#and they were married | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

xlvnedrms · 1 month ago

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“Okay,” he whispers with finality, taking one shaky step back, and then another.

I can see his hands clenching and unclenching uselessly at his sides, a tremor running through them that makes me want to run towards him and hug him with all the strength I have.

Every muscle in my being yearns to scream at him until I’m blue in the face, scream at him to take it back, take back his acquiescence, to tell him to take me back.

But I can’t.

Not when I’d screamed at him just minutes prior, and truth be told, I don’t want to yell another word at him ever again, not after seeing the way his face had fallen the first time I’d done it.

After all, this whole thing had started because of me, and I plan to end it as well.

I can feel my lips moving, feel the scratch in my now sore throat, but I’m barely aware of what it is I am saying. I might’ve been merely parroting his words back to him, or maybe I’d uttered another plea at him.

I don’t know what it is I’m pleading for anymore, I just know I’d been doing it mindlessly on repeat the past however-many times.

Until it’d taken everything from him, and now I can see him shutting down before my eyes. My very own undoing.

He takes another step back, his glossy eyes taking in the sight of me, as though he’s searching for something in my face. Whether it’s because he’s found what he’s looking for or if it’s because he hasn’t, he turns around. He shuts the bedroom door behind him, and I listen for any sound of the lock clicking in place, but it doesn’t come, and it makes me want to fall apart all over again.

But I’ve made up my bag along with my mind, the sack carrying all my essentials, clothes, remnants of memories of this place I’d called home for years now.

I pick up the bag and turn around to leave the apartment, the ensuing bang, a resounding sound that shatters around my ribcage. And I don’t look back.

It’s easier when I am able to go about my day, burying myself in my work, pretending I hadn’t made the worst decision I’d ever made in my life. It’s easier than when I have nothing better to do than to stare at the off-white walls of the place I’d fucked off to, thoughts and regrets and memories flitting through my brain until I feel myself going mad. It’s easier, but it doesn’t make it easy. It’s torture when I tread through the ministry grounds, and I see figments of him at every nook and cranny. Like the shadowed alley between two different blocks that we’d snuck off to one too many times, just to snog until we’re breathless, and then blush at each other like middle schoolers. Or, when I look out the window and down, and I see a shadow of him waiting for me below the willow tree. And the cafeteria where we’d pretend to run into each other and leave our respectful companies to have a quiet hour to ourselves.

Hell, even my cubicle isn’t a place he hasn’t graced with his presence. I distinctly remember bending him over my desk after hours when everyone had long gone, taking my time with him. We’d done it the other way too.

It’s a whole other brand of torture when I am forced to attend ministry parties, and I see the physical manifestation of him, lingering around the long tables. I just know it’s because he’s well within striking distance of the canapes on display. I would laugh if I wasn’t so choked up with emotion that I have to hurriedly turn away and find someone to talk to, anyone.

He looks fine, smiling when people acknowledge him, exchanging pleasantries with him. He laughs when he’s surrounded by people I have come to recognise as the colleagues he directly works with. But beneath his controlled exterior, I can see that the smile doesn’t reach his eyes, just the slight shadow of a stubble he hasn’t - and usually does – shaved. His face more gaunt too.

I inhale sharply and hope he’s eating well enough, hanging out with friends, not drinking himself into a stupor like I know he’s capable of. It’s moot, really, because I know him. And I know that I’ve broken him.

But I’m broken myself and I don’t know how to fix us.

The first two times, I show up alone, having not bothered with finding myself a partner to these events. It’s not smart, I know, not when the reason I’d given him that night we broke up that I’d found someone else. It had been a lofty excuse, in all honesty, because I doubt he believes I’m the type to move on from him, when he’d been my everything, and me his.

But it had also been the one thing I could think of that would make him leave me.

I’d considered going to Troy to ask him to play my new lover, but I can’t bear to see the pitying looks he’d surely send me every time I’m in his presence. It’d also be a cruel joke if he were to see me hanging off of Troy’s arm. Again. After everything we’d been through, I don’t want to subject him to that kind of heartbreak.

Not that what I’m doing is much better, but at least I can breathe through my conscience.

So, instead, I find a man through one of my numerous connections. He looks like Troy –always dapped in finely tailored suits and aged a little more than me – acts like Troy, from the way he flaunts his talents and easily oozes confident alpha male ego. He’s rich too, but his wealth comes from old money, but I can’t complain when he’s willingly spoiling me with gifts and his presence when I need him, in favour of, well, being his sugar baby.

The first time he sees me with the man, I see his eyes harden, his jaw tightens. I hold my breath, half expecting him to throw a punch, or a fit, but when that doesn’t come, I have to bodily pull my partner with me to the loos.

I remember his kindness and all the reasons I’d fallen for him all those years ago. Even when I’d broken his heart, he places me and my chosen happiness over his own.

A part of me wants to see him come undone, to reveal the rage and sorrow I know he’s suppressed, and so at the next event, I kiss the man when I know he’s looking over. It’s a gentle one, because I don’t dare to take it further, not with the public eye on me. I know people will talk, even though there hadn’t been many to whom I’d admitted to my relationship prior, but rumours spread like a wildfire and I don’t intend to make him die in one with me.

The next time I blink and look up, he’s gone.

I don’t try that again.

She taps her fingers against the cup patiently – or impatiently, I can never really tell with her – and waits for me to speak. When I don’t, she sighs, and picks up her cup, talking around a mouthful of straw.

“Want to talk about it?”

I snort. What’s there to talk about apart from the fact that I’d broken his heart in two and I feel like I’ve completely lost mine?

I don’t intend to say that out loud, but I can’t help myself. The bitterness and self-loathing in me making me spit out the words with more venom than I intend to.

She looks taken aback for a moment, but then her expression cools over and she’s looking at me with... concern.

I eye her suspiciously. “I’m sure he’s talked about me enough for you to get the picture.”

“That’s the thing,” she sighs again – and now I feel bad because I don’t want her ageing 10 years even though we’re only meeting for 10 minutes. “He hasn’t said anything!”

She continues, suddenly raising her voice. I cringe when other patrons look at us, and she seems to take the hint, slumping over on herself.

“He doesn’t want to talk badly about you,” she continues, tone softer and sadder this time, shaking her head.

I try to think of something to say, but I draw up blank.

Then, she clears her throat. “I’d like to know something. Was it a mutual decision, or did you dump him?”

I inhale sharply, and I’m sure she’s heard it, but I can’t bring myself to say the words. I sip on my macchiato silently. Her face falls at my silent admission.

“Oh, you...” she says.

And then she’s standing up with the scrape of her chair, before I get a faceful of her hair, her arms wrapping around me fiercely.

Why she’s hugging me when I’d basically confessed to jilting her friend, I don’t know, but then she’s pulling back and looking me in the eye so intensely until I scowl and look down at my drink.

She returns to her seat, clasping her hands out in front of her on the table.

“Why?” she hisses out in a whisper.

And my heart aches to tell her everything, to admit to it all. But I can’t, after this many weeks, I still can’t, and that’s how I know for sure that my breaking up with him hadn’t been a spontaneous decision. I know myself and I know I’m a coward when it comes to matters of the heart, and that’s exactly what I’d done – prove my cowardice.

I shake my head, pressing my lips together in a tight line.

She nods as though she understands, but she can’t possibly when I’m not giving her anything to work with.

“I just,” she licks her lips, collecting her thoughts. “I wanted to say that you’re both my best friends and I don’t know why you’ve ended up like this. But if love is worth anything to you, please reconsider. He’s not happy, and he hasn’t been since you left.”

She chuckles wetly, continuing, “I know we haven’t seen much of each other since, but you’ve been so busy these days that even an earthquake couldn’t get you out of your office. Heaven knows I’ve tried with you.”

And it’s true; she’s called me and messaged me and dropped by unannounced on multiple occasions and only now have I bothered to properly meet with her.

The words are on the tip of my tongue, the need to know about what he’s been like since the breakup, what he’s been doing, who he’s been associating with, how his work has been.

But it’s unfair to ask her for more, so I say instead, “How is he?”

Her lips quirk up sadly, and she gives me a knowing look. She knows I still care.

“Not great. But he’s functioning thanks to me and Adam and all the work he has, really.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, and I mean it with all my heart.

For everything she’s done for him when I couldn’t.

This, she understands. Then she’s hastily clicking her phone open, and swooping up her cup with her as she stands. She grabs my hand with her free one.

“I have to go now. Please, don’t treat me like a stranger. Let’s not meet only once a month, yeah?”

I try to smile at her, but I’m not sure it comes out as intended, feeling strangled myself. She laughs, nonetheless, the twinkle in her voice echoing as she steps out of the cafe and leaving me to my thoughts once again.

We’d never intended to get married. Sure, we’d talked about it, during the day when sharing a meal, nights tangled up in bed together, when wrinkling our noses judgingly at married couples doing married couple things in broad daylight.

We’d agreed putting our names on paper had never borne much importance to either of us, but it wasn’t something we were against either. In fact, I’d never said it out loud, but a part of me did consider marrying him just to spite my mother. A fact I suspect he’s known for some time already.

We did, however end up getting hitched one warm evening, both drunk out of our minds after hopping between one too many nightclubs and seeing how many rounds of fucking, drinking and dancing we could do before being inevitably kicked out. Not many, really, because we were ultimately only booted out of one, leading us to be up to a whopping two clubs. Only.

I can’t recall the events of the night very clearly, nor could he, but we’d somehow ended up at some marriage centre where we’d apparently signed off our lives to each other. It’d been funny when we’d woken up, the laminated paper winking back at us. I wasn’t completely sure I hadn’t been hallucinating the damn paper, nearly falling out of the bed in my haste to show it to him.

It had taken another round of sex – we tended to get distracted like that – two cups of coffee for myself and a whole brunch ordeal before we’d stared at the certificate together in complete silence, then stared some more.

Until we’d both decided it was too funny to not laugh it off. And that’s how we’d ended up married despite not really wanting it to happen, and yet neither of us cared enough to make it not happen.

I stare down at the divorce papers, the bottom right inconspicuously empty. Only my side had been signed, just as it had been when I’d sent the papers over to our old, shared address.

I suck in a breath, pinching at the bridge of my nose tiredly. I’d hoped after our final showdown, that we’d end this amicably, but seeing as my one-sided breakup hadn’t been enough to convince him to sign the bloody papers, I’m not sure I can act civilly just to make him see to it that we end things. I don’t want to be a bigger arse to him than I have already been, but I’m not sure I can remain sane knowing I am still married to the man I never wanted to leave, and yet left anyway.

And so, two months after that fateful fight – I’m not counting but it’s been exactly 69 days – I corner him just as he’s exiting his block.

His eyes widen when he sees me, his usually beautifully tanned skin paling when he sees me, as though he’s seen a ghost. Which, perhaps, wouldn’t be quite as frightening to him than seeing me in the flesh. He falters, but he’s just reached the final step descending to where I’m stood, when he seems to trip over the air. I reach out before I can think better of it, and then I have a fistful of his collar in one hand, and his bicep in the other.

I curse myself when I relish in the feel of his muscles shifting under my touch, much like the nights when we’d been...

Fuck.

He jerks back just as quickly, though, as if my very touch had scorched him. His eyes, though, they tell a different story. They shift around uncertainly like he can’t decide whether he wants me to touch him more, or touch him less.

I step back surreptitiously, making the decision for him, and I can see his nostrils flare, just the slightest bit, as he breathes more easily, inhaling deeply now that I’ve put some distance between us.

He opens his mouth to say something, but I beat him to it.

“Why haven’t you signed it?” I thrust the papers at him.

The papers I’d forgotten I was carrying with me when he’d fallen, and so I had to go through the trouble of picking it up before doing so.

I raise one eyebrow in a way I know makes me look more threatening and serious than I ever want to be with him. My upper lip curls in a slight sneer as I look at him with disdain. I try to ignore the sound of my heart cracking when I see his face shuttering.

He narrows his eyes at me, now cold where there’d been fire before. “Are you serious? Are you fucking serious?”

“Absolutely. But do pray tell what exactly I could be unserious about,” I say flatly, doing my best to incite his ire.

“You showed no sign of wanting things to end, and then I come home to you telling me to fucking shove it. Because of what? Because you’ve found someone else?” His voice is raised to almost hysterics now.

I am beginning to feel concern over how his colleagues might feel if they were to see him acting out the parody that is our marital dispute right in front of his workplace.

“Shut the fuck up,” I say, voice low and dangerous. Mainly because I don’t want to be having this conversation at all and I hate myself so fucking much with every second that passes. “I have nothing else I want to discuss with you. Because yes, you’re right. I’ve found someone else, someone my mother would wholly approve of, unlike she had you. And I intend to marry the person, so if you’ll be so kind so as to sign the bloody papers, that would be much appreciated.”

The lies taste like poison on my tongue that I would gladly drink up greedily if only to make myself stop.

A muscle in his jaw jumps, jaw clenching. Finally, finally, he takes the dreaded papers out my hand along with the pen I’d generously proffered. His movements slow, his eyes never leaving mine, face a blank mask.

And then, to my muted horror, he rips the papers up and scatters it all over the fucking lawn. I might be gaping at this point, but I barely have control over my facial muscles anymore. He stalks past me without another word, taking my pen with him.

“Fuck you,” I hiss at his retreating form, and I would bet good money that he can hear the outrage in my voice.

Needless to say, my life is spiralling. It had been spiralling long before I’d made the decision to end things with him. It had been the reason I’d ended things with him.

I’m also stupid. Horribly stupid, because of all the ways to go, surely knocking myself out with a bottle of painkillers and cheap vodka at my desk at exactly midnight, on day 71 now, is a surefire way to gather attention.

I just hadn’t anticipated said attention to come so promptly.

My plan had been as follows:

Stay in my cubicle to tie up loose ends – I hold an important position and I have enough responsibility in my soul to not just leave things as is.

Sneak in alcohol and drink it until I’m inebriated to the point I can’t even say my own name, and I’m hallucinating his touch, of all things.

Painkillers. With it being the weekend and nobody comes in on a Saturday, I thought it’d be a good time to go through with it.

Sure, having someone catch my cold corpse on the Monday would be quite a fright to them, but I’d strategically chosen the office since we both work in the ministry, and I’d wanted to be as close to him as possible when I go. Without making the trip back to our – his – apartment, because that would only serve to make me grovel for him to take me back.

Another reminder that I’m a coward, choosing to end not only my relationship, but also my life when the going gets rough.

Apparently, my plain fails spectacularly – and dramatically because really, a suicide attempt at work? – as I wake up to the clinical scent of antiseptic and the beep of what I can only presume is a heart rate monitor.

The next thing I notice is hushed voices. It takes me awhile, woozy as I am,to place the voices and the words they are saying.

“...someone else, but now I think this is why he wanted to break up,” I hear someone saying, and I know very well who it is.

“I saw him awhile back, you know? He didn’t look well, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. Good thing I decided to go checking on him again yesterday of all days,” a female voice says.

And hearing about how my scheme had been foiled, I feel a rush of cold fury.

I open my eyes, and snap out a, “You shouldn’t have.”

Three pairs of eyes turn to look at me, and now I see him standing closer to the foot of my bed, Alexandria-June and Adam seated on stools next to him.

He reacts first, rushing forward to touch a trembling hand to my face.

“You’re not okay, are you?” he says.

And when I turn my face away, “Please, talk to me. Don’t do this.”

His last words come out barely above a whisper, and I realise he’s crying. “I need you.”

I blink away the hot tears that threaten to fall.

I feel loved, and maybe, just maybe, it’s worth it to sew my heart back up, rip open my ribcage, and place it back inside.

“So, was there ever another guy?”

I snort. “What do you think?”

“I always thought it didn’t make sense,” I see him shrug out of the corner of my eye.

I keep my eyes trained on my documents, resolutely ignoring his thigh pressing into my shoulder as he sits atop my desk like a fucking child.

He jostles me with his leg.

“Ow. Fuck. What?” I finally drag my eyes up to look at him, and I immediately regret it, because he has a sinful smirk plastered on his face, and I know there’s no way I’m getting any more work done.

Not when everyone has left and he’s a very welcome distraction.

“Stop working so hard, it’s the weekend tomorrow.”

“Yes,” I say, trying to sound irritable. “And I have therapy in the morning.”

He gives me an unimpressed stare; there’s no way he’s buying my excuse.

“Right. Anyway, there’s something I wanted to ask.”

I make a sound akin to a grunt, prompting him to talk. It’s quite uncharacteristic of him when he licks his lips nervously. My curiosity is now piqued.

“I know we already did, and technically your attempt didn’t count, but so we’re on the same page and I know you still want it as much as I do, because fuck knows I want it,” he rambles unintelligibly, and it’s illegally cute.

Then he pauses, and I suspect it’s more for the dramatic effect than nerves now.

“Will you marry me?”

“Okay,” I whisper with finality, surging forward to kiss him.

#original character #writing #writerscommunity #writers on tumblr #mm romance #and they were married #divorce?#i'm new here pardon me #1st post #first person #my fic

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