Afterthoughts: A Charity McAdams Novella (The Charity McAdams Novellas) Read Online Free PDF Page B

moved on but the emotions can all be brought right back to the surface in an instant, and you feel like everything just happened yesterday.
    “Not by you, I loved you, always did. I just meant that being married so young would entail a certain lifestyle. I couldn’t just pick up and move for an acting job. I’d have to give up that dream and I didn’ t want to end up twenty years into a marriage and having regrets that I never tried , always wondering “what if?” I cared too much to put that on you. I needed to go out and see what would happen and if I ended up crashing and burning it would be on me, my family wouldn’t have to suffer for my mistakes.”
    “But I never asked you to give up your dreams,” I say, trying not to sound defensive.
    A few months after the engagement ended I knew he had moved to California and w as pursuing acting and a year later he had a breakout movie role and had been a Hollywood fixture ever since.
    “ Not directly.”
    “What are you talking about? I never said I wanted you to stop acting or to give it up and just work some job you hated for the rest of your life for my sake. I loved you. I wanted you to be happy.”
    “What about a ll the stuff you wrote in your journal ? That didn’t exactly seem supportive.”
    “My journal!” I screech. “What were you doing in my journal?!” My hands fly from the steering wheel and we swerve slightly before I grab the steering wheel again.
    “Can we pull over?” He requests, looking nervous.
    I open my mouth to argue that I just want to get home but decide against it and pull off the freeway and park along the shoulder. As soon as the engine is stopped I turn to him and nod for him to continue.
    “The morning of the rehearsal I came to see you, I had bought some flowers for you but you were out doing something for the wed ding. I don’t remember what. Anyways, your Dad let me in and so I went to your room to leave them for you and I wanted to write you a little note to go with them. I found a notebook on your nightstand and opened it to get a blank page but I saw some writing and just, I don’t know, started reading.”
    As he is making his grand confession my mind starts to rewind on high speed to try and remember my journal entries from the weeks leading up to the wedding. I don’t journal re ligiously, most of the time it’ s an outlet for seasons of life where my brain feels full and I just need a place to get out a ll my thoughts. Often times it’ s a jumbled mess of thoughts that don’t quite make sense.
    After the wedding was cancelled I put that journal away and haven’t read it since. I always figured that was a chapter of my past that di d not need revisiting. I knew I would always remember the pain and humiliation without reading the highlights over and over again.
    “Setting aside that ginormous invasion of privacy, remind me, what was so heinous in my scribbles that drove you to call the whole thing off and run away like that?” I say, sarcasm starting to slip into my words.
    “There were a few things but the tipping point was a whole page of people that you wanted me to talk to about jobs. You had things like plumber, electrician, EMT, etc. and it gave me this picture of what you wanted and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to live up to that. You wanted a normal life with a normal guy and I just didn’t fit that mold and I felt like if I didn’t fit your cookie cutter plan I would be a disappointment.”
    “ How could you feel all this and not bring this up to me? To let me have a chance to work this out with you? Why just run away without getting all the information first? After all the years we spent together I feel like I should have at least been given a chance to explain or try to reach a compromise!”
    “I tried, I mean, I was upset but I still showed up at the rehearsal and was still planning to go through with everything but then some other stuff happened--”
    “What? What happened?”
    “ At the