Secret Desires

8: Loaded Question

        There was a choking sound that came out of me when I opened the front door. He was frozen on the porch as he stared down at me. There was an ache in my chest as I tried not to go to him. I had the intense urge to throw my arms around him and beg him to forgive me. David's throat bobbed as he opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. His lips tried to form words that he couldn't say.

        Two weeks and a day. That's how long I haven't spoken to him. It might as well have been another three weeks like the last time. Only this time, I knew what the reason was as to why we weren't speaking. It was me. I pushed the boundaries of our relationship too far. He kissed me and it was wrong. But it was all I could think about those last three days I spent on the ranch. It didn't help that he wasn't there either.

        David conveniently had to stay in town for work so he never even slept in his own bed. He didn't say goodbye to me, he just left. I received one text message from him the first night he was gone. He said we would talk soon, but he never said what about or when. I didn't call or text because I wanted to respect his space, but I was dying to speak to him.

        After the first week, it was a little easy to ignore the desire to reach out to him. That first week our offer on the new house got accepted. My mom signed the papers and got the keys. We started to move in that same day. Jill, Tanya, and their mom all helped us with moving the majority of things. The big things we still needed help with but my mother didn't want to rent a moving truck or hire helpers. We had the money to do it, but she said we could ask the people we already knew if they could help. We only knew of one person with a truck.

        She asked David last week if he wouldn't mind helping us move. I had been nosy and heard him tell her how his schedule was a little busy this coming week, but he could try to find the time. She offered to pay him which I didn't understand. If we could afford to pay him, why couldn't we just rent a truck with helpers? When I asked her about it, she just changed the subject. I didn't understand until we had someone come to install the modem for the internet.

        It had been a man who knocked at our door. When she answered she apologized and told him there must have been a mistake, that we didn't make a purchase for any internet service. I stood in the dining room, listening to her lie, and then proceed to close the door in the man's face. I asked her about it but she ignored me. The next day she called the company and apologized for the misunderstanding. She then asked for another setup date but requested that a female be sent. She said it was due to religious reasons, but that was not the case.

        The second week was agonizing. There wasn't a single minute that I almost didn't text or call David. I tried to have better self-control, but I was weak. A few nights ago I slipped and sent him a text. Some higher power was looking out for me because the message didn't send. When my mom told me he would be coming Saturday morning, I nearly threw up from my stomach flipping. And when she told me who else she asked to help us on the weekend, I did throw up.

        "You're here!" The both of us nearly jumped out of our skin when my mom's voice came from behind me. She pulled the door open more, a big warm welcoming smile on her clueless face. Her frizzy hair was pulled back into a high pony. She looked younger like this. The light brown hair I had gotten used to after her trial had grown out a bit, her black roots showing. The one thing she kept up with when it came to her hair was her bangs. I knew she only kept them because they hid her scar line.

        "Yeah, I'm here." His voice was a bit strained as he forced a smile for my mother.

        "Well, come in. I can give you a tour." She was so excited. I tried to be, but it was still hard to accept that this was our life now. It wasn't the fact that our neighbor across the street was Jake... It was that we were trying to move on from something that had been everything we were used to. We were about to live a life we never thought was possible. And how we got here was a traumatizing experience, but the life we're supposed to leave behind was exactly that... Our life.