The Boy I Married [hold]

11 | Never Faltered

Brooke

Jacob and I ended up being able to book a consultation with the contractors. He would be the one in charge of that because the earliest they would be able to come take a look at the shop was in a few weeks and I'd already be gone on my vacation by then. Apparently we waited too long and the contractors had already started up on a project for some other company that burned down a while ago. Jacob didn't really give me much details about it other than mentioning we were extremely interested.

He and I stayed at the shop a while longer again. It had become a habit of ours. Time slipped away so effortlessly when we were working on the remodeling plans. He also made a great person to have conversations about. Our mutual hatred for Keith and Ashley managed to spark a few conversations. Apparently after he and I were done, he joined the armed forces and turned his life around. Ashley ended up pregnant and married to some guy Jacob's family hated, but tolerated because he was wealthy.

The two of us engaged in numerous conversations but somehow never ended up talking about him. He kept to himself when it came to remotely anything about his private life. It made me wonder who I actually decided to get into business with. The only things I was sure about regarding him was that: 1) his father was the owner of this coffee shop. 2) his family members were perhaps the evil spawns of Satan himself and, 3) he was divorced.

"What about you? What's your story?"

I watch as his nose crinkles before he takes a sip of his drink and leans over the bar between us. He sighs and tries his best to change the subject but I persist.

"I don't know how to describe my life," he sighs again. You could tell that he didn't really talk about himself more. His personality slowly diminished before us and it was obvious that my third degree was making him uncomfortable. That's the last thing I wanted.

"You don't know have to tell me anything. Nothing that's too uncomfortable o-or that makes you feel like you're breaking your boundaries."

Jacob shakes his head. He looked me in the eyes and for a slight second I felt miniature underneath his gaze. He was trying to find that gut feeling that warned you about toxicity or about engaging in conversations that would later come to bite him in the ass, but he stayed calm and the look of certainty remained.

"Well. My life is pretty interesting to say the least. Not the good interesting either," he half laughs. "Well I got married my sophomore year of college to the woman of my dreams." Jacob smiles for a moment. You could tell that even now, he thought the world of the woman he was married to. "I mean she was everything I wanted and needed in another human being. Our marriage was strong and amazing to say the least. During the last year of college she found out she was pregnant. Excited couldn't even describe how elated we were about that. We planned. Moved into a bigger apartment off campus, built an entire nursery from diy's and YouTube," this time an actual laugh slips out.

The smile on his face was warm and comforting. His family made his demeanor.

"We had our son. Samuel. Her and I both graduated college and then bought our first house together with help from our families. My dad invested so much money into my family. He paid for our house in full as some sort of late weddings day gift," he laughs. "Tasha. My wife—excuse me. Ex-wife and I took Sam to preschool one day and that was the last time we saw him."

My heart sank. I was going to interject but decided to let him have the floor to say anything more he may have wanted to say.