Sam Campbell needed to escape, escape from her life, her messy divorce, and all the pitying looks. Looks she couldn't ignore when everyone in town had known her and Cam, had known her shame and failure. So, she took the first job she could get, teac...
Life was hard. It has been hard for the last week. Hell, it had been hard for the last year. Kind of tragic, actually. Dismal, depressing, somber, grim just like the weather for the past week. Nothing but gloomy skies, dark clouds, and heavy raindrops. It was like the weather had called to check in with her mood and the two decided to be twins because it would be fun. Let's match outfits while she signs on the dotted line, making her failures all final. The weather had made it feel acceptable to lie in bed, curled up under the covers, hiding from the world. Who would want to do anything else when it was pouring and dark? But finally, today, sunshine was peeking through the clouds.
"It can't rain all the time," Sam whispered to herself, quoting one of her favorite movies as she pulled her bike out of the garage, adamant that she was going to get some fresh air today, to get out of her rut. She was stuck in a constant loop of negativity that she couldn't seem to break free from. This morning when she'd been woken by the sun shining in her eyes, Sam had decided no more. She was determined to claw her way out of this pathetic self pitying hole of despair.
She pedaled out of the garage, tires splashing through the puddles, onto the roads still slick from the morning rain. There was a fresh and clean feeling to the air. The sky was more vibrant and the colors seemed vibrant after so many dull and drab days in a row. The trees were budding with spring blossoms and the grass was a lush green, the promise of summer on the horizon.
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Sam sucked down a huge lungful of air, the scent of new life, of cleansing the earth, filling her nostrils. It made her wish it could be that simple for her. That she could just stand out in the rain, arms wide open, letting the droplets wash everything dark and dirty away, leaving a shiny blank canvas ready for new, vivid colors and life to be splashed across it.
But nothing was ever that easy. Cam had sat across from her two days ago, smirking, smugly satisfied, as his lawyer laid out the terms of their divorce. Everything that she'd eventually agreed to because the asshole was making it as difficult as possible, dragging it out, and she had just wanted it over. Sam had been dealing with this shit for the last eleven months, a shackle attached to her ankle, dragging her down. She would have agreed to anything if it meant she could finally walk away, finally be done for good.
It was as if someone had hit the pause button on her life, nothing moving forward, her stuck in limbo for far too long. Not since the day she'd walked into her house, Cam's naked ass thrusting against someone in their bed. Sam's purse had hit the floor with a loud thud, keys clanging against the wood, alerting him and his friend to her early arrival. And when he'd jumped from the bed and spun around, she had caught sight of the girl beneath him. In that split second, when she thought her life couldn't get any worse, it was so much worse. Her entire world tilted on its axis, getting knocked from orbit, hurtling through the black expanse of nothingness, cold and dark and dismal.
That's where she'd been stuck. Stuck for far too long. Sam was done letting him have so much power over her, done letting him keep her in stasis, not moving on, not even really living. She'd been having a pity party for her failure of a marriage for too long. It was past time that she took her life back and today was as good a day as any to start.
