I was staring at the refrigerator.
“Okay, okay.” Walking to it, I swung the door open and examined the contents. “Juice. Milk. Leftovers. Condiments.” Nothing that jumped out at me. Nothing that made any sense. Nothing that would make this agony go away.
A hand grabbed the back of my hair and forcibly pulled down. Hard. My neck yanked backward with the tug, and my head jerked upward. Now, my eyes rested squarely on the freezer. Ah. That.
“Got it. Thanks.” Opening the freezer, I closed my eyes and reached around and past the disgusting dead rodent box until I found it. Pulling it out, I sat down on a chair and unzipped the bag. I turned it upside down... and the foil wrapped cake fell to the table.
I picked at the foil, not quite ready to unwrap it. The last time I’d seen the actual cake inside had been over a decade ago. When I believed in love.
When I believed in forever.
When I believed in... Well, when I believed.
I wanted to throw it away, like I’d done with the rugs. But somehow, I knew that wasn’t enough. I needed to open it. I needed to look at it. And then, I needed to get rid of it.
If I did that, would I be throwing my dreams away with it? Well, yeah, that made sense. In a stupid life-altering, change your destiny, new-age sort of way. My hand shook as I gently peeled back the foil. I’d been smart enough to put the cake in plastic wrap before covering it with foil, so nothing stuck.
There it was. White on white. Crushed icy pink roses, smushed a bit, but still recognizable. Oddly, it didn’t look as if it were a decade old. It didn’t appear to hold the key to my future. It was a hunk of frozen cake. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I made the mistake of picking it up. As soon as my skin touched it, everything changed. Instead of sitting in my kitchen, I was once again at my wedding, then at my reception, various scenes flipping by speedily, like a DVD on fast-forward. Just as before, my real world bled away. It was as if I had stepped into the past. But as a ghost. It felt real, but I knew it wasn’t.
After the reception came our honeymoon. Then our first home. Then our second. And then, finally, the one we’d built together. While all of this was happening, emotions were zipping around inside of me. At first they were amazing. Love. Happiness. Fulfillment. But negative emotions soon followed. Frustration. Sadness. Wanting a baby and Marc’s refusal. No longer cuddling together on the couch at night. Fights. Recriminations. Guilt. More fights.
Guilt? I tried to grasp what was being shown to me. I tried to understand why it was even happening. And then—suddenly— everything slowed down. No longer on fast-forward, the vision in front of me was of that night, in heart-wrenching slow speed, flickering before me. My thirty-fourth birthday. Except this time, I watched Marc’s face as he spoke to me. His hand shook when he gripped the chair. He told me he was leaving me. And then, when my prior-self turned her back on him, cursing him, I saw regret shimmer over his expression.
It was there. The regret I didn’t think he felt, so obvious in his eyes as he stared, frozenlike, at the back of my head. But when my old self pivoted, angry words flying from my mouth, the regret instantly vanished, shielded by that ice cold glare I’d spent the last year remembering.
The tears came then. No way in hell could I stop them. I sobbed, and while I’d cried plenty in the past, never like this. Never this all-consuming explosion of tears that just wouldn’t stop.
My chest hurt from it, my soul ached from it, but strangely— my heart? It felt free, light, and whole. Still crying, I dropped the cake on the table and sat there, waiting for the trembles to stop, the tears to cease.
They didn’t. Standing, I grabbed the cake again, thinking I’d drop it into the garbage, or maybe the disposal, when my eyes fell on the snake. Oh God. That was something else I needed to do. I’d had him for a week, which meant he needed to eat. Still crying, I maneuvered the little door for feeding and dropped the cake in there. Fast.
Every pet I’d ever owned had loved people food. Snakes couldn’t be any different, could they?
Besides, it