Xmas Wishes: How Do You Sleep BTB

There wasn't a single thing out of place. Unlike the usual situation when I traveled, this time the house was as neat as a pin. As I walked through room after room, I noticed that he hadn't taken anything or at least not much. All of his clothes were gone and most of his tools. He'd taken every picture of himself and all of the ones of the two of us he'd simply cut himself out of and replaced them in the frames.

If I'd expected to burn off some nervous energy cleaning while I waited for him to contact me, I was disappointed because there was nothing for me to do. It took me a while to figure out what Jared had done. He literally destroyed our home without attempting to do any damage at all. He'd turned our home into just another house, by simply taking all of the love out of it.

As I looked around that house, instead of seeing all of the wonderful memories we'd built there and all of the hopes and dreams we still had of things we wanted to do there, I now saw only a big empty box to keep all of my shit in.

Finally, after what seemed like forever squared, the phone rang. It was Mary, our next door neighbor. She said she'd seen lights in the house and figured that I was home. I'd known Mary for years. We met her and her husband on the day we moved in.

I figured I'd let her know that Jared had left me. Maybe she'd come over to make me some coffee and console me.

She'd actually called to un-invite me to the party they were having this Saturday for Christmas Eve. She called me a few choice names and told me that I deserved whatever happened to me. Obviously she'd spoken to Jared. Surprisingly, he'd asked her to look out for me and told her that I'd need a friend.

I fell asleep on the couch after drinking far too much liquor. I woke up the next morning with a hell of hangover. I hadn't seen or heard from Jared in over 36 hours and I was going crazy. I wondered why he hadn't called to curse at me and call me names. Didn't he want to yell at me or at least ask me why?

Later that evening the doorbell rang. I leaped up from the couch and ran to the door. As I opened it I noticed that there was a bored looking girl there on the porch. She was chewing gum and she looked at a list. She read my name off of the list. When I confirmed my identity the little bitch said, "Merry Christmas. You've been served." She handed me a thick folder of papers and smirked at me.

Then she walked away still popping her fucking gum, without a care in the world.

I opened the folder. Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected it, especially not so fast. They were divorce papers. Jared was asking for a no fault divorce. He wanted to split everything down the middle fifty/fifty. He'd already taken half of our checking and savings. He was liquefying our investments and would send me a check soon. He'd also removed himself from my 401K plan and sent me the papers so he could remove me from his. He'd generously filed a quit claim to our house and was giving it to me. He kept his car and his jeep. I kept my car. If I signed off on it, the divorce would be final in 60 days.

There was no way in Hell I'd give him up. I intended to get a lawyer and demand my day in court. I wanted to fight for my marriage with every breath I had left. I wouldn't let Jared get out of my life without me having tried my God damndest to keep him.

It took seventy five days in the end, instead of sixty. You're expecting to hear that I fought for and got a meeting with him or counseling, right. None of that happened. Even my lawyer admitted that Jared had been way beyond fair. By rights, he should have made me sell the house and split the proceeds with him. I think, in a way, giving me the house was Jared's way of making me suffer even more by forcing me to remember all of the plans we'd made for our lives. I sat there alone in that house and it was torture. Everything I saw reminded me of what I'd lost. Jared is also one of those people whose absence is felt by everyone he knew. So my neighbors wasted very little time in letting me know how they felt. Less than a week after Jared had gone, I started to feel like I was a tiny island in the middle of a huge lake. I was totally isolated among people who I once thought were my friends.

There was also the fact that I couldn't really swing our mortgage without him and I'd have taken a bath trying to refinance it. So I ended up selling it anyway and for a lot less than it was worth.

I got another job and started trying to work my way back up the food chain. The problem is that it's really hard to find motivation when you just don't give a fuck. The new job was also in sales. For the first few months, I really didn't try very hard so I made hardly any money. I noticed that I was going through my savings at an alarming rate. The cost of my therapy sessions was also killing my bottom line.

My new job had no provision for employee pensions, so I really needed to stop bleeding money from my savings account. The therapy was no help. I already knew where I'd gone wrong. I already knew what I'd lost. I'd actually lost a piece of myself. I'd given up a piece of my soul and only by getting it back would I ever be whole again.

So now it's a year later. I'm fatter, less attractive and more depressed. I made a wish and it appears to be coming true but I guess I'm going to have to work for it a little bit. I don't mind though, because all I wished for was a chance. Jared is sitting next to me. He's like a life preserver in the middle of a very rough sea and I'm a drowning woman. There's no way I'm going to let him get away again.

While we've been apart, I've done everything I possibly could to keep tabs on Jared. I started friendships and re-established relationships with people just to get information on how he was doing. Some of it required me to belittle myself and eat a lot of shit. Remember that bitch Connie? She was the stupid one, who gave me Jared in the first place. Connie called me about a week after Jared left me. She couldn't wait to rub it in. I had to listen to her basically call me a piece of shit. "I warned him about you from the beginning," she croaked. "You just weren't right for him. You dropped your drawers within minutes of meeting him, remember?"

About twenty minutes into the conversation, I finally got what I'd been waiting for. "He really isn't doing well," she said. "You hurt him really badly. I've tried everything I can think of to get him to come out of his apartment. I've even tried to go over there and visit him, but he doesn't want to see anyone."

Through my patience and her big fucking mouth, I had all of the information I needed. I knew that Jared had moved into an apartment. I also knew that he wasn't trying to date anyone and that he was having as rough a time getting over me as I was getting over him.

I found out other news from other places, but Connie was always the one I could turn to when I absolutely needed to know something. She enjoyed letting me know that she knew more about my husband than I did. She loved gloating over the fact that in the end I wasn't very likely to end up with him. Unfortunately, after a while all of my information about Jared just dried up. No one seemed to know anything about him. Even Connie had to admit that she didn't know anything that was going on in his life. I'd have paid to find out even the smallest bit of information on how he was or what he was doing.

Now, all of a sudden, he shows up and except for looking a little thinner and a bit more serious, he really looks good. The time apart had apparently been far kinder to Jared than it had to me. Maybe it's because his conscience is clear, while I bear the blame for ending our marriage.

I looked over again at my ex-husband as the plane continued to slice through the air cutting the distance between us and our destination by miles every second. It just felt like as I watched him out of the corner of my eye that our time was dribbling away and with it any chance I might have to get him back.

"How do you sleep?" I asked him out of the blue.

"What?" he asked. I actually thought I saw the beginnings of a smile cross his lips.

"Audrey, you always did have a knack for asking me the most off the wall questions," he said. "That was one of the things I loved the most about you. And I guess one of the things I missed the most."

I was having trouble focusing when he said that. Jared obviously didn't realize how his words had me in a near swoon. I was beginning to feel the magic of the spirit of Christmas working on my behalf again. I might just pull this off.

He turned in his seat and actually looked at me. His smile just lit up my entire world. Things were going so well until one of those little plastic flight attendants came into the picture. She asked him if he wanted something to drink. Okay, I know you guys are thinking that I'm blowing this out proportion, but I'm not. That bitch was cock blocking.

Why do I think that? Let me give you the situation. Jared and I are both flying business class. We both get the same benefits and amenities. She walks up and leans across me offering him an unobstructed view of her cleavage to find out if he wanted a drink. Wouldn't the correct procedure be to ask BOTH of us, if we wanted a drink? And was it necessary to lean over me and put her titties in his face?

The bitch also did this long before they even had the drink cart ready to bring around. She saw that Jared and I were talking. She didn't know that we already had a history together. She saw him turn around in his seat and smile at me. She just decided right then and there to shit in my corn flakes.

Luckily, it didn't work. Jared just smiled at her and told her he'd wait until the cart came around so he could see what they had. She told him that she'd asked him early in case he wanted something special or something that wasn't on the menu.

I asked her if EVERYONE got that opportunity and she just smiled and left without answering. So tell me, was I over-reacting?

"I guess I never expected to see you again," he said, changing the subject and talking to me as if we'd never been interrupted. "But then I never expected any of what happened to happen. It was like getting kicked in the teeth. I guess in a way, it was my fault. You see, when I met you, I thought that my life was set. I never imagined that you and I wouldn't be together forever."

"I never thought that either," I said. I saw a bit of anger flash across his features and he covered it up well. That was another thing about Jared. I never saw him lose his temper. Not once in all of the time we were together. So even that flash of negative emotion spoke volumes about what he'd been going through to get over me.

"Jared, I love you so much, it hurts me not to be with you," I said. "I feel like a part of my soul is gone. I had to sell the house. I couldn't be there with the ghosts of us constantly reminding me that we were broken."

"None of our neighbors would speak to me. I became a pariah. I tired therapy, it didn't help. Nothing helped Jared. It was as if I'd died and no one told me. I was just wandering around going through the motions of life, without realizing that I was simply no longer alive." As I said this, a single tear rolled down my cheek. I'd been trying so hard to keep myself together. I'd really thought that I was all cried out over this, but finally getting to talk about it to someone who really mattered caused all of those old emotions to surface yet again.

Jared handed me a handkerchief. Damn him, it wasn't a napkin or a wet wipe or any of those things. It was a very nice, real handkerchief. Where the fuck would he get something like that these days?

"Okay," he said. "I understand this from your point of view. We have this chance meeting. We haven't spoken to each other since it happened. So you see this as an opportunity for what...closure?"

His eyes scanned my face and I felt as if every emotion that I'd buried, all of my hopes and dreams were open for him to see.

I looked downwards and was rewarded. The floor of the plane was covered in carpet. That was good because if he told me to get down on my knees and beg him, or suck his dick, I'd do it.

"So, okay Audrey, we're having this talk. You get to have the closure your therapist told you, that you needed. What's in it for me?" That was unusual. Jared had never really done anything for his own benefit before. I was beginning to see what I'd done to him. The changes in him were far deeper and yet far more subtle than I'd thought.

"What do you want, Jared," I asked in a very quiet voice. I hoped against hope that he'd tell me, that he wanted ME back.

"Do you know what you did to me?" he sneered. As he asked the question, I could tell I'd dredged up memories and emotions that he never wanted to visit again. He'd buried them so he simply didn't have to deal with them. In order for us to move forward, we were going to have to open that box and take a look at some truly ugly things. I guess I knew that there'd be some anger and some resentment, but I was ready to face them if he was.

His voice had been loud enough that the flight attendants both looked in our direction. I could see concern on their faces as they looked at him. The looks that they gave me were far less caring.

"You were my ENTIRE... FUCKING... WORLD," he spat. "Do you have any idea of how long I searched to find YOU? Do you have any idea of how SPECIAL you were to me? Every woman I'd dated before you was always like Connie. All they cared about was what they looked like. The only thing they cared about in men could all be the sum of an equation with three variables. It was like fucking romantic algebra. The first factor is what the guy looks like. The second factor is how much money he makes or has. The third is how big his dick is. You add those three up and come up with a score. If a guy is lacking in one, but above average in the other two he can still measure up."

My mouth dropped open. Not because I was shocked about it, but because he'd distilled it with such brevity. He'd made it sound so simple and so mercenary but it was profoundly true.

"Don't you think it's demeaning to determine a man's worth or his suitability as a mate with just three variables?" he asked. "Even those guys who try to fuck every woman they meet have higher standards than that for the women they actually intend to marry. That's one of the reasons that I never went around trying to screw every woman I had access to. I knew that I could never be with someone like Connie. She's cute and all of that, but on a deeper level, we just didn't click. So why would I waste my time on her?"

"When I met you, it was different. I'm not saying that you weren't pretty, because you were. But you had some things that Connie just didn't have. I was attracted to you with my body. But my brain and my heart told me that you were the one. Within a few minutes of meeting you, I just knew it."

Hearing this now from him made me want to open the door to the fucking plane and just scream out how happy I was. Of course, if I did that, the plane would depressurize and plummet into the ground killing all of the passengers, with Jared and myself among them. The only thing that would probably survive intact would be the airbags inflating that fucking flight attendant's boobs.

"Audrey, Connie gave me so much shit about deciding that you were the one I wanted to be with, she told me for months that you'd do something like what you did. I never believed her. That's one of the reasons that she and I are no longer friends. After...well, after what happened between us, she tried to help me get over it. But she really wasn't a friend. All she ever did was tried to rub my face in the fact that she'd warned me about you. And she kept trying to convince me that the answer to my problems was to hook up with her. A friend doesn't try to force you to do something you're just not ready for. So Connie and I are no longer friends."

"Audrey, I was depressed and just beaten down. For a long time I didn't go out at all. It was over a month before I even went back to work. I was just devastated. I mean think about it. The woman I loved, the person I thought I shared my life and my soul with was going out and fucking other guys. I walked in on you fucking a guy old enough to be your grandfather."

I closed my eyes and tried to look away from him. He wouldn't let me. He reached out and gently grabbed my face and pulled me back so I was facing him.

"And Audrey, it hurt me even more to know that you enjoyed it more than you did with me," he said. Both of our minds were laid bare, along with our emotions. I was visibly crying then and there was wetness in the corners of Jared's eyes as well.

"Would EITHER of you like a dri..." flight attendant Barbie began before both of us cut her off.

"NO!" we both shouted at the same time. Our reply was far harsher than we'd meant it to be. Everyone in our vicinity noticed it and looked at us.

"We'll be landing in about an hour," said the flight attendant as she wheeled her cart to the next set of passengers.

In a quieter voice, yet an angrier tone, I spoke to Jared again. "What the fuck makes you think I liked it better with him?" I asked. "Jared, you asshole, there was never anyone better than you. There was never anyone who was even as good. Just what stupid logic are you basing this bullshit on?"

"Audrey," he said quietly. I could see that this was really hard for him. Even after all of this time, he was hurting as much as I was, maybe even more. "It was what you said. You were begging him to shoot his juice in you and make you a mommy. You wanted that old, fat bastard to get you pregnant instead of me."

"Jared, have you lost your fucking mind?" I asked him. I looked at him thinking he was joking or being facetious. As I looked deep into those beautiful brown eyes there wasn't a hint of deceit. Jared really believed what he'd heard that day.

"Jared, whenever I was with those guys, it was never about love or sex. I got all the love I needed and all the sex I needed from you. When I was with them, the only way I could go through with it was to close my eyes and imagine it was you on top of me. So I was pretending it was you that day. It was the only way to get a reaction out of me. If I didn't, I'd just lay there dry as a bone. It would be like they were fucking a blow up doll. Having sex with you was so much more than a physical act. None of them could ever come close to it."

Jared's face changed again. I don't know why I expected him to be happy after hearing that but I did. His reaction was anything but happy though. It was like an explosion of pain. Maybe Jared's emotions were like a bunch of chemicals all placed on shelves in his psyche. My answers to his questions had poured some of those emotions out and obviously some of those things should never have been allowed to mix.

"Then why the fuck did you do it?" he yelled. Jared's shout in the close confines of the plane echoed like a bomb had gone off. Not only the flight attendants but two men at opposite ends of the plane stood up and stared at us. I guess we knew who the Air Marshalls were after that.

The flight attendants and one of the men came over to us. "Sir," said the man. "Is there a problem here? Should we arrange to have you switch seats?"

"It's my fault," I said. The man looked at me dubiously. "We just need some privacy. We'll keep it down."

The man looked at us suspiciously. "He's my ex-husband," I said. "We haven't spoken to each other since the divorce started. Maybe if we'd had a chance to talk then things would be different now. I guess he wasn't expecting some of my answers to his questions. I did a terrible thing to him. When we get off of this plane we may never see each other again. We'll be very quiet." He shook his head but he went back to his seat.