Bad Luck or Fate?

Chapter 4

I looked at Jimmy's hand and around the house one more time. I set my purse on the ground and sat back down on the couch. Jimmy leaned back against the door frame and watched me put two and two together. I looked at him in the eyes for the first time in since our encounter began. He just looked back at me.

"I'm so sorry to hear that. You guys seemed really happy. I would have never expected it. I guess that's why I didn't think anything of it."

Jimmy shook his head and held up a hand. "Hey, its fine. There's no way you or anyone could have known. The only people who really know is my parents, Nance's parents, Higgs, and some of my best friends. It happened about a month or two before I went to the Tonight Show. We had been struggling for a while. You know we couldn't get pregnant, and that was stressful. We were blessed to finally have Winnie, but the years of stress had already taken their toll, and with the added stress of a baby and moving and setting up a brand new show, it was just too much. Don't get me wrong, Winnie and the Tonight Show is one of the best things that happened to me and Nancy as well. We just.. fell out of love somewhere in between it all. We just aren't announcing anything until the Tonight show has become a concrete and steady gig. I don't want to lose that and Nancy knows how much that means to me. We will remain great friends and be the best parents that Winnie could ever have, and I still love her, we just aren't in love. You can't fake that for the rest of your life."

I watched him as he made his speech. He shuffled around a bit and you could tell it was hard on him to talk about it, but he was really strong about it. "Well, I know how that goes. I just got out of a relationship like that as well. We were together 4 years. So, I understand."

Jimmy looked up from the floor with almost a hopeful look in his eyes. "Really? I'm sorry that happened to you. It's hard but its actually almost nice to talk to someone who knows what you are going through. I am actually doing pretty okay now. I've accepted it and it doesn't hurt as much anymore. The only real bummer is not seeing Winnie everyday but we trade off weeks and she's never too far away from me. That and being in an empty house when she isn't here. I try to stay away as much as possible when its just me."

I nodded my head in agreement. "Yeah, that's part of the reason I came to New York as well. I could not stand being in that empty house any longer. All I could see around me were memories. It drove me insane. I had to get out and do something. I needed a fresh start." I got up and started pacing. "He was abusive, so I don't know why I stayed around as long as I did. When we first got together, it was awesome. Couldn't get enough of each other, you know?" I looked at Jimmy and he nodded his head as he watched me pace back and forth. "Oh, yeah, I know." He said. "Then he started getting possessive of me. Checking up on me whenever I wasn't with him. Hacking into my social media accounts to make sure I wasn't doing anything I wasn't supposed to. He always thought I was cheating on him. I would never do that to anyone, ever. I was sticking up for myself more than needed to be. We went to counselling, and it helped for a while. Then, one night I got out of work later than usual, and I had taken one of my coworkers home from work because it was freezing rain outside and he didn't have a ride. Well, I guess one of Mike's friends saw me giving a man a ride home. When I got home, Mike let me have it." I stopped pacing with the memory of that night. I touched my face with a painful memory. "That's when the hitting began and it never really got better from there."

I looked up at Jimmy and I saw him standing against the doorway with his arms crossed. He slowly looked up from the floor at me and I saw sympathy and another emotion I had never seen before. He looked me in the eyes and whispered "He hits you? That's when the hitting BEGAN? You mean you didn't put him in his place immediately and leave the first time he touched you?!"

"He apologized immediately and said it would never happen again and I believed him." I looked down at the floor. "It actually did get better for while but about three months later we got into a huge fight and.." I was interrupted by Jimmy