Episode 542: Grenade

What better way to make everything feel worse than by returning to the place where she’d first taken his breath away?

The night they’d met, he’d walked in there to drown his sorrows, too. Spending New Year’s Eve alone had a way of depressing a person. Quadruple your depression if you were married to the love of your life and yet still found yourself alone.

The bartender set a drink in front of him. Ryley polished it off in a swallow, and slammed down the glass. Heartache and frustration had him seething with anger. Ever since he’d discovered her gone, yet again, that morning, he’d slammed everything he came into contact with. It hadn’t made him feel any better. Nor had locating her.

Ryley slammed his elbows onto the bar, and slapped his head into his hands, scrubbed his fingers over and over his eyes. At first he wasn’t even going to go there, he’d told himself she wouldn’t, but then he’d realized that’s exactly where he’d find her, his wife was determined to punish herself for all the wrongs she’d never done.

Still, he couldn’t believe it. Adria had chosen to live there. Not with him, but with her parents. All because, thanks to them, she had this crazy idea that she no longer deserved him. He didn’t know how to convince her otherwise. He’d been trying for months.

As Ryley downed his next drink, a beautiful blonde took the seat beside him. She was not the blonde he wanted. She was nowhere near as beautiful as his wife was, no one was. She offered to buy him a drink though, and he wondered if he shouldn’t just take it, do what Adria wanted, give up.

Episode 543: Blue