He Married Her While I Waited at the Altar, I Called My Mother While She Called Me Back Chapter 09
“Stella, your proposal got the best client feedback this quarter. Starting next month, you’ll be independently managing a product line.”
The director announced this in front of the whole team during our monthly meeting.
My coworkers clapped, and the girl sitting next to me patted my arm, whispering, “Badass.”
I stood in front of the whiteboard and smiled, my fingers slightly tightening around the cap of my
dry-erase marker.
No one knew that three months ago, I was crouching outside a ballroom with only $2.40 left in my
bank account.
And no one knew that in the guest room of that apartment in Silverstone, I didn’t even have a whole
blanket to sleep with.
After the meeting, the director held me back for two minutes.
three-year gap on your resume before you joined us. Would you mind explaining it?”
“Taking care of family matters.”
He nodded without pressing further.
Three years.
Three light words glossed over it on my resume, but only the person who survived it knew how
heavy those three years really were.
On the night my first full paycheck dropped, I went down to the supermarket alone.
I stood in front of the shelves for a long time.
I bought yogurt, a box of strawberries, and a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
I never dared to buy these before.
Julian would always say this stuff was unhealthy. Every time I put junk food in the cart, he’d frown
and silently put it back on the shelf.
Eventually, I stopped putting it in altogether.
His rules on “unhealthy” only applied to me.
Hailey’s Instagram was full of pictures of them eating burgers, fries, and drinking beer, with him. even holding her drink for the photo.
Back in tny apartment, I sat on the edge of the bed, opened the bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and ate
them one by one.
They were so spicy my lips went numb, but my stomach felt warm.
What was this feeling called?
It was called being in control of my own life.
At the end of my second month, I took two days off and went back to my hometown in Maplewood.
The domestic flight took three and a half hours, and I leaned against the window, barely sleeping a
wink.
By the time I left the airport, it was already dark.
The streetlights at the entrance of our neighborhood had been replaced with new ones, brighter
than before.
My mom was standing at the entrance to our building, wearing that faded cotton coat.
Her first words when she saw me weren’t “You’re home.”
“You lost weight.”
“Work has been busy.”
She reached out and pinched my arm, the corners of her mouth turning down. Without saying
anything else, she pulled me inside.
The table was full of food.
BBQ ribs, baked salmon, garlic broccoli, and a plate of clam chowder.
All my childhood favorites.
My dad was sitting at the head of the table. He looked better than I expected. He had gained a little weight and looked more energetic.
He glanced at me and muttered a single word.
“Sit.”
I sat down, and my mom piled three large scoops of food into my plate until it was overflowing.
No one brought up those three years.
No one mentioned Julian.
It was as if nothing had ever happened.
But not entirely.
When my dad reached over to serve me some fish, his hand trembled, and the fish almost fell on the
table.
His hands hadn’t been steady since his heart bypass surgery.
I kept my head down, eating my food, my eyes stinging.
It was the most peaceful meal I had eaten in three years.
Halfway through the meal, my dad suddenly spoke up.
“That Sterling boy came by again last month.”
My fork paused for a second.
“Yeah.”
“Your mom didn’t open the door.”
“Yeah.”
“He left a box at the door, saying it was some of your old stuff. He stood there for a long time before
leaving.”
My mom kept serving food without looking up, her tone as hard as stone.
“What useless garbage. Where does he get the nerve?”
“Did you throw it away?”
“I threw the box away. But your dad stopped me from throwing away one thing inside it.”
My dad pulled something out from the cabinet behind him and placed it on the table.
My notebook.
Brown cover, frayed edges, with one line written on it.
(One Hundred Little Things About Julian.]
I reached out and opened it.
The handwriting in the beginning was all mine.
Written in ballpoint pen, some pages slightly blurred by water stains.
Entry #1: He always holds his mug with his left hand.
Entry #13: He hates it when people touch the back of his neck.
Entry #41: He absentmindedly chews on his pen cap when reading documents.
I flipped all the way to entry #67.
Entry #67 was the last complete one I had written.
Entry #68 was only half-finished: [He’s terrified of the cold; in winter, he has to have someone-]
The handwriting stopped there.
That was the night before our engagement party. I had planned to finish it, but he called me to run documents over to his office, and I forgot about it when I got back.
But at the bottom of the page, there was a new line of text.
It was in Julian’s handwriting.
Blocky, with heavy strokes, as if carved into the paper.
[Completing entry #68: She is terrified of the cold. In winter, she has to have someone hold her while she sleeps. I knew this for three years, and I never did it once.]
At the very bottom was another line of text, so small you had to squint to read it.
[Stella, I’m sorry.]
I closed the notebook and placed it on the table.
My mom put down her fork and looked at me.
“Do you feel sorry for him?”
I picked up the notebook, walked over to the old bookcase in the living room, and shoved it onto the
bottom shelf.
Right next to my elementary school textbooks and middle school diaries.
Things that belong to the past.
“Not anymore.”
I went back to the table, sat down, and picked up my plate again.
“Writing ‘I’m sorry’ is easy. Actually making up for it is the hard part.”
“The distance between knowing you’re wrong and actually changing is a distance he’ll never be
able to cross.”
My dad quietly took a sip of his chowder, taking a long time before forcing out a sentence.
“Eat your food. It’s getting cold.”
My mom placed another piece of rib into my plate.
Outside the window, that new streetlight burned with a steady glow.
I took my time and finished every last bite of food in my plate.