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August 18th, 2015
I thought that the honeymoon phase would last longer than it did.
Jamie and I had only been married a little more than two months, it’d been a year since I was tumor free and I was looking forward to going back to work twice a week next month.
If only we hadn’t gone out to lunch to celebrate my tumor free brain. If only… if only…
++++++
“What do you want to eat, Sassenach? Yer choice,” Jamie smiled as we walked out to the car. It was a beautiful day, and the first time this month that Jamie had spare time away from work to celebrate my diagnosis of being tumor free.
“Hmmm, how about that little place on Home Street? With the really good pancakes!” Licking my lips in anticipation, I got in the passenger seat.
“The cafe that ye stuffed yer face at?” Jamie laughed, starting the car and headed in the direction of Cafe Class.
“I did not stuff my face!” I gasped, eyes wide. “The blueberry syrup was delicious yes, but I did not stuff my face, I ate them in a graceful way.” Jamie laughed, his eyes crinkling like they always did when he was really happy.
“I’m so happy, Sassenach… to be here wi’ ye,” he said a moment later, his left hand sliding over my knee. I brushed my finger over his ring, feeling the cool metal against my skin, blushing when I remembered our recent nuptials.
“I’m very happy too, Jamie.” I placed a kiss on the back of his hand and his lips curved softly. I would never tire of seeing him smile.
We got to the cafe and thankfully it wasn't busy, so we took the table nearest the window, looking out at the street. People watching was one of my favorite things to do — imagining their lives, the little details that make up a person. I was doing just this while I waited for our pancakes to arrive — Jamie had stepped outside to take a work phone call, mouthing “sorry” as he walked out the door.
I was looking at a woman coming down the street, noticing how cute her jacket and shoes were, wondering where she got them from, when she stopped suddenly in front of Jamie. She pulled her sunglasses off, resting them on top of her head, short curly hair much like mine. My heart squeezed as Jamie saw her, muttered something into his phone, hung up and gave her a hug. A familiar, yet tense hug.
My eyes were focused on them, unable to tear away my gaze until Jamie turned towards the window, pointing at me and I blushed, trying to make it look like I hadn’t just been gawking. Then my palms started to sweat as they both came through the door of the cafe — Jamie, kind as ever, holding the door open for her.
I stayed seated, legs crossed, my left hand with my wedding ring resting on the top of the table. Jamie looked at me, his eyes wide and his ears pink. Christ… who was this woman to him?
I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“Hi, I’m Gia.” She stuck her small hand out and I shook it. My eyes shifted from her face to Jamie’s and I saw him shrug, as if his shirt were too tight. “You’re Claire, right?”
“Yes,” I found my voice. “Jamie’s wife.” I thought I saw her flinch slightly at the word ‘wife’ but I could have been making things up.
“Aye, Claire and I just got married in June!” Jamie chimed in. About time lad.
Gia smiled, resting her hand on the back of Jamie’s arm, “Oh that’s great! Congratulations you two.” I wanted to yank her hand off of my husband’s arm, but I also didn’t want to cause a scene. The next words out of her mouth caught me so off guard, I knew if I had been standing, I would have fainted.
“Hope your wedding went a lot better than ours did!” Gia laughed awkwardly, looking up at Jamie, but his eyes were fixed on me… gauging my reaction.
I sat still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.
“It went just fine, thank you,” I replied shortly, crossed my arms over my chest, and bit the inside of my cheek to stop the tears that would inevitably come. Jamie was married before? To this woman?
A million thoughts raced through my head, and I was too busy staring at my fingers in my lap to notice that Gia had left and Jamie was now standing in front of me.
“Sassenach… we need to talk.”
“Fuck you,” I said quietly for the sake of the people around us and stood up, brushing past him and nearly ran out the door, in a hurry to escape the nightmare that had become my life.
++++++
Jamie found me sometime later, sitting on the same park bench that we had shared our first kiss at. Why had I bloody come here of all places?
Tears threatened to spill down my cheeks when I saw the tips of his shoes approach. He stood there, waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t have any words for him — no words at least, that would do any good.
“Claire,” he took a step forward, his hand reaching under my chin, but I pushed it away, my stomach in knots at the feeling of his skin on mine. Only two months ago, we had promised to love one another, to not keep secrets, and to not tell lies.
This was a secret I didn’t understand and I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to get over.
“Claire, please,” his voice wavered and I finally looked up to see his eyes red, full of tears of his own. “Talk to me.”
“What do you want me to say?” I felt weak, as if every emotion I had ever felt in my life had been sucked out of me — a hollow shell.
“Somethin’, anythin’… please tell me what’s goin’ on in that wee head of yers.” Jamie bent his legs, and fell forward onto his knees to the grass, his hand hovering to touch my knee, but he pulled back when he saw my expression.
“You were m-married?” I stuttered on the last word. “For how long?”
Jamie took a deep breath and laughed. Laughed! If we weren’t in a public place, I would have hit him against his chest, clawed at his skin, anything to make him hurt as he had hurt me by keeping this from me.
“No, Sassenach. I wasna married to Gia, but we were engaged,” he sighed and rose to his feet, his fingers tapping against his thigh. I focused on his ring finger, trying to remember the vows he had made me, trying to remember the shit we had been through… anything that would help me to keep loving him. In this moment I very much wanted to hate him.
“Then why did she say wedding as if it happened?”
“Because…” he took a deep breath and muttered something in gaelic. “Because I left her at the altar.”
I finally looked up at him, “What? Jamie… how could you do that to her? Why?”
Taking it as a good sign that I had made eye contact with him, Jamie came and took a seat next to me on the bench, still a good safe distance away however.
“I ken it sounds bad, and I’m no proud of what I did. I’ll never forgive myself for it, but damn it, Sassenach… I dinna regret it!” Jamie grabbed my hand, shaking it slightly in his. “If I had never left the church that day, then I wouldna have met you.”
I pulled back my hand firmly, squeezing it in my lap. “All this time though Jamie. Not just you… but your family, Jenny and Murtagh. Wait,” I paused, trying to do the math in my head. “When was this? Before or after the plane crash?”
“After.”
“Jamie… how long ago,” I didn’t want to know but I knew I needed to.
“I knew Gia from university, that’s where we met,” Jamie said and leaned back against the bench as he began to tell me everything. “After the plane crash, I wasna myself. Once I recovered from most of the damage, I went back to school, but ye ken that I wasna speakin’ to Jenny and barely Murtagh.”
I nodded, keeping my gaze transfixed on a butterfly on a flower nearby and Jamie continued.
“Gia…” he sighed, and I could see him running his hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in places. “She is the complete opposite of ye, Claire. I knew from our first date that she wasna my type and that I was only seein’ her to try and get away from the pain. After my Da —“ his words got stuck in his throat, and silently, without looking at him, I slid my hand across the bench, offering this small gesture and he took it, squeezing lightly.
“Ye wouldn’t have liked who I was back then, Sassenach. I was bitter, and no a verra nice person. I ken I never shoulda proposed to her, but she kept talkin’ about weddin’s and well I didn’t see why not.”
I wanted to cry at the soft touch of Jamie’s fingers on the palm of my hand. The same touch I had felt hundreds of times before. The same strong hands that had helped me when I felt weak and couldn’t get out of bed.
“So you got all the way to the altar and then decided that was the best time to break it off?” I spat out, maybe a bit too harshly and I felt Jamie’s fingers pause on mine before continuing to trace patterns on my skin.
“Aye. I did. I was a coward, Claire.” Jamie slid towards me on the bench, bringing my hand into his lap. I was too numb to move, to do anything but sit there and listen. “I met Gia five months after the plane crash, I was only nineteen and by my twentieth birthday, we had plans to be marrit. She hasna even met Jenny or Murtagh, mo ghraidh, that’s why they never said anything.”
“So they don’t know about her either, Jamie?” I looked at him, more tears welling in my eyes. Who was this man that I had married…
His eyes were wide, sensing my doubt in him. “Christ, of course they know! I told them the day after I left Gia. I wasna willin’ to make amends wi’ them yet, but I needed them to know.”
“Did Jenny yell at you?” I attempted a laugh, imagining what the fearsome Jenny Murray would think about all of this.
“No. She only said she was sorry she couldna be there for me. The conversation wasna a long one, Claire.” He pulled my hand to rest over his heart and I looked at him, biting my bottom lip. “I’m so sorry.”
“After everything we’ve been through Jamie… I just don’t understand why you never told me.” A single tear slid down my cheek and I felt it drop onto my lap, wetting my jeans.
“There’s no good reason why I didna, Sassenach,” Jamie bent his head. “I am a coward, that’s all there is to it.”
“I went through having a bloody fucking brain tumor and you don’t think the fact that you had almost been married to another woman was important to tell me? Yes, Jamie… you’re a coward.” I pulled my hand away and stood from the bench.
“And to think,” I looked him in the eye. “We were so excited about getting on the adoption list,” I scoffed. “I wouldn’t dream of bringing a child into this… this web of lies!” Turning to leave, I prayed that Jamie wouldn’t follow me, but a larger part of me, the weaker part of me, wanted him to run after me and hold me in his arms, begging me to forgive him.
I made it all the way back to the car in front of the cafe, and with no sign of Jamie, I climbed in and headed home, my heart in pieces.
++++++
August 18th, 2015
5:08pm
I walked around for hours after Claire had left me at the park. The moment she called me a coward, her eyes no longer holding that spark I had come to love, I knew… she would never forgive me for this.
Or at least not easily.
Checking my phone every ten minutes, with no new messages from Claire, I steadied myself and started walking in the direction of our house. There was more she needed to know, and I hoped she would hear me out.
The water was on in the bathroom, most likely Claire runnin’ herself a bath. I didn’t want her to be shocked at my arrival home, so I slammed the door a little louder than normal and waited in the doorway until I heard the sound of the faucet creak and stop.
I walked down the hallway, past pictures of our life together. We’d only known each other for twenty months, but already those twenty months were the best of my life — no matter the hardships we had endured early on. Claire wasn’t in the bedroom, but I saw the bathroom door cracked open, steam drifting out.
“Sassenach, are ye in there?”
“Go away, Jamie. I can’t do this right now.” She didn’t sound like herself, not like my Sorcha.
“Please, ye dinna even need to come out of the bathroom, Claire. I just need to say somethin’ and then I’ll go and stay wi’ Jenny and Ian tonight.” I waited for her and let out a sigh of relief when she opened the bathroom door, padded across the room and took a seat on the bed.
“Go ahead, then.”
“I thought of tellin’ ye, Claire.” I walked over to her, sitting on my knees in front of her, ready to beg for her forgiveness. “I did. I almost told ye once, but then ye got diagnosed wi’ yer tumor and things happened so quickly after that.”
“You’re using my tumor as an excuse for your cowardice?” She rolled her eyes, biting her lip.
“No! Christ, no I’m not. It’s just that I didna want to cause ye more pain. Claire… be honest wi’ me, would ye have wanted me to tell ye about this when ye were ill?”
She took a deep breath, folding her robe tighter around her body. “No. But, I got better a year ago, Jamie. What about then?”
“I can’t give you a reasonable explanation other than as time went on, and the happier you became, I couldn’t dream of crushin’ ye, of hurtin’ ye,” my heart was racing, pounding out of my chest. I didn’t know what I would do if Claire couldn’t forgive me.
“I can try and understand that,” she looked down at me, her eyes and cheeks wet and it broke my heart to see her so. All I wanted was to hold her in my arms and promise to never hide anything from her ever again.
“Thank ye, Sassenach I —“
“I said try, Jamie. I didn’t say that I do or that I ever will.”
“Please, mo nighean, I’m a foolish man and I ken I’ve kept a secret from ye when we promised there would be no such thing between us.” I moved forward, gently resting my hand on her ankle. “But I didna marry her… I married you.”
Claire made a sound then that broke my heart completely. A sob like none I had ever heard from her, not even when she was in the most pain from her chemo. I looked up at her to see her shoulders shaking, tears freely flowing down her cheeks. I didn’t care if she tried to push me away, I rose to my feet and gathered her in my arms, sitting down on the bed and cradled her to my chest.
“Shhh,” I said through tears of my own. “I love you, mo cridhe, it’s you I chose and it’s ye who I’ll choose everyday.”
She buried her head into my neck, body still trembling.
“Claire, we’ve been through so much to let this come between us, I’m beggin’ ye lass,” I cried, my voice shaking. “Please forgive me for a mistake I made when I was an idiot. Christ —“
Her hand came to cup my face, and I weeped at the feel of her touch. “I dinna deserve ye, Claire.”
“No,” she whispered. “You don’t.” Her arms came around my neck then and I rose from the edge of the bed and laid her down, and then curled my body around hers. “Just hold me, Jamie. We’ll work this out tomorrow, but for now… just don’t let me go.”
That night, I cried until I had no more tears left to give and held her in my arms, thanking God that she hadn’t cursed my name and sent me out to the streets. Hours later, a small wet nose tickled the back of my neck and Annie, the furry wee beast crawled over my body to lay next to Claire, resting her head against her. Animals are loyal creatures… humans — they are flawed, and broken creatures.
Strong to Severe Storms Across Oklahoma (Pics/Vids) - August 18, 2015
Strong to Severe Storms Across Oklahoma (Pics/Vids) – August 18, 2015
Yesterday, Chris played around with some summer thunderstorms across the north-central part of Oklahoma. There wasn’t much severe weather, but the skies certainly were doing a bit of talking. Here’s a recap of the chase complete with copious pics and vids… (more…)
