Bittersweet Surrender

by Q. B. Tyler

“Sounds like a good mom.” He smiles, but I can see something behind his eyes that I can’t quite detect. I didn’t know much about Will’s family—you don’t know much about Will in general, Charlotte. I shake my head, trying to clear the thought that I’m jumping feetfirst into the unknown with a man I don’t know other than in the biblical sense.

  “She’s the best. She will love you,” I say, giving him a smile. “Eventually,” I add as an afterthought.

  “So, you’re the man that has me battling midday Atlanta traffic so my best friend can give you a blow job. Pleased to meet you.” Lauren struts into his office as if she owns it, before sticking her hand out for Will to shake.

  I shoot a look at her. “Lauren!” I hiss.

  “Oh, are we being coy now? What’s the protocol for this because I don’t know.”

  “It’s nice to meet you too. I’ve heard a lot about you. Charley has only good things to say,” he says and I can see her resolve weakening already. Despite Will’s formalities, I can see a bit of amusement in his eyes. Lauren made people comfortable even in the most uncomfortable situations. It was one of her most lovable qualities.

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” she says with an eye roll, though a smile plays at her lips. “Okay, so you ready?”

  “Yes, but we have to go to my house.”

  “Whatever for?” Lauren asks with an eye roll. “I’m really not in the mood to mediate you and Matt. Isn’t that your job?” Lauren points at Will before she chuckles. “Can I just say you’re a really shitty counselor,” she snorts.

  “Lauren! Can you not?” I narrow my eyes at her. Normally I loved her sarcasm and quick wit, but right now I really wasn’t in the mood. “I need to grab a few of my things before Matt purges everything I own.”

  “He’s not going to do that, Charley.”

  “I don’t know what he’s going to do, but either way I literally have the clothes on my back and my purse. I just want some of my things. My mom and stepfather are meeting us there.”

  Lauren looks at Will and I shake my head. “He’s not coming,” I say, already knowing Lauren’s thoughts.

  “As much as I want to be there…” He looks at me as if he’s rethinking his choices.

  “No, baby, I’ll be fine.”

  He puts his arms around me and pulls me into his arms before his hands move up to frame my face. “Do not get too close to him.”

  I nod. “I’ll have people with me, he won’t…he’s not going to hurt me.”

  “You have one hour.”

  “What?” I ask confused at his time constraints.

  “Until I’m coming in after you.”

  “No, Will. You can’t.”

  “Technically I can, if I feel you’re in danger. Do not test me, Charlotte, I mean it.”

  “Will, I will have three people with me.”

  “None of whom can protect you like I can.”

  My heart skips a beat at his words and the fact that he wants to love and protect me so fiercely. “One hour.” I nod. He rubs my cheek and gives me a small smile.

  “Call me if you need me, you know where I’ll be.”

  “Parked at the end of my street?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I sigh as we pull into the garage. We left my car at Will’s office so I didn’t have to drive and to prevent Matt from doing anything to my car. Although he paid for it, it is mine. It was a gift and I’ll be damned if I’ll allow him to wreck it in a blind rage.

  “You ready for this?” Lauren asks, and I nod. “You and Will…you guys together… I’m not sure what I was expecting, but that was intense.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Her eyebrows furrow. “He looks at you like you’re his reason for breathing. Like you’re the center of his world. The way you look at each other…” she shakes her head, “I’ve never seen you like that with anyone.”

  “I’ve never felt this way about anyone.” My eyes drift to my house, the one that I share with my husband, the man that I should be feeling that way about.

  “You know I’ve got your back in there, right?”

  I nod, before we make our way to the door. The first thing I hear when I cross the threshold is my mother screaming. Shit! My mom beat us here. “How dare you kick her out? What kind of man does that!?” she yells, and I groan.

  “Mom!” I make my way into the living room to see my mother standing with her hands on her hips, a scowl crossing her features.

  “I see you told your mother,” he snarls at me.

  “Excuse me? You called her. I was perfectly fine leaving her out of it for now,” I bite back.

  “Why do you even give a shit that I told you to leave? Don’t you have a boyfriend to stay with?” he asks as he nurses a drink in his hands. I wonder how many of those he’s had. He can be an angry drunk every once in a while.

  “Is that all you’re going to keep throwing in my face? Your hypothesis that there’s someone else? Be a fucking man and own up to the problems in this marriage that you caused,” I snap before I move up the stairs to our bedroom.

  Forty-five minutes later, I’ve packed up two suitcases of clothes and shoes, a few pieces of jewelry, my favorite books, and my laptop. I’m moving toward the bedroom door when I pull one of my favorite items from my dresser. A music box that was my grandmother’s. It looks like a snow globe but inside is a woman and a man that spin around when you wind it up. When I was younger, my grandmother would tell me it was my parents and I relished in the fantasy as my birth father died when I was a baby. I would stare at it for hours, pretending that it was my parents before me. When she died, I slept with it for a week. I press it to my chest before setting it in my open Louis Vuitton tote. I take one look around the room that has been my home for the last five years before making my way downstairs with Lauren, my mother, and Patrick behind me.

  Matt is sitting in the same chair, one leg crossed over the other looking at me with disdain. “Did you get all the shit I gave you that you want to take?”

  I don’t dignify his question with a response. “I’m leaving. Whatever you don’t toss, I’ll come get later, I guess,” I say sadly, “and I’ll file in the morning.”

  “Who the fuck says you get to file?”

  “Okay…?” I wince. “You can if you want.” At this point, I want out of this house before Will makes good on his word. We’re dancing really fucking close to an hour.

  He snorts. “Of course, you don’t care.”

  “Matt, you’re drunk,” my mother says. “Maybe we should call your mother…or Nathan.”

  “No,” he hiccups, “just get her the fuck out of my sight. I don’t know how she gets to just walk into my life and take everything from me and just walk out when she’s done. Fuck you, you ungrateful bitch,” he snarls at me.

  “Now just wait a minute—” my mother interjects, not liking anyone taking that tone with me.

  I interrupt her, knowing that there is really no reasoning with this highly intoxicated man. “Matt…it’s not like that at all. You know it’s not.” My bottom lip trembles, hearing him spew those hateful words.

  “I don’t know shit. I don’t even know who you are anymore. The woman I fell in love with wouldn’t do something like this,” he says getting up and moving toward me. I back up wondering if he is going to get violent when Patrick pulls me out of the way. “You think I’m going to hurt you?” He chuckles. “You really don’t know me, do you?” I sigh with relief, I knew he wouldn’t. “After all this time you think I would lay a finger on you? Despite the fact that you ripped my heart out?”

  “Ripped your heart out? Matt you barely tolerated me half the time!”

  “I loved you,” he says, his voice so low, “and you broke my fucking heart,” he adds bitterly. “So, now I’m going to break yours.” My eyes widen as he reaches for my tote that I left sitting on the table. I know what he’s going to do and I move around Patrick to try and stop him but it’s too late. Lauren an
d my mother scream for him to stop, knowing what that music box means to me, when it leaves his hands. As if in slow motion, I watch as it shatters against the wall. It splinters into a hundred pieces, much like my heart and the pain rips through me dropping me to my knees instantly, the ability to keep myself upright gone.

  How, how, how! Of all the things! How could he do that to me!?

  I’m vaguely aware of my mother screaming in the background before Lauren has me off the floor, moving me toward the back door, shielding me from the broken glass all over the floor. I don’t know if I have any of my things when she puts me in the car. Everything around me is white noise, all of the blood rushing to my ears and drowning out the sounds of the world around me. My lip trembles as I think about the two people, outside of the globe, no longer holding hands as they spin in a circle.

  “I’m going to go get your stuff, stay here,” Lauren says, putting my purse in my hands. She fishes through my bag in search of my Blackberry and pulls it out. “We’re leaving in five minutes, follow the white Lexus,” I hear her say before she hands it back to me, and heads back into the house.

  “Charlotte?” he rasps through the phone, his voice laced with concern. “Baby, are you there?”

  “I—I’m here.” I manage to get the words out.

  “What happened? Why are you crying?”

  “I’m o-o-okay,” I stammer.

  “Don’t lie to me, Charlotte. What’s going on?” The panic is evident in his voice.

  I hear the door open and shut behind me and I imagine it’s my things. “I’ll call you right back.” I don’t wait for a response, before I hit the end call button as my door opens and my mother’s arms engulf me. Her familiar scent is the only source of comfort I’m desperately clinging to.

  “Oh, honey,” I hear. “Patrick will make you a new music box, okay?” she says in my ear. “What an asshole.” I look up at her and shake my head.

  “I’m the asshole. I did this to him,” I sob.

  “No. No, honey, you didn’t.” My mother tucks a hair behind my ear and kisses my head. “Here,” she says opening her hand and revealing the two tiny figures that were inside my music box. “They can put these in a new one.”

  “It’s not the same,” I whisper.

  “I know. Your grandmother had that when I was a little girl,” she says sadly, “but no one loved it as much as you did.”

  I swallow. “I want to be with Will now,” I say not caring that I’ve said his name.

  “Is that his name?”

  I nod. “Yes, he’s around the corner. He wanted to be here but…it would make things complicated.”

  “Matt knows him, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I say simply.

  “Honey…who is it?”

  “I can’t tell you,” I whisper.

  “Yes, you can,” she says back.

  “He can get into trouble, and I’ve already wreaked enough havoc on his life…on everyone’s lives,” I say as I see Lauren moving back toward the car. She climbs in and my mother looks at Lauren wondering if I will say it in front of her. I nod, indicating that she already knows.

  “Charley, if you can’t tell me, who can you tell?” she asks, linking her pinky with mine like we did millions of times when I was growing up.

  “It’s our marriage counselor.”

  * * *

  I’M NUMB.

  I feel nothing as we back out of my driveway, Lauren’s back seat full of my belongings. My mother is in a state of shock by my reveal but she knows this isn’t the time or place. I am still too emotionally wrecked by what happened to discuss it. With a promise that, “We will discuss this later, young lady,” she had left. I open my hand, and the small metal people have left indents in my palm from squeezing them.

  How could he be that cruel? Of all the things he could break? He broke the thing that meant the most to me?

  “He’s such an asshole, I can’t believe he did that! I have a good mind to go back in there and rip his balls off!” Lauren screeches as she grips the steering wheel tightly.

  I shake my head, although I know she’s not looking at me. “I brought this on myself,” I say softly, the tears falling down my cheeks. I don’t think I could stop them if I tried. The feeling is so fresh and raw.

  “That was so cruel and heartless. He knew your grandmother gave it to you and how much it meant to you.”

  “I left him, Lauren. People do awful things when they’re hurt, and he thinks I left him for another man. Which I did.”

  I’m not making excuses for him, what he did was the most heartless thing anyone has ever done to me. But isn’t what I’m doing to him just as bad? No, Charley, you aren’t doing anything to him. You both did this. You both wrecked this marriage. But on the other hand, you’re the one saying “it’s over,” and you did betray him.

  I want to scream just to quiet the thoughts in my head.

  “Did you though?” she asks.

  I look at her, my eyes narrowing in question. “Did I what?”

  “Leave him for another man.”

  “Uh…where exactly have you been?”

  “I just mean if you were happy, if Matt treated you right, didn’t ignore you for months and take you for granted, perhaps the affair with Will would never have happened. And it’s not like you went looking for trouble. It just happened. You fell in love, no one can fault you for that.”

  “I’m fairly certain Matt’s lawyer can fault me for it.”

  “Oh, fuck him,” she says.

  I’m silent again, the events of the day playing through my mind on repeat.

  New house. Sex with Will. Leaving Matt. Music box breaking. He thinks I’m a whore. I’m a whore.

  I’m a whore.

  I’m a whore.

  The thoughts are blaring in my head as the car slows to a stop. I look around to figure out why we’ve stopped when my passenger door opens and I’m being pulled into strong arms, and against a broad chest. My body calms immediately, feeling safe for the first time since I left his office. His arms wrapped around me is the only time I ever feel truly safe anymore. Physically, mentally, emotionally.

  “What happened? If he touched a hair on her head, I’m going back there,” he barks as I unbuckle my seatbelt and wrap myself around him. I know he’s talking to Lauren but I pull back slightly and look at him, sure my eyes are glazed and red. His hand stops rubbing circles into my back before kissing me lightly. “What happened, baby?” he asks in a much different voice than he used with Lauren. I open my shaky hand slowly, and I’m almost afraid I’ll drop them when he sees what I’m holding. His face falls, realization dawning on him. “Is this from—” he starts, having heard the story about the music box, and I nod.

  “He’s so mad at me,” I whisper sadly.

  “Asshole.” His demeanor softens as his hands find my face and starts to pull me from the car.

  “Wait—” Lauren says, and Will puts a hand up.

  “I’ve got it. I’ll bring her to your place later.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “I need to be alone with her,” he says and my eyes flash to his. I expect to see lust and desire but those feelings must be lying dormant within him because all I see is love and devotion in his eyes.

  She looks out into the woods in front of us and then at me in frustration. “Do you want to do this? Charley, he can come to my apartment. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go traipsing off with your boyfriend, five minutes after you leave your husband.”

  The tears stream down my face hearing my life spelled out so simply. Go traipsing off with your boyfriend five minutes after you leave your husband. I know she meant it more literally and not so metaphorically but is that what I’m doing? The house and marriage and kids talk? Should I take the time to let the dust from my marriage settle before I go jumping into this new life with Will?

  I glance up at him and shake my head. Maybe I am, but that’s what I want. For the past
two years I’ve done everything that I thought would make someone else happy. Well, look how that turned out. It’s time to do what I want for a change.

  “Lauren, we won’t be too late,” I say simply before he pulls me from the car, shielding me from the world behind us. Sliding me into his BMW, I watch as he talks to Lauren briefly before I see her pull off into the night. He gets in the car and I scramble across the console into his lap. “I love you,” I say into his neck desperate to hear him say it back. Matt’s words are still blaring in my head, and I’m hoping Will’s words will eradicate them.

  He pulls me out of his neck, the tears swimming in his eyes, and I’m shocked to see one travel down his face. “I’m so sorry,” he says sadly.

  “Why?” I whisper. He’s the last person that should be sorry.

  “Pushing you to do this, I—”

  “No,” I say putting a finger to his lips. “You didn’t push me to do anything. This needed to happen whether you were in my life or not. I wasn’t happy.”

  “You thought you were until I came along,” he says sadly.

  “Did I?” I cup his face. “Baby, look at me,” I order and his eyes meet mine. “Do you love me?”

  “More than anything,” he says, urging me with his eyes to believe that despite what he’s saying, he’s not going anywhere. “It’s just…the way he talked to you…what you will have to deal with in divorce proceedings…” He squeezes me tighter in his lap. “I hate that you’ll have to go through that, and I can’t even be with you.” He strokes my closed fist which holds the people from my music box and I open it. “I’ll fix it.”

  I shake my head. “You can’t. He smashed it.” The vision of it shattering against the wall into pieces plays over and over in my head.

  “It was broken when you got home?” he asks, and I shake my head.

  “He threw it at the wall when I was leaving.” The tears form all over again.

  His eyes widen as his thumbs find my cheeks wiping away my tears. “In front of you?”

  “Yes.”

  He swallows hard and looks out the window as he tries to rein in his temper. I’m curious what’s going through his head right now when I hear him say, “Stay with me tonight.”