The Luckiest

10

Derek stared at the ring on his finger. He hadn't known exactly what had possessed him to slip it back on but there it was. On his finger, all gold and perfect looking. And familiar. Enitrely too familiar. He didn't want to wear the ring anymore, not really. He didn't want to be married to Addison, defnitely not married to Addison. That marriage had been full of pain and suffering. He just wanted to wear the ring.

There was something vaguely comforting about it. About the way it proclaimed to the world that he was done. He was done with the dating and the mind games. He was married. He was part of the group of people who could weather a storm and come out for the better, with someone by his side. He had something to go on for, something to keep moving for. He had what his parents had. Except he didn't, he never had.

Addison wasn't someone who would stand beside him after a storm, or after anything for that matter. He had spent most night laying in bed completely alone. He had spent plenty of night sitting alone in a restaurant wondering exactly what was keeping his wife this time. It had been nothing like what his parents had. It had been nothing like a marriage was supposed to be. But still it had been something. It had been a marriage.

It had been something to work for, something to breathe for. After Dad...there hadn't been much to breathe for. And in those first few years, Addison had given him that. She had stood by him. Held his hand at the funeral, supported his decision to take time off from med school. "It's only a year, Addie," he had promised her. And she had nodded and told him he needed to do this. She understood. Or had understood.

And then one year had become two, because it was taking longer than he planned to get the restaurant back on his feet. By the third year he was starting to enjoy himself a lot more than he had in med school, but he didn't bother telling her, he just asked for another year. And she had given it to him. Somewhere between the fourth and fifth year she had figured out that med school was over for him.

Somewhere between the fifth and sixth year, he had noticed she wasn't coming home much anymore. "I'm a resident, Derek, I'm busy." But she wasn't home much and when she was, they barely spoke. Somewhere between the sixth and seventh year, they had started going to marriage counseling, though she rarely showed up at any of the appointments. Somewhere between the eighth and ninth, she stopped wearing her wedding ring.

That was around the time he figured out he wasn't in love with her anymore. But the lack of a ring thing still bothered him. She was his wife. He had promised her forever, regardless of anything else that was going on. He had suggested kids. He had tried harder and harder for the counselling. He had lost count of how many times he had tried to ask her what he could do to make the marriage work.

It never occured to him the marriage would end. Even if he wasn't in love with her anymore, even if she didn't love him, even if they weren't anywhere close to the two twenty-two year olds who had gotten married much too soon, he had never thought the marriage would end. Marriage was supposed to last forever, it was supposed to be predictable like that. And then she had come home early one night with divorce papers.

He had been shocked. He didn't even know why. Some part of his brain had definitely been expecting this but overall he didn't think it would ever come to this. He had thought that maybe this was working for her, the non marriage kind of marriage. She had never mentioned divorce. She hadn't talked about them at all but she had definitely never said divorce until she came home with the papers.

At first, he had begged and pleaded. Said something about vows. Said something about doing whatever he could to make this work for her. And then he had relented. He had signed the papers, ended his marriage. He couldn't help but notice as she signed that there wasn't a ring line on her finger. For some reason, he hadn't expected there to be one on his finger either.