Thanks to those of you who read and left reviews. I really appreciate it. So this chapter has been a long time coming, and is an amalgamation of the divorces of two of my friends. I hope I've been able to convey their feelings of hurt and loss. Song inspiration came from Pink's "Who Knew?" Thank you again for taking the time to read, and if you enjoy it, please kindly leave a review.

"Scott? That's your ex-husband, right?"

I nodded.

"You've never really talked about him before."

"Yeah. That was on purpose. Honestly, even now, the thought of talking about him is making me anxious." I turned my head to look at Jon directly. "He's the main reason I acted the way I did the night we first met. The other reason was that you were a cocky dick."

"He's still there now, he just now knows when to pick his spots," he laughed.

"I had built my own wall of sorts around my heart…and my genitals. I remember telling Dave one night that I had sworn off love and relationships for good. I was clearly bad at them, given my track record. He said those were famous last words, which…well it turns out he was right," I said, gesturing to the two of us in bed together. "But I lasted for months with no problems and was perfectly content with loving myself, so to speak. I never would have imagined that I would've been able to let someone slowly chip away at that barrier until it all came crumbling down. Not after Scott."

"So…lay it on me. What's this dude's story?"

I reluctantly got out of bed and shuffled over to my bureau. I could hear Jon shift in bed as he sat up, curious about my actions. I rummaged through the top draw until I found a small lockbox and opened it, removing the contents. I sighed and returned to bed.

"What's in that envelope?" asked Jon, pointing to the item in my hand.

"You can't rush to the end of the story. It won't mean as much." I sighed again and snuggled under the covers. "I met Scott the spring of my senior year at college…"

"I have no clue how you convinced me to come out tonight. You know I really hate these frat parties, Kait. Especially themed ones."

"Hurry up and drink that green beer so that'll you'll become fun, Lana."

Kait was that friend everyone has who pulls them out of their comfort zone. I'd met her in one of my classes my junior year. We had been study buddies, but we had enough things in common to form a friendship that lasted until graduation, at least.

"I was 'fun' enough my freshman year and did enough stuff then to last me a lifetime. I think I'm good."

"Noooo!" she whined. "I didn't know you then, so that doesn't count! I've never been able to see you let go and get a little crazy. Plus, you broke up with Rob back in August and unless you've been hiding it from me, you haven't dated anyone or even fucked anyone since then! Come on, Lana, these are the prime years of our youth, when nothing has consequences!"

I envied her devil-may-care attitude. I could never flow with that. She did have a point though, I'd realized. It had been a while since Rob. He'd been a sweet guy and we dated for a whole year, but we didn't connect on enough significant levels…then there was the fact that he…

"Also we need to find you a new guy who doesn't suck at eating pussy!"

I did a spit-take with my beer. Not because it hadn't been true…I'd told Kait about that enough times…but that she yelled it loud enough for anyone at the party to hear.

"I'm going to make sure that you get some D by the end of the night!" Kait let out a loud woo! that rang out, causing more people at the party to do the same.

I shook my head, knowing my face was beet red under the dim lighting. I could also feel a stirring between my legs. Apparently just the possibility of having a biological dick inside of it was making my pussy excited.

I scanned the room for potential one night stand material, only to grimace in disappointment. Every guy in the room looked like and was acting like your typical frat guy. That was definitely not my type, even if only for no strings attached sex. But then while I was eyeing the beer pong table, I noticed a guy who stood out…because he was dressed like a leprechaun.

"Are you shitting me?" I stared in disbelief at this weirdo.

"Who? Who?"

I pointed over at the idiot.

"Oh! Are you interested in him? I'll go bring him over!"

"Wait, no, I didn't-!" Kait was already halfway across the crowded room.

I finished my beer and felt my stomach churn as she dragged the stunned guy across the room to me. As he came closer, I realized that he was quite handsome, and that he had these intense almost turquoise eyes.

"Hey Lana, this is Scott! He thinks you're cute!"

"Oh my god, Kait, we're not in fucking middle school." I turned to the guy and addressed him. "I apologize for her. Can't bring her anywhere."

"It's okay, most of my friends are like that. She's right though. My name's Scott and from a distance I did think you were cute. Up close though, you're beautiful."

I was slightly taken aback by the fact that he was speaking complete sentences, didn't once use the word "bro", and didn't say I looked "banging". I really hadn't had any good experience with frat guys up until that point, so I was super judgmental.

"Well…thanks." My hands fidgeted, thinking of something to say. "So what's up with the leprechaun outfit? Do you pick up a lot of chicks that way?"

"Nah, but being a St. Patty's Day party and all, one of the brothers had to dress as the most stereotypical thing possible, and I got short straw."

I nodded slowly, unsure about how well this conversation would end.

Kait was all smiles, oblivious to my doubts. "I think my work here is done! Have fun, you two…" she trailed off and went across the room to take Scott's place at the beer pong table.

"So do I dare ask what she said to you?"

He laughed and his face lit up. Tiny lines scrunched around his beautiful, stormy eyes and I felt instantly smitten. "She asked me if I'd do you."

My jaw dropped and I smacked my palm against my forehead. "Again, I can't take her anywhere."

"My answer was yes, by the way." I felt my cheeks burn and I had to avert my eyes. "If you're interested, that is."

"It's not that I'm not interested…I'm just not sure about random hook-ups right now. I was in a relationship for a year and I haven't been with anyone since. You're gorgeous…I just I don't know if pulling my panties from under a stranger's bed at 5am and doing the walk of shame is the best idea."

"Fair enough. How about we go up to my room and I'll make you some coffee? I promise it won't be green. We can chat and get to know each other a little better, and there's no pressure about hooking up. If you decide you want to, awesome. If you don't, that's awesome, too. Honestly, I'm going to be happy just looking at you."

I sheepishly grinned, charmed by his no-pressure offer. I said yes.

We had sex that night and started dating a week later.

"It was amazing, the best I had experienced at that point…until you"

I caught his cocky smirk from the side of my eye and nudged him with my elbow. He nudged me back, then I wrapped my arm around his neck, putting him into a crappy headlock, causing us both to laugh. I looked into his eyes up close, studying the color intently.

"His eyes were kinda like yours, you know."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I noticed that immediately the moment I saw you. It pissed me off," I chuckled. "His eyes were one of the things that attracted me to him in the first place, so the very thought of them after the divorce sent me into a rage. I basically overcorrected, from my obsession with them to my loathing of them. But…I'd be a liar if I said that your eyes weren't one of the first things I found attractive about you."

"So then what? You guys dated for a while?" he asked. He seemed more into the story than I would have expected.

"Yeah, after we graduated…we were both in the same graduating class…we ended up moving in together. Our apartment wasn't too far from here, actually. It was a lot nicer than this one. Scott had gotten a sweet job offer right out of graduation and was making a lot more than most recent grads. Way more than I had. I was still working at various jobs, not using my degree, hoping I'd find something in my field, but the job market was tough. He never seemed ashamed of me, though, or seemed to be upset that he was making the majority of the household income. He was very supportive at that point. He was my rock. I was madly in love with him."

I stared off wistfully, thinking about the good times with Scott. My face must've looked awfully sad because Jon placed his hand on my cheek and pulled me back to the moment.

"Welcome back," he said, giving me a half smile.

"Thanks," I said, laughing softly. "Anyway, our second anniversary, he proposed. We'd talked about it casually before, marriage and whatnot. If either of us ever wanted to get married in general, the idea of having kids, that sort of shit. I never thought that he would have actually wanted to get married that early on, though, so I was taken by surprise. Like I said, I was madly in love with him, so of course I said yes. I didn't stop to think about the small details…or that marriage is hard. There's a reason all of the fairy tales that end in marriage stop there. It's only happily ever after if you end it before reality sets in."

I sighed and reached over onto the bedside table to grab a sip of water.

"We got married on St. Patrick's Day. Neither one of us is Irish. In hindsight, it was probably a pretty douchey thing to do, but to us at the time, we thought it was cute. It was very close to our third anniversary, and we had met at a St. Patrick's Day frat party, so it only made sense. Green everything. It was obnoxious, really. Even my hair was partly dyed green, but that was awesome. Even now, objectively, it was one of the best days of my life…"

"It still feels a bit strange that my side of the church has maybe a total of 15 people on it, while Scott's has like…over a hundred." I sighed and messed around with the bust of my dress, trying to get it to look perfect.

"It's not your fault you have a small family and his is ridiculously huge. Plus he invited all of his frat brothers, work colleagues, and other random friends. You're far more selective about who you call friend…which is why I've always wondered why you call me one."

Kait smiled at me in the mirror. We had grown apart since graduation, but we still kept in touch, thanks to social media. She was still the best friend I had, so I had asked her to be my Maid of Honor, and she had accepted.

"True. I know it shouldn't bother me, but it just feels so lopsided." I frowned at my reflection.

"Wait till his friends and family see you killing it in this dress, Lana, and they'll start scurrying over to your side."

I laughed and placed my hands on my hips, finally satisfied with how the dress sat on my body. "You're damn right, I'm killing it. Like The Bride in Kill Bill." I grinned while Kait shook her head. She never seemed to appreciate my media references.

The ceremony went smoothly, albeit long. Neither Scott nor I were particularly religious people, but his family was, and they were fronting the bill for most of it. Traditionally the bride's family pays for the wedding, which is a bullshit old tradition by the way, but my family couldn't afford a wedding large enough for the number of people Scott had been expected to invite. That was why we had a church wedding with the typical church wedding vows. I didn't care enough to have fought it. The reception was the most important part to me, the part where you get to celebrate the union of you and your partner.

When we finally made it to the vows, he held my hand so gently as he placed the ring on my finger. He recited the vows as those eyes looked deep inside of me, and I believed them. I recited them back to him, slipping his ring onto his finger and fighting back tears. After we were pronounced and we kissed to the applause of our guests, he held my head in his hands and whispered to me.

"I promise to love you, forever and ever, Lana."

"Obviously that didn't happen, but I was young and gullible and believed every word from his lips."

"How would you have known then? If you had been a cynical asshole about love like I was, you wouldn't have gotten married or even seriously dated him in the first place. You were a normal fucking person with normal fucking feelings. I don't think you were gullible at all. No one goes through with a marriage expecting it to blow the fuck up."

I pursed my lips. "I guess you're right."

"Damn right, I'm right!" he laughed.

"Don't make me put you into a shitty headlock again, pal," I laughed, shaking my head.

"You know I prefer headscissors from you." He wiggled his eyebrows at me and I rolled my eyes in return.

"Didn't you get enough of that earlier?"

"I can never get enough."

My face flushed slightly and I cleared my throat. "Now is not the time for getting all sexy on me. I'm dealing with some major baggage here!"

"So far everything seems pretty good, like a damn romance novel or something. So how did it all end up in flames?"

"I couldn't see the smoke that should've warned me of the flames, but you know what they say. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Thinking back on it…I'd say it was about a year into our marriage that there were signs of where things were headed. Not that I noticed any of it at the time. I think I'd been working downstairs for about a month…"

"You think it's going to be a busy night?" I asked while absentmindedly drying a glass.

"Maybe. Friday nights typically are…although this bar is never as busy as the ones down the street. This one is more of an old watering hole, rather than a trendy cosmopolitan bar that all the socialites, tourists, and college kids go to." Dave had been working there for a few more months than I had. He had already become someone I could trust and confide in.

"I think I like it better that way, honestly," I mused.

"I do, too."

It was almost six o'clock and the two of us were preparing for the influx of patrons after work. I heard the bar door open and noticed someone approach out of the corner of my eye.

"Scott!"

As Dave had told me afterward, my eyes lit up and my face beamed at the site of my love. It's not like it was really ever a surprise to see him stop by the bar. He came to say hello and give me a kiss every night after work. However, this night had been different.

"Hey honey," he said as he leaned across the bar. I had expected his nightly kiss that we always shared when he came to visit. Instead, he continued talking. "So I'm being pressured to go out with the partners and the rest of the staff at work tonight. They said be prepared to stay out late. So…don't wait up for me, okay? I have no clue when I'll get home."

I frowned, disappointed that I wasn't going to be able to go to sleep next to him that night. It was one of the things I cherished most. Being able to fall asleep with his warm body next to mine. It was one of the simplest pleasures in life.

He saw my frown and responded in turn. "I'm sorry that it's so last minute, but they sprang it on me as we headed to clock out. This is the first time they invited me. They finally accept me as part of the team! I really don't want to blow this opportunity. Lana, you know that networking is important in my field."

"You're only a paralegal, though."

I could sense he wasn't happy with my statement.

"Yeah, for now, but I always told you I wanted to go to law school some day. If I make a great impression with the partners at work, both in and outside of the office, I could have some really great recommendations to any school I wanted. This is important to me!"

I saw the determined look in his eyes. I wanted to be a supportive wife, so I gave in. It's not like it's a huge problem, I thought. It was one thing. Looking back, it was always one thing. When you only see each individual situation, none of them seem that bad. It's that whole 'not being able to see the forest through the trees' saying.

"Okay, my love, I won't wait up. Have a good time."

I leaned in for a goodnight kiss, but ended up catching his cheek instead of his lips as he turned to leave.

"Sorry, honey, I gotta run. The guys are waiting outside and the partners will be pissed if we're all late. Love ya!"

"Love you, too!" I called out as he slipped through the door. I sighed and went back to work. Dave didn't say anything for a while after that, but I remember sensing that he had really wanted to.

A couple months later, after Friday night late outings with his colleagues became a regular practice, another situation came up that should have been a sign. Again, at the time it didn't seem odd, because as an isolated incident, it wasn't. One day, when I was off from work, Scott came home from work with a guitar.

"That sure is a strange shape for a briefcase."

He raised his eyebrows at me. "It's not a briefcase, Lana."

"Yeah, I know. It was a lame joke."

I scrunched my eyebrows as he put down the case and opened it up, watching his fingers gently glide along the body of the guitar. Scott had never been one to be spontaneous. That's one thing that we had in common. Especially not since we'd graduated college and he didn't have the constant influence of his frat brothers. It seemed strange to me that he's just buy a guitar out of the blue like that.

"So…I'm a bit confused as to why you left for work without a guitar and came back from work with one."

"It's been a lifelong dream of mine to learn how to play the guitar and…I don't know…I just decided that today was going to be the day I got that dream started," he said, proudly closing the case. "I signed up for lessons, too. They start on Monday."

"That's cool." I stood in silence for a while, trying to figure out how to word my next concern. "So…how much did it cost?"

"Three thousand."

"Three…wha…three thousand dollars?! For a beginner's guitar?"

"No, of course not. I got the best one I could find cause I won't be a beginner forever."

"Scott! Why didn't you talk to me about this first before making such a big purchase?"

"I didn't think I needed your permission before I bought something for myself, Lana. It's not like you talk to me before you buy your ice cream or renew your streaming subscriptions."

"You're right, I don't. That's because those are small purchases! They aren't two months of rent!"

"They add up over time. I'm just doing one big purchase that will last me for years. I wanted to do something for myself that made me happy."

I sighed, giving in to the purchase. It's not like we couldn't afford it fairly easily. He made a lot more money as a paralegal at a prestigious law firm than I did tending bar, especially since I was just starting out at the time and the bar wasn't as busy as it is today. Still, I should've been more suspicious. Just the knee-jerk decision to buy a guitar…and he had never mentioned to me ever since we'd known each other than he wanted to learn how to play. It seemed odd, but I figured maybe it was just a dream from his childhood that recently had come back to light and he wanted to see it through. He was a political science major in college and had been planning to take the LSATs soon. He was a meticulous person when it came to planning things most of the time, especially large purchases. I should've seen that sudden change in behavior as a red flag, but I let it go. I let everything go…because I loved him.

"Another thing I probably should've picked up on was that we didn't have sex as often the further along our relationship went. Not that that is necessarily a sign of a bigger problem in the relationship, but it can be sometimes. We weren't having less because of scheduling issues or added stress in our lives…and it's not like we stopped altogether. We had just enough sex to not make it obvious that it was happening less frequently. Just enough to make me not feel like I had to talk to him about it."

Jon was oddly silent. He was slowly stroking my hair, but he had no commentary to my last story. I turned my head and saw his eyes full of sadness and…was that pity?

"Oh fuck, don't you go pitying me now. I've managed to work through a lot of it since then. Thanks in part to you being in my life. Dave, too. He was there through the worst of it, and he was the best friend I could have had."

He leaned down and kissed my forehead. "Your ex-husband sounds like a real dick."

I laughed and gave him back a kiss on the lips. "He wasn't like that when we first dated. Or if he was, he managed to always keep it hidden from me. I think he just changed. People change. It's inevitable. The person I started dating wasn't the person I married, and the person I married wasn't the person I divorced. It's why when some people complain about how the high divorce rate is because of a lack of morals or some bullshit, I have to remind them that a lot of people get divorced simply because instead of growing and changing together in ways that the couple can adapt to, they grow and change in opposite directions until they're no longer compatible. There's nothing wrong with that. Friendships do that all the time and no one bitches about a lack or morals. I get that people hold marriage to a high regard, but it's still just two people trying to maintain a long term relationship and sometimes it doesn't last forever. It's a fucking double standard"

I took a deep breath and bit my lip.

"But if that relationship is about to end, there are definitely right and fucking wrong ways to let the other person know."

"Tonight sucked," I whined, elongating the uh sound.

"I know. I hate when you think you're done for the night and then some big party comes in an hour before closing and uses all your clean glasses. Anyway, you did great. Go home and get some deserved rest."

Dave clapped his hand on my back as we locked up. I smiled and waved to him as I hopped into the taxi to head home.

I quietly snuck into the apartment, not wanting to disturb Scott. I know he had to get up in a couple hours for work and had a difficult time getting back to sleep if he was woken up. I tiptoed through the dark apartment to our bedroom, quietly stripped down, and climbed into bed. When I rolled over to wrap my arm around my husband's warm body, I was met with cold bedsheets. My exhausted brain didn't register that he wasn't there for a few more seconds, my hand blindly feeling around in the bed for his form. I sat up abruptly, panic and confusion in my chest.

I jumped out of bed and turned on the light. I definitely wasn't dreaming. The bed was empty.

"Scott?" I called out. Not surprisingly, there was no response. I exited the room and went to turn on the main light to the apartment. My eyes widened by what I saw.

Most of the living room was empty. Artwork that had been on the walls, vanished. The brand new TV we had bought not too long ago, gone. Other than the thrift store couch I had brought home when we first moved in and a couple smaller items here and there, it appeared as though we had been robbed.

Yet the room wasn't trashed. If we had been robbed, it had been done by the neatest and most polite thieves ever. I frantically looked around the apartment, making mental note of everything that was missing. It looked like it was mainly Scott's things. Other than some big items we had bought together, none of my belongings had been taken. And that's when I saw it.

I had only noticed it out of the corner of my eye, as the gold color blended in quite well with the wood. On the small dining table that had been left sat a simple gold band. Scott's wedding ring.

"It was probably only a minute at most, but it felt like I stood there for hours staring blankly at the ring. I wasn't quite sure how to process it. Obviously, our place hadn't been broken into. I started searching around for a note or letter, something explaining what this was supposed to mean…even though I knew in my heart what it meant. There was nothing. There was no form of communication at all. No letter, no text, no phone call. Nothing to tell me why. Why this? Why now? Why had he not talked to me about whatever he had been feeling so we could work it out? I thought about confronting him at his job, but I was too afraid. I tried reaching out to some of our friends, but I was ghosted by them. I seriously started to wonder if I had died and was living out some Sixth Sense scenario. I felt like my sanity was slipping away."

I shook my head and laughed at the absurdity of what I was saying.

"I went through five weeks of that until I got a letter in the mail. It was divorce papers, but there was also a letter attached. From Scott."

I held up the envelope. Jon's eyes widened. I could tell that he simultaneously wanted to know and not know the contents. I sighed and handed it over to him, knowing that to fully open myself to him, to truly make myself vulnerable, I had to let him read it.

Lana,

I'm sorry that it has taken this letter so long to reach you. It took me a while to write this so that you could understand what I did, and I thought it would be good to give you some time to begin moving on.

I am not in love with you anymore. I haven't been for about a year, but it was only a few months ago that I started to get the courage to do something about it. It started out as a sense of boredom in my life. I just didn't enjoy hanging around the house watching movies every night. When I started going out with my colleagues from work, I would listen to their stories about their spouses and I realized two things. First, the ones who truly love their spouses would talk about them with such excitement and joy in their eyes that you'd think they'd just started dating even though it's been twenty plus years. I didn't have reaction that when I spoke about you. Second, the ones who have been divorced spoke about how much happier their lives had become once they admitted to themselves what they were feeling and were no longer ashamed about it. I was jealous of them. Once I began to embrace my passions, like the guitar, I realized that there was so much more I wanted to do in my life, but I was being held back by our marriage. I hated the routine. I was bored by you and slowly began to fall out of love, even resenting you at times, but I was afraid of hurting you. Now I've finally realized that by not being truthful, I was hurting both of us.

So please, so that we can both move on with our lives and be happier people, sign the papers and send them back to my lawyers at the below address.

Yours truly,

Scott

I watched Jon's face in silence as he read through the letter. His eyes scanned back and forth as he read each line. His eyes became more and more narrow as he worked his way down. When he finished, he tossed the letter aside and scooped me into his arms, squeezing me tight. The comforting squeeze unlatched something inside of me and the tears started. He didn't say anything, just held me as I sobbed.

"I think the main thing from this that's been holding me back in our relationship," I began once I had calmed down, "is my fear of abandonment…of being abandoned because the other person becomes bored by me."

"I don't blame you. Not after reading that shit."

"And you, who lives this exciting life, traveling all around and meeting so many interesting people…why wouldn't you become bored with me? I just like staying at home. You've pulled me out of my comfort zone so much, whenever you've taken me out here or there. I've loved it, but I always feel a sense of relief whenever I come back home afterward. I just fear the day that you'll realize that you need a partner who is more exciting, more willing to take risks. Not some fucking homebody who's gravestone will probably say 'she watched every episode of Dr. Who' on it."

He kissed my neck and whispered in my ear breathe.

"I've been with adventurous women. Ones who want to go rock climbing and skydiving and go out every night. That was fun, but with how busy I am during the week with traveling, wrestling, interviews, whatever, it's honestly been really nice to visit you and not have to do anything in particular. Just talking with you and feeling you…it's like a vacation from my life. But that took me a while to admit to myself because I was never that guy. I've been a hell of a lot happier since I did, enjoying my time away more because I have you to look forward to. I can't erase what happened in your past. I can't say that we'll be together 'forever and ever'…"

I cringed hearing those words.

"…because who the fuck knows what will happen in the future. But I can say that right now, I want to be with you."

He turned my face towards him and stared at me with those eyes.

"I love you. I'll say it as many times as I have to until you-"

I cut him off with a kiss. He reciprocated in turn, and eventually one thing led to another. We made love again, and when I came, I breathed out a sigh. It was like my body and mind were releasing a tension that I had been holding inside of me for too long. I knew I still had a long way to go to work through my issues, but this was a huge step. I, too, didn't know what would happen in the future, but right now I was in the present with the man I loved, and that's what mattered in the end.