Mrs. Matched | Complete

Chapter Thirty-Four

It didn't take Melody long to have me calmed down enough to fall asleep, and once I woke up from my nap she had cleaned the whole house and was sitting on the floor quietly watching a movie.

"Hey, Mel. You could have left."

"Could not. You need a friend and I'm here for the long haul."

"Hopefully not that long."

She shifted around to face me, pulling her knees into her chest. "Aubrey, what happened? I haven't talked to you in over a week and then you call me sobbing about something you said you wanted."

Ouch. True, but ouch.

"I don't know, Mel. I mean..." I took a deep breath. "I'll start at the beginning."

She pushes up from the floor and settles beside me on the couch, pulling her legs up under her and resting her water glass on the last overturned box that remained in the house I had finally moved into.

"So, we had some days to kill before the last Match Made tasks and he asked if I wanted to go hiking."

Her laughter interrupted my story and I stared at her until she collected herself. "You said no and then what?"

"I did not say no! I went."

The look she gave me said, 'You definitely like him,' louder than I couldn't have possibly screamed it.

"And while we were there. Wait, I have pictures." I pulled out the pictures of the house and the hike and told her about the last task from Match Made.

"So you still have his letter somewhere?"

I pointed to the small box on the mantle where Chris had stored them both upon our return from the mountains. "In there."

Mel lifted the lid and pulled out an envelope with my name written on it in Chris's neat cursive. "There's only one."

"He took mine?" A small bubble of hope filled my chest. Did that mean he cared? And then it crashed down to earth. Or maybe he wanted to burn it or something.

"I guess." She didn't ask my permission to read the letter, just did it anyway. "Awwe," she said, clutching the letter to her chest when she finished.

"Yeah, so I thought it was going well and I..." I took a deep breath. Admitting it out loud was hard. "I decided finally that I actually wanted to be in this marriage and I talked to him about what that might look like and I guess I freaked him out because he took the copies of the letters to Match Made and then, I guess, just decided he wanted out. Which is totally fair. That's what I've been doing the whole time I'm just... sad, I guess."

"Oh, Aubrey. There has to be more to it. No one goes from this"-- she held out the letter-- "to dissolution of a marriage in under two weeks. It just doesn't happen."

"Except it did," I whispered.

"There has to be an explanation."

All the air left my body. "I think I just need to go to bed. Can we do this in the morning?"

"Yeah. I'll help you upstairs?"

I nodded, desperately hoping Chris had closed the door to his room before he left. The emptiness of the house was enough already without the gaping hole he left.

I didn't even look, allowing Mel to help me to the closest bedroom to the stairs. When she closed the door, I heard her calling Paul on her way down the stairs. Probably to tell him where she was and that she wouldn't be home. Because that's what married people do.

Why would Chris just decide to leave without even talking to me? It didn't seem like him. I was torn between pure, unadulterated rage and deep, soul-sucking despair. Maybe I hadn't known him as well as I thought, because the Chris I thought I knew would have talked to me. He would have said something.

Just leaving?

Maybe he was a better actor than I was. Maybe he managed to keep it all inside, never letting it escape into my life. Well, he sure fooled me.

I sank back into my bed, closing my eyes and waiting for the sweet release of sleep, my mind running a mile a minute trying to escape my eventual fate.

I must have succeeded because I was rudely awakened by Mel crashing down on the end of my bed in the pitch black of night.

My ankle ached as I smashed it into the bed frame, trying to get away from the large figure that loomed over me. "Mel, what are you doing? Trying to kill me?"

I managed to find the table lamp and turned it on, blinking back the brightness until I was able to see her holding the envelope and biting her lip.

"What is it?" I snapped.

"I might know why Chris left and it might be a little bit my fault." She looked ready to run away at the slightest sign of danger, so I narrowed my eyes and waited for her to explain.

She relaxed back into the bed. "Okay, it's not really my fault but remember we saw the lawyer?"

My stomach fell into my lap. Oh, no. He didn't.

"Well, he thought we wanted out of it and he drew up the papers and when I saw you two... you and Chris I mean. I thought you were so good together and the whole thing just slipped my mind. Over and done, you know?"

Knife to the gut, bestie.

"Well, I should have called him to make sure he put it on hold. But then there was a charge to my credit card and I really should have called to make sure nothing was up but I didn't and I'm just so so sorry, Aubrey."

"Wait. What?" My head was spinning and my supper felt like it was coming back up.

"I think this paperwork says you submitted a petition to dissolve the marriage. It was sent to trigger once the tasks were completed. And then... Well, he signed it. So..."

"So I'm not married anymore because I petitioned for it? And he agreed?"

"I think so." She nods somberly. "That does seem like him, though, doesn't it? I mean he must have had some idea you didn't want to be in this and he didn't deserve that but he stuck around and then after all that you ask him to leave the marriage. I mean, he didn't seem like the kind of guy who would say no, did he?"

And she was right, of course. But that didn't make the growing realization that I had ruined my own future sting any less.