âWhat do you mean I gave up? I stayed in our house for a year. What was I supposed to do? Stay in that small dingy ass apartment I didnât like for four years?!â When they lived in Los Angeles, Giselle made it a point to Johnny that theyâd move as quickly as they could. Heâd chuckle, kiss her on the forehead, admonish her for her expensive taste and then promise to get her that huge house with a white picket fence she so desperately wanted. Giselle believed him back then. That one day theyâd move from their small cruddy apartment to a house in the hills (sheâd always wanted to be on the Real Housewives and moving into the exclusive neighborhood couldâve been her chance). Now she was more than a thousand miles away in some hipster city she just couldnât find her footing in. Instead of a home she was living in a hotel of all places. Even though it was pretty ritzy by anyoneâs standards, her mother always made it a point to tell her that âhookers lived in hotelsâ. She had butler service and a spa at her fingertips, yet she felt shameful for having an extended stay so far (it had barely been a week).Â
âI went to my parents because I didnât have anywhere else to go.â She admitted. âYou know, how my relationship is with them. You know that I wouldnât go to them unless I was at the end of my rope. I was dying, Johnny. i had just lost my baby and my husband in the span of a few months. I had no friends, what was I supposed to do? You wouldnât answer my calls, you didnât get in touch with me, you didnât do anything! How was I supposed to expect that youâd come back for me? Who the hell leaves the person they love like that?â The question seemed to linger heavily in the air. Why did he leave her? Why did he just up and leave without any explanation? Those very questions haunted her for years. The kicker was that she had finally felt like she didnât have to please anyone. Giselle finally had felt valuable - that she didnât have to prove her worth to anyone. The anxieties of being perfect had just melted away a few years after marrying him, and then those feelings of inadequacy came rushing back when he left. âEasy.â She scoffed. âPretty sure that went out of the window when you decided to fuck everything up.â
Telling him about their child didnât make her feel any better. If anything, Giselle felt like collapsing. Using their child as leverage to hurt him was beyond horrible, and in that moment she couldnât really forgive herself. Pushing back the sick feeling wasnât exactly as easy as she thought it would be. So, she brought up her wrist to dab the cold sweat on her forehead and she leaned onto the hostess station for balance, as she knew she had absolutely no right to say all that and then request a chair. âis that what you really think of me?â echoed in her mind to the point that she had to ponder about it for a bit. It was a complicated answer, but she decided to go with the most honest and brutal one.Â
âYes,â She said hesitantly. âYour actions disappointed me. Sure, we werenât sunshine and rainbows for the six years we were together, but we made it work. I gave my all to you and you gave me shit. You didnât care. Its almost like you didnât even love me.â Years of pent up frustration and grief started to pour out. Suddenly all that she couldnât say during her marriage was now fair game. âWas I not good enough?â She asked brokenly. âI tried so hard. I thought i was doing everything right but I couldnât reach you sometimes and I tried. I did everything in my power to try and make you happy but it never seemed like it was enough. Something was missing and it was you. You didnât want to try, you were content with just not giving things much effort. You knew my history and you knew how much I loved you, yet everything was about you. You never wondered about the sacrifices I made, what Iâd think about certain decisions, or if i was really and truly okay. You just did nothing. So yes, thats what I think of you. You disappoint me. You used me, you married me, and then you left me. If I didnât mean that much to you then what the hell was all this about then, Johnny?â
Giselle wanted to slap him. Yes she knew what he was into, yes she knew that it was going to be hard, yes she knew that everything could come crashing down at any moment. However, she never expected their friends (his friends really) the ones they barbecued with, the ones that Giselle watched their kids for, the ones that she begrudgingly got along with for Johnnyâs sake. No matter how much she turned on her southern charm and tried to get on their good side, they wanted to murder her in cold blood. Sure it was the life that Johnny had chosen, and somewhat of Giselleâs too since she had married him. However, she was innocent in all this. Why would they want to get her rather than Johnny? It didnât make sense, and she needed answers. âWhat the fuckâŠâ She ran a hand through her cool long black hair. âDo you have an office or something so we can speak in private? This isnât appropriate for everyone to hear.â Giselle knew that whenever he referred to his past ventures as âtheyâ, it was highly sensitive information. They needed somewhere private to speak, without peering eyes and eavesdropping ears.Â
"i never meant for it to take this long,â and when he said that, he meant it. when he dove in, he dove in the way he usually did--head first and with everything he had. he didnât learn about the consequences until he was well on the road. âyou can say what you want to say, but i did what i did to protect you.â the explanation was the only thing that allowed him to sleep at night. but now he was wondering if he was going to get any sleep at all now that giselle was here. heâd surely have to find new reasoning to new dilemmas he was nowhere near prepared to fully wrap his head around. or rather, willing.Â
johnny fell silent as the next wave of sentences hit him over the head. he knew full well she went with her parents. and he shouldâve known that was out of the norm. rather than thinking it meant something horrible--which clearly, it did--he had assumed it meant she was done with the life they were trying to build. that she was searching for something else--namely something her parents were pushing. though johnny was famous for consistently pushing against the authoritative figures in giselleâs life, when he was faced with what he was facing in the four years they were apart, he did take time to wonder if her leading the life her parents wanted for her was better than expecting her to wait for him to be what she needed. of course, he resented this kind of thinking. but back then, he was so close to being convinced that he couldnât be what she needed. now that he was technically where he should have been when they first decided to create something for the two of them, it was still worth considering if it was really what giselle needed--considering all the loopholes and things of the sort.Â
when she replied with a short and not-so-sweet answer of âyesâ, he felt a mixture of deep sadness mixed with an anger that felt the need to retaliate. âdonât you fucking dare say i didnât love you.â if there was anything he knew about his marriage, it was that he stayed because he loved giselle. considering his relationships before her lasted weeks if he was lucky, the fact that he spent six years married to her was unimaginable. however, it wasnât just the duration that allowed him to know that his feelings were real. it was seeing her, it was speaking to her, and it was everything in between. even now when they were surely at the worst theyâd ever been, he knew that he still loved her deeper than he could ever explain to her. and the feeling was terrifying, it always had been. but facing her now and feeling like he could lose her regardless of how much he loved her was a special kind of fear he could easily say heâd never faced--and that statement was a lot considering just how many times the barrel of a gun had been pressed to the temple of his head. âdid you come all this way to talk to me like this is over? itâs not fucking over.â it was the first time in a while that he was thinking like this--seeing giselle again was the boost he needed.Â
the emotions here were surely riding high, and once he found a break he felt himself sigh in an effort to collect himself as well as his thoughts. the sigh was staggered, the way a sigh usually was when someone was confronting difficult emotions. and thatâs exactly where johnny was. he thought after all this time, he could maybe create something new. but he was stupid for thinking like that. he couldnât detach himself from giselle, even if he wanted to. it just wasnât something in the cards for him--and yet, here he was wondering if what he had with her was even within his grasp. was their marriage too far gone? he couldnât bare the thought. he didnât want to. and he was mad at her for making him consider the idea to begin with, even if she wasnât directly insisting that he did. thatâs how things went with him. when all else failed, he reverted to anger. it was easier to create some kind of blame than to own up to his own bullshit.Â
"letâs just put all of our shit on the table for everyone to gawk at, thatâs the mentality you came in here with--why stop now?â johnny said in a sarcastic tone that suggested that he was taking on any form of defense he could find. why he felt the need to cover his ass in this way, no one but him could ever know for sure. especially when giselle was clearly speaking in a way that should have easily told him that she was ready to really talk about things the way they needed to be talked about. one of these days heâd learn that being hurt didnât mean he needed to fight. that there were better ways to go about things. more mature ways. today wasnât that day. and that was purely because heâd never done it any other way. which was exactly why he decided to choose the words in his next sentence without any kind of hesitation. âthis is my club, okay? i call the shots.â
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