ALMOST A BRIDE (Open On Annie)

24

I must have gone over it with my sister a million times, from a million different angles.  

Why had he done it?

Did he feel anything for me?

Was it all fake?

Was some of it real?

Was he really not going to use it?

Should I forgive him?

Had I over reacted?

But no matter how many times we discussed it, no matter how many times she played devils advocate, or Eric reminded me that people make mistakes… the result was always the same.

I had never felt more betrayed by a person- ever. And remember, I’m the girl that walked in on her boyfriend getting his kink on in our bed, with the tie I’d given him for Christmas. You would think that something like that would still trump all other forms of betrayal and disappointment for the rest of my life until I took my dying breath, but this, what Chris had done to me, was worse.

Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t coming off the back of Trev’s betrayal, a betrayal that Chris was very aware of.

But my brother in law had a different perspective, the man of logic.

“If he’s deleted it, and he’s not going to use it, it means he knows he made a mistake, and if you really love him, forgive him.”

But could I really believe him- that he’d deleted it and that in 6 months I wouldn’t be seeing my painful story made into a total joke on the silver screen. Maybe he would even get Megan Fox to play Tess, since he found her so fucking good-looking it would seem. But it was hard to think because-

 “Annie, please, please let me in…’ Knock knock.

Knock knock. “Annie, come on, let me just talk to you.”

“Annie, phone my agent, talk to him. I swear I wasn’t going to use it.” Knock knock.

“Annie, I love you….”

It went on all afternoon and I could see that Eric was getting irritated and fed up with having to go to the door and explain to him that ‘No I was not coming out. No I did not want to talk to him.’

I think it was at about 3 AM that morning, while staring at the ceiling surrounded by a pile of snotty tear drenched tissues, that I finally got my first bolt of brilliant, blazing insight. You know the kind of insight that hits you after the fact, in retrospect, the kind of insight you wish you’d had when going into a situation.

It went a little something like this…despite it being a year since Nipple extravaganza, I still hadn’t moved on. In fact, I was completely stuck in a rut. I had absolutely no life, no job prospects, no anything. I had been wallowing in self-pity for a whole year, which was only keeping me firmly stuck in the past. My life was in total limbo, I was still reeling from the shock of it all and still constantly, on a daily basis, feeling the acute sense of betrayal that Trev had inflicted on me. Especially since I had never gotten an actual apology from him, or anything that vaguely resembled one.

Of course this thing with Chris now was only a million times more amplified because of my history. It was like adding fuel to the fire.  My feelings of betrayal and hatred for Trev were mixing in with my feelings for Chris, and what I was left with was a thick, messy pot of boiling, ugly anger.

It was glaringly obvious that I was absolutely not ready for any kind of a relationship at this stage in my life, with anyone. I had not gotten over my last one, it still had a hold over me, still haunted me, and the damage it had caused was still very much part of my daily life.  I would need to shrug that off first before I could think about another relationship.