Every Wrong Reason

Come on. It never got old.

Plus, I could sing I Want it That Way and pretend like it was just to get under his skin.

At the age of thirty, my husband still hadn’t given up his dreams of becoming the next big thing.

Our entire marriage had been centered around his big break, the big break that never came. Our weekends were booked with gigs and late nights at seedy venues. His college degree that he’d earned with honors was all but forgotten in his pursuit of happiness.

He was good at it. I would never claim otherwise. My husband could sing and play guitar and rock out on stage as if he belonged on the radio and in stadiums surrounded by hundreds of thousands of fans. He was something to see on stage. I was transfixed from the very first moment I saw him up there. He never failed to make me fall in love with him every time he took the stage and opened his mouth.

But the music industry was not a fair place. He knew that more than anyone else.

We had lost so much money to bad agents and self-recorded albums. I had watched my savings dwindle and my hard-earned paychecks disappear into new equipment and demos.

It had been amazing while we were dating. I used to love having the lead singer’s complete attention. I loved that he wrote songs about how much he loved me. I loved that my husband was in a band.

Fast forward seven years, it wasn’t as pretty. The shininess had worn off and the glitter had faded. I was tired of supporting us on my pathetic teacher’s salary and begging him to get a real job, a job that paid something.

And I could tell he was tired. He was tired of failing. He was tired of not making it. With each passing year, he’d grown more cynical… more jaded.

His music was still great. His music would always be great. But at some point we had to grow up.

I supported him for as long as I could- both emotionally and financially. But I reached my limit and I couldn’t hide it anymore.

I didn’t even want to think about what that did to him… what it felt like to have the person that was supposed to love him most in the world give up on him.

Guilt swam in my stomach, erasing my hunger and determination to stock my empty refrigerator.

I pushed the cart forward and let go for a few seconds. Grocery shopping on a Friday night. This was about as grown up as it got.

But not in a good way.

I looked at the few items in my basket and tried not to roll my eyes. I had been wandering around the store for forty-five minutes and hadn’t been able to find anything that sounded good.

I’d picked up lots of Nick’s favorites before I realized that he didn’t live with me anymore. Putting them back on the shelf made me feel so pathetic. I couldn’t shake the feeling of failure when I acknowledged that taking care of Nick was a hard habit to shake.

Plus, it made me realize that I had been catering to his needs for so long, I didn’t know how to take care of my own.

Why didn’t I know what I liked to eat? Why couldn’t I pick out groceries for me?

The embarrassing part was that I started to realize how much of a crutch Nick had been for me. When we were married, I felt completely fine buying junk food for us because it was all stuff that Nick liked. I realized I blamed him for bad eating habits, when really, when it came down to it, it was food I actually preferred.

Now my conscience wouldn’t let me pick out the sugary cereals or the mountains of chocolate I craved. Now I had all of this obnoxious guilt for not buying organic produce and rice cakes.

Damn Nick and his obsession with processed foods.

And damn Dr. Oz for doing that special on weight gain and high fructose corn syrup.

I loved high fructose corn syrup.

I grabbed my wayward cart and dropped my head down to the cold metal handlebar. “It shouldn’t be this hard.” The chill from the freezer section pulled goose bumps from my arms and legs, but I didn’t have the willpower to keep walking.

I just wanted to give up and go home. I could order Chinese. Again.

Or eat my weight in Wheat Thins.

My body jerked when someone banged their cart into mine. The scraping metal and squeaky wheels grated on my nerves and I snapped my head up, ready to rip someone’s hair out.

Or at least give them a stern verbal lashing.

Okay, probably more likely it would have been a meaningful glare. But they would have felt shamed.

I would have totally shamed them with my evil eye.

Today was the wrong day to mess with me.

My lips parted and my eyebrows shot to my hairline when I saw Nick at the helm of the other cart. My eyes moved over his faded maroon t-shirt and low-slung jeans. In one second, I noted his hair that was just slightly too long and the thicker beard that roughened his jaw. I could close my eyes and picture this man perfectly naked. When he appeared out of nowhere, I saw the differences in him without trying. “What are you doing here?” The words fell out of my mouth before I could tame my reaction.

His lips twitched with an almost smile. “I think you forget that I’m still alive. It’s like you don’t expect me to keep on existing now that I’m not in your life every day.”

His words were only barely playful. Mostly they held a sharp edge of bitterness.

“That’s ridiculous,” I countered immediately. Even though, maybe he was a little right. “You’ve just surprised me. Twice.”

He leaned forward as if telling me a secret, “You’re ridiculously easy to surprise.”

The shock of seeing him here receded and I pressed my lips together when I felt laughter bubble up inside me. “Whatever.” Memories of our relationship tumbled around in my head, but I suppressed them. I was already an emotional wreck. I didn’t need him to witness my most recent damage.

Nick tugged at his earlobe, his nervous tell. “So, uh, really, you surprised me too. I didn’t expect to see you here. On a Friday night.”

“Ice cream,” I suddenly decided. It was so much better than the truth. “I need ice cream.”

He raised one eyebrow, a look I used to love on him. “Bad week?”

“Week from hell.”

“Yeah, me too.” His words were a forlorn mumble and I had the immediate urge to ask why.

Instead, I forced my lips to stay shut. We stared awkwardly at each other, neither of us knowing how to navigate our fragile peace treaty from last week. Long seconds ticked by while people moved around us and bad pop music drifted through the store.

“So, what are you in the mood for?” His gaze swung toward the frosted freezer doors, where cartons of ice cream sat hidden behind cloudy glass.

The million-dollar question. “I should probably get the staples first, right? If I pick out ice cream now it will melt by the time I get to the car.”

“Yeah, me too.”

I looked back at Nick and found him watching me. His fingers flexed and stretched while his palms rested on the metal bar. He was trying not to reach for his earlobe.

“What do you need to get?” I asked quietly.

It was weird talking to him. Even if it was just over groceries. Our relationship had always revolved around conversation, even if we were screaming at each other. But he’d been mostly out of my life over the last five months. We had nothing to fight about at the moment, but we couldn’t exactly bare our souls in the middle of Meijer either.

We had never been good at small talk. Not even in the begi

What do you want most in life? That had been the first question he asked me on our fateful second date.

I remembered staring at him for longer than was comfortable. I remembered wanting to fidget, but wanting to figure him out more.

When I answered him, I hadn’t known what I was going to say or if it would even be true. I want a life, a real one. I want to know each day meant something profound and at the end of it, I want to know it was worth the journey.