Say Hello, Kiss Goodbye - Jacquelyn Middleton Page 0,9
I was grateful for:
1. yummy turkey sandwiches.
2. binge-watching all of Poldark. Aidan Turner is yummier than turkey sandwiches!
3. a day spent in flannel Christmas pajamas. Even if they’re in Saz’s signature blue.
December 27 was completely blank.
December 28 was half-assed with only binge-watching more Poldark (should I visit Cornwall while I’m here?) written on the first line.
The next two days were untouched. Leia had fallen off the gratitude wagon—but had she really been on it?
Before the holidays, Leia’s therapist had made her promise one thing—to keep a gratitude journal. “It will help diminish toxic emotions. It will ease your depression and anxiety,” she’d said. But finding time to do the homework stirred up more anxiety, not less, and the longer Leia sat cursing the blank lines in the cute zippered journal with the Brooklyn Bridge on the cover, the guiltier she felt. Gotta love the irony…
Her gaze leapt to the window sill in front of her and a glittery noisemaker, its golden streamers sadly splayed and torn. Out with the old, in with the new, so they say. Waking up her laptop, her fingers swept the trackpad and opened photo albums stuffed with New Year’s Eve memories: 2013, 2014, and 2015 in Pittsburgh, and 2016 and 2017 in New York. Over the years, the cities, faces, and multi-million dollar homes had changed, but the parties remained much the same, offering chef-catered cuisine, premium alcohol, and decadent desserts—everything Leia and her friends desired except a midnight kiss from their partners. Such was the life of a girlfriend or wife of a NHL player when their team had a New Year’s Eve road game. The league never stopped for “Auld Lang Syne” a reality Leia had endured, thanks to Tyler McClelland, her first love and recent ex-husband.
Diana Ross’s “Upside Down” filled her headphones, and Leia sucked in a breath, selecting New Year’s 2014—the night she sat in the stands watching twenty-two-year-old Tyler, an offensive defenseman for Pittsburgh, score the winning goal in a nail-biting 3-2 home win over Carolina. Afterward, the loved-up pair went out for a late dinner to celebrate. Four years feels like a lifetime ago. Leia clicked through her memories, an unsettled heaviness tightening her chest. First up, a photo brimming with youthful passion—Leia, all smiles entering her favorite Japanese restaurant, wearing a beloved upcycling design (a knee-length cocktail dress with a plunging neckline and bell sleeves created from meadow green velvet curtains), and holding hands with a beaming Tyler, immaculately dressed in a fitted charcoal gray suit, his blond hair still damp from his post-game shower. We looked so amazing that night.
She opened another photo: their secluded table romantically lit with candles. They always saved that corner for us.
Leia’s finger paused over the trackpad, but her heartbeat had already broken into a sprint. There’s no stopping now. She clicked. There he was, Tyler, the love of her life—the boy she had met at fifteen, the man she had followed to Pittsburgh for college at nineteen—on bended knee, a three-carat Tiffany dazzler in his hands. He was my meant-to-be. The one. Her jaw clenched as she enlarged photos of her tearful New Year’s “yes” and their romantic clinch. But I was one of many—so many—you fucking liar!
More clicks and she careened into their 2015 wedding album and the photos of a lavish mid-July affair in Toronto’s famous hilltop castle. Leia was twenty-two, Tyler a year older. If I had known what was to come… She landed on a black and white photo snapped while she happy-cried through her vows surrounded by teary-eyed friends and family.
I, Leia, take thee Tyler, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer… A sour expression pinched her lips. … in Pittsburgh and in New York, to love and to cheat, til divorce us do part…
She slumped in her chair, glaring at the screen. You heartless piece of shit. Her pulse pounded, outpacing the music filling her ears. Together for ten years, married for three, separated for four months, and divorced for two. You broke me. You stole the best of me and now I’m someone I don’t recognize anymore—someone who believes nothing lasts forever and there’s no such thing as true love. She gulped back a sob and trembled. At least I know better now. I won’t be hurt again.
Taking in a stuttering breath, she let it go and inhaled another, her watery eyes drifting from her laptop to Sarah’s shelves,