Sip of Assistance

Epilogue

Epilogue

I woke up in my bed at home in Los Angeles next to my wife.  My arms weren’t wrapped around her waist, her head wasn’t on my chest, and we hadn’t touched all night.  It had been a couple months since we had sex and as hard as I tried to touch her and kiss her and love her things just weren’t working.

When we were out at events in the public eye and she was draped all over my arm it was different.  The old her -the one I fell in love with six years ago- came out again and she looked at me like I was the only person that could ever matter.  But once the bloody camera flashes faded and no one was watching she grew cold and distant.  I couldn’t pinpoint what it was specifically that changed things, but over the course of the last two years -since we’d gotten back together- she’d fallen out of love with me.

Part of me wondered if she knew… if somehow she figured out what I did.  But how could she possibly know that I proposed to Holly a little over a year ago at the Halloween party?  Danielle may have worked her social networks, but Holly wasn’t the type to gossip. 

Then again, maybe it was obvious that even though I pretended to be happy and in love with her, I was really still missing Holly.  Two years since mine and Holly’s two weeks of lovemaking in London and it was still fresh on my mind.  It wasn’t just the sex; it was her… it was always her.

For so long I’d clung to this image of Danielle that was false and romanticized and when she broke it off with the man she left me for and came back begging for a second chance I let myself be drawn back into everything I’d thought I moved on from. 

Then Holly caught us and disappeared for months before springing back up as James McCalman’s assistant.  I thought maybe I could get a second chance, but she deserved so much better than what I did to her, how I treated her and seeing as she declined she must have known that too.

Danielle had to see that… or maybe she just grew bored; that was the problem last time.  I was almost certain she had already begun seeing some other bloke and the worst part was I didn’t care.  I couldn’t focus on her when everywhere I looked I saw Holly Preston and James McCalman; out on the town together hand in hand, at an awards show smiling brightly on the red carpet, on the cover of magazines annoucing their engagement to be married, and the latest was that they were on holiday in London –in a cozy cottage, of course. 

I couldn’t bring myself to try to change her mind again.  She looked too happy; happier than I ever made her.  The way they were together, even at parties when I watched from a distance as they stole kisses and shared private jokes when no one was looking- proving it was real.  I was happy for her because she deserved to be treated like a queen and I clearly knew bugger all about doing that.  James wasn’t daft like me; he knew how to make her happy and I knew that it was really over for me and her forever.  Even if things didn’t pan out with Danielle, I would have to strive down a new path and a new future… I’d have to let her have her happy ending even though I wasn’t in it.

THE END