True, I could be an insufferable bastard at times, although she already knew that about me. So, what had changed? It wasn’t as if I loved her any less. I simply didn’t get how her mind worked. She seemed to be in her own world, weaving her own ideas as to what I had been up to.
Had she asked straight up if I was cheating, I would have truthfully told her no. Had she inquired if I was interested or considered the thought of cheating at all, I would have told her no. Had she asked if I was fucking Katie, I wouldn’t even blink before giving her a straight answer.
However, what had she done? She had basically gone around the tricky subject, as if dipping her hands in it would ruin everything.
Couldn’t she see that everything was slipping so quickly it was hard to reign it back in? There was no stability between us. It was as if we were two lone survivors adrift on the sea, with no hope or sign of rescue. It was appalling how she was going about it, and it was outrageous to see Lily—the woman I had placed on a pedestal—treating me as something to discard. I supposed the saying was true—one could never know the real person behind the smiles unless you married and lived with them.
From where I was standing, it looked as if she had already given up. It had come from her mouth. Perhaps not the exact words, but she had basically given me the green light to do as I pleased because she didn’t give a fucking damn about what I was getting myself into.
It had occurred to me to tell someone what was going on in my personal life, but each time I was tempted to talk about it, even to my father, I would refrain from ever referencing trouble in our marriage.
Like at that very moment, my father had been pressing on the real reasons why I didn’t want to join them, and I wasn’t sure if I should lie or tell him the truth about Lily and I.
“I don’t ask much of you, son. Would it really be too much to enjoy your old man’s company?” my father started saying over the phone while I took a moment to heave a sigh and pressed the bridge of my nose.
“Dad—” My argument was lost on him because he decided to interject one of my long lists of excuses as to why I couldn’t go on a damn trip with them.
“Five short days. It’s not too much to ask, is it?”
Old men and their stubbornness, when would it ever change? Hell. What was wrong with my father, anyway? I get that he wanted some family time, but he was acting as if he was dying tomorrow, and this family trip would be the last one we would have. Unless, of course, that was what he truly believed. In that case, was it really too much to spend five short days with him? No. Of course it wasn’t.
My father was one of the people who had pushed me to become the man I was, and I wasn’t that selfish of a bastard to deny him the enjoyment if he thought he didn’t have much time on his hands. The last time I had seen him, he had seemed like he was almost back to his old self. Then again, I guess it was hard to tell because people could fake looking okay. I should know; I had been doing it for weeks, and I admit, as the days went by, it was getting easier to pretend rather than deal with what the real problem was.
“All right, Dad, I’ll go, so please, stop hounding me, because I have a company to run, yeah?” I conceded, feeling like a fool for putting my foot down about not wanting to deal with Lily for those five days yet seriously overlooking my father’s reasoning behind the spontaneous idea.
My father’s delighted chuckle made me realize how much the trip meant to him. I had done the right thing. Whatever my ill feelings towards my wife were, they could wait. My father needed some enjoyable old times to remind him life was good, that it could still be beautiful after the serious scare he’d had. Anyone would be truly shaken from that exhausting ordeal. Though mine was different, after the operation, everything seemed to be clear. My purpose was set after I had seen Lily wearing merely a shirt in the kitchen, looking so lovely that my heart fucking dropped at the sight of her smiling at me.
I was in love, and I wanted her, so I married her in a heartbeat.
Playa del Carmen was where we honeymooned…
I supposed the impending trip would be another memorable one, but afterward, I doubted I would ever want to go back to my family’s vacation home. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I had an odd inkling that maybe this would be the last time I spent a vacation there with Lily.
*
Three days later…
All four of us were en route to LAX airport in a hired car. Lily and I hadn’t really discussed the logistics of how we were going to handle ourselves during the trip; therefore, I was half tense and half expectant that she would do something drastic to raise my parents’ concern. I didn’t want to be mean about it, but come on, pregnant plus hormonal overdrive plus marriage problem equals catastrophic proportions. Here was hoping I would come out of the adventure in one piece.