.
Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc. at
www.gobookcoverdesign.com
ISBN: 978-0-9893783-2-1
little cabin by the creek,
you still captivate my soul,
hold prisoner the memories untold,
reminding me of those I’ll never let go. . . .
For Boyd and Elaine.
Prologue
Cold, wet dirt enveloped his hands as they dug deeper into the lakeside Idaho earth, searching for the old thermos that had been buried in this exact spot years ago. It has to be here, he thought to himself. He knew that this idea was crazy, and he had no way of knowing if she would ever come back to this place. If she would even remember the sacred treasure that they had left behind—their “time capsule” they had called it. Even if she never thought to look for it, never found what he was leaving behind for her, he knew that in some small way he was gaining a sense of closure. A chance to tell her how he felt, a chance to say good-bye.
He felt something hard and smooth beneath his fingers, and began to dig with more urgency. Moments later he pulled a rusted steel coffee thermos from the ground and twisted the lid until it broke free. His heart beat loudly in his chest, as his mind flooded with memories.
Memories of her. His best friend, his first love, his first heartbreak. After all these years, she still haunted his soul. The one connection in his life that he compared all others to, the one connection that nothing and no one had seemed to match, leaving him alone in the end.
The contents inside the thermos looked as if they had been just placed there moments ago, rather than the twentysome years that it had been. It really was a time capsule. Pain and regret seized his heart as he held their treasure in his hands tightly, as if he were holding on to her in some way. He felt a single tear trickle down his cheek and wiped it away quickly. He refused to let himself feel regret or sadness. He had made peace with his destiny, working through his anger, accepting the hand that he had been dealt.
He returned the treasure to the thermos, adding a letter that he had written, protected inside a small plastic bag. He secured the lid and buried the thermos once again, right where they had left it years ago. Deep inside the dirt, underneath the tallest evergreen that stood behind her cabin, near the creek.
He whispered good-bye into the cool breeze as he held on to an image of her from years ago, an image of the beautiful brown-eyed girl who still owned his heart.
One
I should have noticed the charcoal-gray Marc Jacobs handbag—from last season, no less—that lay conspicuously on the entryway tile as I crossed the threshold of my eighth-floor condo where Ryan and I had lived in Seattle for the past six years, or Ryan’s suit jacket which he had worn to work that morning hanging carelessly from a hook of the mahogany coat rack, a family heirloom on his side. Instead, I was consumed with thoughts of how, undoubtedly, this was turning out to be the worst day ever.
Making my way directly to the kitchen, I frantically rummaged through the loose papers that were fanned out on the breakfast table, searching for the Hawkins file that I had mistakenly left behind this morning in my mad dash out the door. It would be this day of all days that the board of Hawkins Direct, the telecommunications company that I was representing, would call for an emergency meeting in the middle of the day. The one day that I had the absentmindedness to leave behind a key file in my otherwise flawless and perfectly scheduled world.
Tucking the file under my arm, I headed for the front door. Then I heard it. Muffled voices filtering in from the hallway that led to the master bedroom. My first thought was that someone was in my home—an intruder—which fueled my senses with adrenaline and an inkling of fear. But as I made my way down the hall, one foot in front of the other, scolding myself for not grabbing the magnum flashlight—my weapon of choice—from the drawer in the kitchen, I heard Ryan’s deep voice.
I instantly felt a sense of relief, certain that I was not being robbed—or worse, that I was about to be attacked—but when I heard a faint giggle, an unmistakable feminine tone, my fear was quickly replaced with a sense of dread. That sick feeling that instantly begins to fester in the pit of my stomach, anticipating what I would find on the other side of the partially closed door that led to my bedroom. The room where I had shared a bed with my husband of ten plus years.
I slowly pushed open the door, my eyes taking in the bare skin of Ryan’s back and the toned, tanned flesh of the small figure that lay beneath him, mostly obscured by his six-foot-four frame. I scanned every detail—from the way his short brown hair was being mussed by her dainty fingers to the rumpled duvet spread out underneath them as if they had been in such a hurry they hadn’t bothered to draw back the bedding. The bulge of his triceps, flexed from the restraint he used to hold himself above her as he moved with familiar sounds of intimacy and pleasure. Sounds that I had believed were reserved only for me.
I had never imagined another woman eliciting such a response from him. I felt as if someone had ripped open my heart and snared every private moment that I had shared with my husband, dangling it in front of me like a carrot, mocking me. Look what I have. I stood motionless, trying to process the harrowing scene before me. My eyes moved from Ryan’s naked body to the incredulous open-mouthed expression that he wore when he finally turned to find me standing in our bedroom doorway. It was as if—until that very moment—he had forgotten me. His wife.
Utterly shocked and instantly riddled with despair—stabbed with a pain so consuming that I couldn’t breathe—I turned away and fled the scene as I heard Ryan gasp my name. I fought against the sickening sensation building in my gut, crawling up my throat as I clutched the Hawkins file against my chest and practically ran down the hallway. My need to escape outweighed all else in that moment as I buried the anguish of betrayal in order to suppress the onslaught of tears that threatened my otherwise calm demeanor.
I barreled out the front door, rode the elevator to the lobby, and sprinted straight across Blanche Avenue, dodging four lanes of traffic, all the while holding the tattered pieces of myself intact, denying myself the reaction that I deserved. I claimed a spot at a small window table in the coffee shop across the street and took a moment to catch my breath, to organize my frazzled thoughts, to plan my next move.
A short time later, the nameless woman, who I vaguely recognized from Ryan’s office, appeared outside my building. I wanted to confront her, to hurt her in some way, but I couldn’t move. Instead I just sat and watched her, scrutinizing the way she walked down the sidewalk, the way she ran her hand through her long, dark just-fucked hair, and the way she stared dead ahead as if she hadn’t just been caught with her panties down. Unable to turn away, I took in every detail that I could observe about her from the window of the coffee shop—like the fact that she looked nothing like me.
She was an obvious D-cup from the way her chest bounced and spilled out of her white blouse with each brisk step. She was at least three inches shorter than me, which she made up for in her stiletto heels. Her coloring was darker from her hair to her olive-toned skin. My mind was a cluster of suspicion. Was she mo
re Ryan’s type even though he had always claimed to favor blondes? Did he prefer large breasts despite the years that he had led me to believe he was a strictly a “leg guy”? I was questioning everything about him—my own husband—as if I had never really known him at all.
As the woman turned the corner onto Fifth Avenue, just two blocks from the offices of Simms, Reed, and Walsh—my husband’s law firm—I caught sight of Ryan as he exited our building. He stood on the sidewalk, looking completely disheveled as he glanced in one direction and then the other with his phone to his ear. I heard my phone buzz from inside my purse that lay at my feet. I was sure that it was Ryan calling me as I watched him speak into his phone, his free hand gripping his forehead between his thumb and forefinger. My heart beat loudly in my chest as I blinked away a few tears that escaped despite my strong effort of will.
I wanted to claw out his eyes, scream and pound my fists into his chest. I wanted to ask him how he could do this to me, to us? I wanted to know if he was in love with her. How many times had he had sex with her? How long had this been going on? How could he fuck her in our home, in our bed? My mind was buzzing with questions. But I knew that I wasn’t ready for the answers. My heart couldn’t survive another ounce of pain; it was all too much.
So I watched from my vantage point, hidden behind the tinted glass of the coffee shop window as he followed the same path of his mistress—back to the office—before I jetted across the street to our condo and hurriedly packed a suitcase.
I drove to my own office, downtown, where I spent the afternoon in the emergency meeting that had started this whole mess of a day. I couldn’t concentrate despite my best intentions, and—when I was called out on this fact, seemingly obvious to Mr. Chambers, the head of the board—I claimed illness, apologizing profusely. But as I sat in my office’s sleek conference room, listening to the differing opinions concerning the upcoming merger of Hawkins Direct and one of its smaller competitors, I had the overwhelming sense that I wouldn’t be able to keep up this charade for much longer. I felt on the verge of a breakdown.
I paused and called in a well-qualified colleague of mine, introducing him and announcing that, in light of my illness, Clark was going to be taking over the case. I knew that this was a huge opportunity for him and that he would not turn it down. I also knew that he was perfectly capable of handling this merger.
I spent the remainder of the afternoon briefing Clark and making phone calls. All the while, I remained calm, stoic. I discussed the leave of absence that I had impulsively decided upon—claiming long-term illness—with my senior partner and left the building. It wasn’t until two hours later when I reached my mother’s house that the walls came crumbling down, allowing the despair to wash over me. It hurt to move, hurt to breathe, hurt to feel. My whole world had just crashed into oblivion, and I wasn’t sure what came next or where this would all lead—a notion that was completely foreign to me. I was a planner, a scheduler of life’s events, big or small. The only thing that I was sure of at this point was that this was, undeniably, the worst day ever.
Two
It had been exactly four days, seventeen hours and forty-three minutes since that monumental moment that had put a screeching halt on my life. The kind of moment that changed someone’s life significantly. The kind of moment that divided my life into sections of time: before and after. I’d had a few of these moments already, dividing my life into quadrants like a damn pie chart. Some were obvious, like the day I graduated from law school or the day I passed the bar exam, both defining moments that began my chosen profession as a lawyer. The day that I became Mrs. Ryan Walsh—another noteworthy moment—when I promised to love Ryan in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, till death do us part.
And now I was in unchartered waters, weathering the storm of a new chapter of my life—a new segment of time—one that I had already tried to categorize, but, unaware how that moment would define the rest of my life, I was reluctant to put a label on it. Yet.
After a few debilitating days of ugly crying, curled up in the fetal position in my childhood bed, my mother—in a desperate attempt to offer a solution—had proposed an idea that I couldn’t resist. I had finally gotten myself out of bed, loaded my car with everything I would need for the next three months, and hugged my mother good-bye.
And now as I drove north in the early morning light, I couldn’t help but feel that my mother had tossed me a lifeline. She had given me something to focus on—a plan, a purpose. I gripped this lifeline with both hands and hoped like hell that my heart could hold on until I reached safety. Or at least until I reach the cabin, I thought. I turned up the volume on the radio allowing Coldplay to blare through the speakers at an almost unbearable decibel—my weak attempt at drowning out the tiny voice in my head reminding me that running away wasn’t going to change anything. Ryan had cheated, and I had left him.
We had become that couple, the unfaithful husband and the pathetic wife—hurt, scorned, and hopelessly bitter. The couple that kept Ryan’s law firm profitable. The couple that Ryan and I had spent many nights discussing while we cuddled under our gray flannel duvet—agreeing that we would always be honest with one another, that we would never let our relationship get to the point where one of us would cheat out of sheer misery or unhappiness. That we could prevent such a tragic cliché with our unconditional love and candidness. It seemed almost funny that two well-educated thirtysomething adults could be so naive, but, of course, I wasn’t laughing.
Three
Ryan and I met in the midst of my junior year of college. We were both pre-law. It wasn’t love at first sight by any means; in fact I think that I may have hated him at the start. Our official introduction was the night of the annual Sigma Nu Bash, Ryan’s very own fraternity. His friend, James, had been aggressively hitting on my roommate and best friend, Cassie, who was completely wasted at the time. I had been trying, to no avail, to convince her to leave with me. It was my job to escort her home safely, having lost the coin toss for designated driver. Ryan had stepped in when he realized what was going on, steering James effortlessly away from Cassie and in the direction of another coed who was less intoxicated.
He helped me walk Cassie to my car, her nearly limp body draped over the both of us. I knew exactly who he was; everyone on campus did. Ryan was charming and sexy and way too dangerous for me. He was well over six feet tall with a ridiculously perfect body. He played college baseball, and I was sure that sheer fact alone—coupled with the warmth of his brown eyes and sexy smile—made panties drop everywhere he went. Vowing to be the exception to his rule, I turned up my sarcasm and gave him the cold shoulder that I had perfected throughout my first two years of college. I thanked him for his help, truly appreciating what he had done for Cassie, but I did not accept his invitation for coffee the following day or the next.
I seemed to run into him everywhere after that and thus began our banter that bordered between harmless flirting and cold-hearted criticism as egos were deflated and feelings were hurt. I found him to be arrogant and rude, the kind of boy who could charm you and then wound you in the same breath. His perfect smile threatened my heart in a million different ways, and I refused to be one of his victims. He accused me of being stubborn and rigid, too uptight for my age. We went round for round, but still he kept coming back for more. Cassie tried to convince me that it was sexual tension. She joked that we should either “get it on or get over it”—her words exactly. I was hoping for the latter.
And then on the first day of a new semester, I found him sitting next to me in my Constitutional Criminal Procedure class, a third-year pre-req for those applying to law school, with a shit-eating grin on his face. But it was during this semester that I discovered another side to him. I saw the real guy behind the panty-dropping smile. A compassionate, intelligent, and hard-working student who cared more about his degree than the speed of his curve ball or his next female conquest. I had been wrong about him, and this new realization was both refreshing
and intriguing, to say the least.
We both realized early on that we had plenty in common beginning with our paralleled majors. We became friends, our time spent together studying in the campus library or debating criminal justice issues over coffee. And then there was that moment, the moment when I realized that he was more than just my friend. He seemed to feel the shift at the same time, although he swore that he felt something for me from the first moment we met.
I remembered the rain, pouring down as if buckets of water were falling from the sky, the day that Ryan drove me to my apartment after a long study session at the library. I couldn’t seem to open the passenger door of his ten-year-old sedan; the handle was stuck. Ryan leaned across the center console, reaching over to help me. His body brushed against mine, causing my heart to pound in my chest. Before he was able to open the door for me, I looked into his eyes, and it was as if I could see my whole world in their depths. His lips crashed against mine seconds later, and I was lost to him. That was it for me.
We were inseparable from that point on. Before long, everyone on campus knew that we were together, surprised that the unattainable Ryan Walsh was in a relationship. There was widespread speculation about whether or not we would last, but it wasn’t long before we proved the masses wrong. By the time we both had finished law school, we were engaged.
Our wedding was just as I had always pictured it. A small church ceremony with an elegant outdoor reception. Everything was perfect, with the exception of Ryan’s father walking me down the aisle rather than my own. I loved Ryan’s parents as much as my own family. They were warm and kind, and, being that Ryan was an only child, they welcomed me with open arms, referring to me as the daughter that they had never had.
Gravity: A Novel Page 1
