tonight and she unfortunately got caught in traffic coming back from getting her hair, makeup, and nails done. All she had to do now was change into her dress and they could leave. When she rounded the corner and saw him laying in bed in his workout clothes, she pulled to a stop.
“Why aren’t you dressed? We need to leave in ten minutes,” she said, undressing as she headed to the closet.
As she pulled her dress off the hanger, he spoke. “I’m not going.”
His quiet voice had her stalking back into the bedroom. “What?” she asked, standing in front of him in her underwear. He didn’t even look at her. He always looked at her, especially dressed as she was.
“I’m not going to go. Tell everyone Merry Christmas from me.”
No—he needed to go. She needed him with her tonight. Didn’t he know what today was?
“Why?”
“Just not feeling it,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Today was a rough practice plus I had to drive up here and I’m just exhausted.”
A nagging feeling in her gut told her it was more. The way he was looking at anything but her …
“But—”
“Mia,” he said her name and there was a hardness to his voice that she had never heard before. Maybe he did know today was one year since she’d miscarried and he just didn’t want to be around her …
Swallowing back the rush of tears, Mia turned around and headed back into the closet.
The past year she had been on a mission to get pregnant again. She’d been religious about keeping track of her fertility indicators, and she and Ethan had had a lot of sex, but month after month, the hope of maybe finally being pregnant followed by the disappointment of seeing only one pink line on the pregnancy test wore on her, eroded her hope, and solidified that she was a failure at this. Ethan not wanting to come to this party plus her failure to get pregnant after a year plus the anniversary of the miscarriage pushed her over a ledge she didn’t know she was standing on. Because him not going to this party with her was him basically saying he didn’t want to be with her. That he did blame her, that she’d failed him.
She couldn’t take it anymore. Their dream of five kids wouldn’t happen … because of her. This was her body paying her back for all the shit she’d done to it in the past—all the drugs, all the alcohol. The messed up body that couldn’t hold any more children.
She shook her head. She couldn’t wallow in this right now. She had to get to this party. The label was doing really well and they had thirty employees that deserved this celebration. And as one of the owners, Mia needed to be there. So as much as she wanted to fall to the floor and cry, she stepped into her dress, put on her shoes, and grabbed her purse and coat.
Ethan hadn’t even bothered to say hello or that he was sorry, why did she think he’d respond when she said bye. He just continued to lay on the bed, looking out the window.
“See you later, I guess,” she said and left.
Mia made the drive over to the studio then parked in her reserved spot, making a quick stop at her office to deposit her jacket and purse before walking over to the rehearsal space where the party was being held. When she opened the door, the music reached out and hugged her. She needed to get on that stage and jam with everyone. As she walked in, she spotted the bar and went that way first. Why not top off her epic failure with a drink?
The debate in her head was as loud as the music as she tried to decide whether to actually get a drink.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked. She could get a soda and head into the party without Ethan or she could have a little Jack in her soda and let it dull her senses and not let her think about the fact that her husband wasn’t there, that he didn’t want to be near her.
“Jack and Coke,” she told the man behind the bar.
One of their new acts, Wes Ryson, was on stage, playing his guitar and singing about how love hurts. Standing off to the side, she watched him perform, sipping on her drink. He excited her—he was going to be