Trusting Fate

I Just Need To Process

Ashton's POV

"Well, it all started way back in 2011. I was fifteen years old." Emmie looks like she's going to be sick as she starts. I squeeze her hands softly, trying to encourage her. "I was a sophomore in high school and I had this crush on an attractive and very popular senior. I met him in person for the first time in December 2011, I was on the girls basketball team and he decided to come with a friend to see the game. I happened to be friends with the guy he came with. I was the only sophomore playing varsity in that game and after the game Justin came over to talk to me. And the next seven years became a very long and trying lesson."

"We sort of became friends after that game, he came to more games, and we ran track together in the spring. That's when we really became friends and exchanged numbers and such. We started dating exclusively in August of 2012, and at the beginning it was great. Actually he was a totally different person at the start to who he was by the end. But there's something about my relationship with Justin that's different that most people my age." She looks pale, whatever she's about to say she's very worried about.

"Ash, I... I married him." Her lip starts to quiver. I'm surprised, shocked even when she says it, that was definitely not an idea that had crossed my mind.

"Ash? Do you want me to keep going?" The way she's looking at me I can tell I've been staring at her for a long minute.

"Um," I shake my head to clear it, "yes. Sorry that just took me by surprise. But yes, please continue."

"I was nineteen when we got married. My mom told me to give it more time, that I was still young, that I had my whole life to be married. Why didn't I listen to her?" She lifted a hand to wipe a tear.

"We all make mistakes, Emmie, but what does this all have to do with last weekend?" I push slightly, not sure how much I want to hear but wanting to know what happened at the same time.

"We moved out here about six months after we got married. Justin got a job with a big tech company based out of San Francisco but was told he could live anywhere in California as long as he could travel to San Francisco every month for a couple days. I got my credits transferred to UCLA so we picked LA. And literally from days into being out here he changed. A couple months later I found out I was pregnant, and I was stupid enough to think maybe a baby would help him focus back on us and our family. Justin started spending more and more time in San Francisco after I got pregnant. He would tell me it was because work was so busy, but it wasn't. He barely made it to the hospital when Pai was born and left for San Francisco again the next day." She wipes her eyes again, squeezing them shut for a long moment, "I was such an idiot."

"Hey," I pull her into my lap and wrap my arms around her, I can't help it, I know how this story ends already. "Finish the story, please?" I whisper into her hair.

"He never invited me to any event his company held, and I found some photos he was tagged in on the company Facebook page when Pai was about nine months old. He was with some blonde leggy model, and he wasn't wearing his wedding ring. But I was in my first year of teaching and couldn't afford to move out, or go home and try to get a job there. I was twenty-one years old, with a baby, a cheating husband, and nowhere to go. I had become good friends with Patti by that point and after being home over Christmas 2017 I confronted Justin about the photo's, the girl, all of it. He told me he didn't want the guys at work to know about me, because I wasn't a tan blonde Cali girl who he could show off. So he got a "fake" girlfriend to take to work things. And I guess when I got pregnant I got even less attractive to him, but he kept me around to have when none of his girlfriends could play. He was so ashamed of me, embarrassed of me, he decided I wasn't good enough for him and his big shot job. But he also knew I couldn't leave with where I was at in life. The next three months were the most miserable of my life. All of his and my family came out last March and we had a party for Pai's first birthday at the beach. For one day I kind of felt okay, celebrating Paislee. But Justin didn't come to the party, and my mom could tell something was up. Living so far from home we had been able to keep it quiet before then. When I got back to our apartment that night I found him with one of his girls, he'd missed Pai's party to be with her in our house." She starts shaking as she cries.