My fiancé was supposed to be our forever happy place, but instead, he cheated and broke our hearts. Then he demanded I return everything he gave me and my kids… right down to a stuffed elephant. So I did.
And karma delivered the rest. My name’s Loren. I’m 35, widowed young, and mom to two amazing little kids.
I met Brian at my sister’s barbecue in Millbrook, exactly 13 months after my husband died in that terrible accident on Route 9. My kids were still raw from losing their dad. Simon was 10 and barely speaking.
Nancy was seven and still crying herself to sleep most nights. I wasn’t looking for love. I wasn’t looking for anything except maybe five minutes of adult conversation that didn’t involve goldfish crackers or cartoon characters.
Brian showed up with a six-pack and a crooked smile, and offered my kids lemonade without me asking. Real lemonade, not the powdered stuff. He sat cross-legged on the grass with Nancy, making balloon animals out of napkins and twist ties from the bread bags.
When Simon finally cracked a smile watching Brian’s pathetic attempt at a giraffe, my heart did this little flip. “Is your favorite color blue?” Brian asked me later, nodding toward my sundress. He didn’t flirt like most guys.
“How did you guess?”
“Lucky guess. You look beautiful in it.”
I should have known that kind of charm comes with an expiration date. For two years, Brian was everything I thought we needed.
He remembered birthdays… not just mine, but the kids’ too, and planned them like mini-festivals. He once biked across town in the rain because Nancy mentioned she wanted strawberry pancakes. He taught Simon how to ride that old bike we’d found at a garage sale, running alongside him in the driveway until my son finally pedaled away on his own.
Brian showed up with Chinese takeout on nights when I worked late at the diner, still in my uniform and smelling like coffee and regret. He never moved in officially, but he was at our place more than he wasn’t. The kids stopped saying “Brian” and started saying “our Brian.”
The night he proposed, right there in our tiny living room with Nancy’s art projects still scattered on the coffee table, my daughter whispered in my ear, “Mommy, I hope he stays forever.”
I whispered back, “Me too, baby.
Me too.”
Only “forever” lasted exactly eight more months. It started small. Brian would come over after work and just sit, staring at the TV like it held the secrets of the universe.
When I’d ask about his day, he’d grunt something about his job at the auto shop and reach for another beer. “Brian, honey, you seem distant lately. Is everything okay?”
“I’m fine, Loren.
Just tired.”
But tired doesn’t explain why you stop asking about your fiancée’s day. Tired doesn’t explain why you spend three hours at Murphy’s Bar instead of coming home to help with homework and bedtime stories. One evening, after he’d barely spoken two words to the kids, I cornered him in the kitchen.
“We need to talk. Really talk. Maybe we should try counseling?”
Brian laughed.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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