CHAPTER SEVEN ╱ The Credits Roll

            There is something so inherently human about lying awake in the dead of night, eyes pushed up toward the ceiling, reveling in the past. Criticizing. Analyzing. Then the future whisks you up, fantasies flying. Another thought trickles and you're right back where you started, and it's suddenly three o'clock.

            There are fleeting moments where I believe I am right where I am supposed to be. Then there are the others, the badgering inner monologuing that I am the catalyst of my own suffering.

            My choices. My free will. It was all up to me and I chose wrong.

            I chose him. And I got Pearl, but I got heartache, too. With everything I have left in me, she will not suffer the same fate. She will not have the blistering heartache. Not if I can help it.

            When I was a little girl, I used to sit in my mama's arms and watch romance consume our flat screen. My eyes, alight and curious, but also hopeful. Hopeful to experience a love so grand, so intricately woven and a little complex. Everything always works out in the end of those films, though. When the credits roll, unless there is a sequel, then it's assumed that happily ever after followed.

            But what is happily ever after?

            The credits roll. They don't display the mundane. The credits roll. They don't record the small arguments, the daily rituals. The credits roll. We go to work, we get dinner, we talk about the little moments of our days. The credits roll. We gather beneath the sheets, we fall asleep without so much as grazing fingertips. The credits roll. Bitterness builds. The credits roll. Just touch me without expecting a quick release! The credits roll. Bitterness eats away at the limbs. Just touch me. I miss you. Make me feel something besides this bitterness.

            The credits roll. A child's feet slaps against the linoleum, their messy fingers staining the countertops. The couch. The floor. The glass windows. The doorknobs. The credits roll. You muss your hair. Your tired eyes. Your clenched fists. Your tightened jaw. The credits roll. It's like this sometimes, marriage. Mundane and complicated and trying. The credits roll. You spend ten years of your life with someone who's become a ghost, bouncing off the walls with frown lines etched into their skin.

            The credits roll.

            Happily ever after.

            I think of the girl I used to be, before all of this. Love and marriage. Betrayal and hatred. Self-loathing. That one has always been there, just festering beneath my freckled skin. Lying dormant, preparing to metastasize.

            I think of Smith.

            It makes my finger burn, so I push the thought of him aside.

            Loyalty will eat you alive if you let it. Consume you. Contort what you believe in. Spread the band of your morals. Loyalty can be beautiful, but not if it's in the hands of a rogue.

            A tear slides down my ample cheek. I let it flow, so much so that it tickles my collarbone. It's then that I swipe it away. My cheek feels sticky. I toss off the quilt swathed around my legs.

            I need air. Desperately.

            I move across the floor, as sly as a fox, all while clawing at my suffocating throat. I flick the sash lock and force the window open. My feet are grazing through the grass within a matter of seconds. I let them take me toward the property edge, where a little creek is nestled. The rushing water eases the pounding in my ears.

            I clasp my eyes shut and release a breath. I don't bother shedding my clothing. I dip my toes along the water's edge. It sends a shiver up my spine, but I proceed until I am waist deep within the rushing water.

            I spread my arms wide and wade further. The nightgown my mama let me borrow fans out beneath the ripples, surrounding me in a beige cloud of linen. I release a breath, and as I do, there's a faint crunch in the distance. A hushed curse envelops the quiet space.

            I extend my legs and arms, allowing my body to lift and float against the current. A smile graces my lips as I speak out against the dense air, "You spyin' on me, Smith Sterling?"

            A throat clears. I peek out between one half-lidded eye. The brush parts, a shadow emerges, and then a deep voice takes up the shared space, "That wasn't my intention."

            "How long have you been out here?"

            "Just a few minutes." he replies, while settling on a nearby rock positioned on the steep waterline.

            I hum. He clears his throat again.

            "Couldn't sleep?" he inquires. I close my eyes so I don't have to face him.

            "Still adjusting to the time zone," I lie. "And you?"

             "Still adjusting to you being back here."

            My heart does a little dance, but my mind can't discern whether it's a blessing or a curse. My tainted mind settles on a curse. It sends a raging hot course of rage through my veins. It's easier to be angry than despondent.

            The feeling forces me forward, toward the water's edge. The edge that Smith remains. He doesn't seem alarmed by my sudden movements as I push out of the water. Linen clings to my skin. The feeling, that heavy pressure, sends discomfort surging through my sensors. I determine that is origin of this overwhelming feeling prickling my aura.

            His eyes shift toward my chest, only to flick back to the center of my face. A flush dances across his jawline against the light of the moon. A matching one curls around my cheeks, straying down the back of my neck. Our eyes heat. And then I cower with the downturn of my lips.

            "I can't keep doing this with you," I all but whisper.

            "Do what, Junia?" he rasps. His eyes are everywhere now. Searching, not prowling. Trying to discover, to hone in on the language we no longer speak. We aren't teenagers anymore.

            I motion between us, "This!"

            He remains silent.

            "I put my trust in a man once and look where it got me," I explain. "I have to focus on what truly matters, and that's my Pearl. I need to get a job. Figure things out. Get my shit together."

            "Okay."

            "I haven't been back in town for less than a week and I just can't risk a setback. The talk. I already can't bear it." I ramble on, sifting my fingertips through my saturated, blonde tresses.

            "Okay." he dwells.

            "It wouldn't look right, y'know? T-the . . . divorce, the divorce hasn't even been finalized, or even discussed. I know that's saying a lot because he's already playing house with my ex-bestfriend. It should be a given."

            "Okay." I acknowledge that he has repeated himself three times, but my lips keep strumming with thoughts I have concealed.

            "And it's not that I am even saying that is what's stopping me, because it isn't. We're old flames. That's all this is."

             "Okay." It is right then that I realize I am at the end of my tether.

            "For fuck's sake, Smith! Stop saying that!"

            A smirk glides onto his face with ease, "Whatever you say, Junie Wren."

            I'm fully out of the water now. The nightgown drains as I take each step, my toes sinking into the sopping mud. "And stop with that." It dawns on me that I am pointing my finger in his face.

            "Okay, honey."

            "Smith Abram." It leaves my tongue as a warning.

            "Junia Wren." It leaves his tongue as a promise. That alone is enough to have me fleeing.

            "I'm leaving." I announce, my voice a huff.

            "I'll be seein' ya." he calls out to my back.

            I toss a hand up, because I was raised to be polite, even in the presence of nuisance. That's what I tell myself. Smith Sterling is a nuisance. A mosquito. A dreaded humidity following a rainstorm.

            It's better than acknowledging that he is none of those things. If I were to do that, I would be rendering my heart a hopeless heap. Because if Smith Sterling were to hurt me again, there would be no coming back from that. It nearly ate me alive last time.

It's eating me alive still.

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