Tommy Sallow is onto better and brighter things. After working a small hometown beat in upstate New York, he's finally in sunny California. As expected, it's the same shit in a different town. Except, you know, now he's near the ocean and miserable...
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Nothing.
I watch as his car pulls out of the driveway, hitting the street and accelerating away without hesitation.
I do nothing to stop him.
My feet stay planted while my voice remains closed off. Everything in me is frozen as his tail lights disappear. Everything except my heart. Because that part of me seems to be shattering.
A sudden breath rips my feet from their hold on the ground as I stumble backward, my body tearing itself out of its state of shock. An instant awareness falls over me as the words I just left him with filter in front of me. I know why I did it. I put the fight for my family above the fight for myself, for what I want. The harsh realities that now plague this porch.
He's gone.
He's gone and I pushed him away. I didn't stop him. The weight on my chest increases as my eyes begin to burn.
I let my head fall to my hands, holding the heavy burden of the last few days. Last night...last night I came to a few realizations. One, I need to give this marriage everything I've got. I need to walk away from it with absolutely no regrets, no what ifs. So, when I pressed my lips to Vince's, I tested the waters of what was left. I entered a world of last resorts, clawing my way through a sea of what ifs just to find a glimpse of happiness left buried in there somewhere.
What I found in return was a cold plunge into a realm of nothingness. I felt nothing kissing Vince. Not fear, not panic, not love or lust or passion. In that one kiss, I felt his cold hard lips on mine, I felt a twist of betrayal and the resulting wave of nausea in being with someone else, someone who wasn't Tommy. And that right there cleared most of the haze from my clouded view lately. Because I never once felt that sense of guilt kissing Tommy. I never felt a betrayal toward what I once had with Vince. And yet, after a few short months, I felt it. It felt wrong kissing Vince.
But now, here I am, sitting on my porch alone, staring at the empty trail Tommy's tires left behind. And why? Because I still can't seem to answer the age-old question of what's best for my family. Of what my decisions lately have done to Mia. I can't make another wrong choice. I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore. And I sure as hell don't want to be a project. Projects get completed, checked off a list of things to do before you move onto the next item. I don't want to be just a check on a list. I don't want to be some satisfying fulfillment of a savior complex. When Tommy said that, when he said he saved me, something in me lit up like the damn Christmas tree consuming my living room.
Is that all I've ever been to him? From that first moment he saw me on a domestic violence call, one that he never had enough to file anything for, did seeing me again provide him some sense of closure? A hero swooping in to close the chapter on unfinished business. Because when he walked away from that house, things only got worse from there, he knows that now. He knows what he left. He couldn't save me then, but maybe he thinks that's what he's doing now. And that's the red flashing siren that rang through my head when he mentioned saving me. That's what caused me to react the way I did...to overreact the way that I did.
