Dating Game Read Online Free PDF

not afraid to beg. Getting rid of Rachel was her only hope.
    There was a long silence from the bed, and finally he answered her. “No, I won't. It's too late for that. There's no turning back now.”
    “Is she pregnant?” Paris asked, sounding horrified. She hadn't even thought of that. But even if she was, Paris would rather suffer the indignity of an illegitimate child of his than lose him entirely. It had happened to other men before, and their marriages managed to survive. If he wanted it to, theirs could as well. But he didn't want to preserve their marriage. That much was obvious to her.
    “No, she's not pregnant. I just think I'm doing the right thing for me, maybe for both of us. I love you, but I don't feel about us the way I used to. You deserve more than that. You need to find someone who loves you the way I once did.”
    “That's a rotten thing to say. What am I supposed to do? Put out ads? You're just tossing me out there, like a fish you're throwing back, and telling me to find someone else. How convenient for you. I've been married to you for more than half my life. I love you. I would have stayed married to you till I died. What am I supposed to do?” Just thinking about what he was doing to her filled her with terror and despair. She had never felt so frightened in her entire life. Her life as she had known it had ended, and the future seemed fraught with terror and danger and misery. The last thing she wanted was to find someone else. All she wanted was him. They were married. To her, that was sacred. And apparently less so to him.
    “You're beautiful, and intelligent, and a good person. You're a wonderful woman, Paris, and a good wife. Some man is going to be lucky to have you. I'm just not the right one anymore. Something changed.… I don't know what it is, or why … but I know it did. I can't be here anymore.” She sat and stared at him for a long time, and then slowly got up out of her chair, and went to stand next to him, on his side of the bed, and sobbing quietly, she sank to her knees, and bowed her head on the bed. He lay there in bed, staring up at the ceiling, afraid to look at her, as tears rolled out of the corners of his eyes and onto his pillow, and gently he stroked her hair. For all its tender agony, and all the ancient feelings it evoked in both of them, they both knew that it was the last moment of its kind they would ever share.

Chapter 2
    The next morning dawned in utter splendor with an insultingly brilliant blue sky and bright sun. Paris wanted it to be rainy and gloomy outside, as she turned over in bed and remembered what had happened the night before. And as soon as she did, she began to cry and looked over to find Peter, but he was already in the bathroom, shaving. And she put on a bathrobe and went downstairs to make coffee for both of them. She felt as though she had been trapped in some surreal tragic movie the night before, and maybe if she talked to him coherently in the bright light of day, everything would change. But she needed coffee first. As though she had been beaten, every inch of her ached. She hadn't bothered to comb her hair or brush her teeth, and her carefully applied makeup from the night before was streaked below her eyes and on her face. Wim looked up in surprise as she walked in. He was eating toast and drinking orange juice, and he frowned when he saw his mother. He had never seen her look that way before, and wondered if she'd had too much to drink at the party and was hung over, or maybe she was sick.
    “You okay, Mom?”
    “I'm fine. Just tired,” she said, pouring a glass of orange juice for his father, maybe for the last time ever, with the same sense of unreality she had had the night before. Maybe this was just a bad patch they were going through. It had to be that. He couldn't mean he wanted a divorce, could he? She was suddenly reminded of a friend who had lost her husband to a heart attack on the tennis court the year before. She had