A Woman's Survival Guide to Difficult Men: Shooting Star
Chapter 1: Shooting Star
Dean appeared in 2012 amidst the turmoil of my divorce, a sexy knight in shining video gear. We hungrily devoured each other whenever we managed a stolen weekend in Brooklyn (where he lived) or Miami (where I lived).
“I want to be in a monogamous relationship,” he said over FaceTime shortly after returning from a month in India. We’d started dating, long distance, two months prior.
“Yes,” I answered.
“When can I see you?” he asked.
I booked a flight to New York the following weekend.
Dean lived in a studio loft in Bushwick, a seedy Brooklyn neighborhood on the verge of trending. Exposed pipes overhead, brick lining the “bedroom” wall. He divided the loft into two rooms with a long bookshelf across the middle. Moroccan lanterns hung from the high ceilings; walls artfully painted. Global artifacts covered every surface. The apartment was intriguing and sexy, like him. We made love twenty-five times that long weekend. Making up for lost time.
Where have you been all my life, I wondered.
Lining up the years, we realized that as I’d entered my marriage to Jake, he’d been leaving his. What if.
“I had so many doubts about marrying Jake,” I told him, as we lay naked in bed. “If I’d had the courage to call off the wedding, you and I might have met and had a family together.”
I wept at the loss, at the price of fear – that I might not have a child if I kept waiting for the “right guy.” I married Jake out of fear that there would be no one else. Now my poor daughter would shuttle between two households for the rest of her life.
My divorce raged in two states, Florida and Wisconsin. I was a Florida resident by then, but Jake wanted us back in Wisconsin where I had limited job prospects, no family and no emotional support. Dean stood by me as I faced multiple judges, even meeting me at a hotel in Milwaukee for the weekend before a court appearance.
“This is for luck.” He latched a necklace around my neck, a tiny ruby dangling from a black string.
The court appearance went well. So far, no judge uttered the words Jake was hoping for – that I dreaded – ordering me back to Wisconsin. My daughter and I were Florida residents now. Because Jake and I shared property in Wisconsin, a Florida judge ruled that the divorce should conclude in Wisconsin for logistical purposes.
The stress of our contentious divorce ripped through my emaciated body. I’d stopped eating, my stomach in knots. My dad pleaded, “Please, make it stop.” It wasn’t just my divorce. In a way, it was my parents’ too. I lived in their house, where Jake stayed when visiting our two-year-old, the air thick with resentment between us. Jake’s attorney had recently subpoenaed my parents to appear in court in Milwaukee. I could only guess why — maybe to dig into what they might one day leave me. It felt like a financial fishing expedition, and I couldn’t shake the feeling he was angling for a cut.
Dean remained my field of daisies, the one place I could relax and feel taken care of emotionally. He whispered reassurance in my ear and held me tight against his warm, delicious body. His hand felt right in my hand. We were a couture fit in every way.
“I’m going to take you to St. Lucia someday,” Dean promised from the start of our relationship. “It’s a special place. I want to take you there.”
“That would be nice,” I uttered, knowing nothing about the place, just that it was an island far away. I’d say yes to Mars at that point, anywhere far, far from the reality of my divorce.
“Men say a lot of things at the beginning of a relationship,” I told my friend Grace on the phone. “We’ll see if he actually follows through with it.”
Seven months later, the week of my forty-third birthday, we flew to St. Lucia. We arrived at Anse Chastanet, a boutique hotel made up of individually designed rooms organically tucked into the hillside. Our room opened up to a breathtaking view of the Piton Mountains and the Caribbean Sea below. I perched on the patio sipping tea and exhaling for the first time in a year. We ate quiet meals in an outdoor restaurant and explored the island by day. Mostly, we relaxed on the private hotel beach where I sank deep into my lounge chair and stared into the horizon, remembering what peace felt like. I let the still, humid air soak deep into my soul as my muscles released. Dean held out an actual camera pointed backwards at us for a selfie before selfies were a thing. We smiled into each other’s eyes. The picture captured our euphoria.
Later, we rented a Jeep to traverse the landscape and wound up at a remote hot spring. Dipping into the steamy pool, an audible sigh escaped my lips. Alone in the middle of the Caribbean jungle, we made love. Dean deep inside of me, our eyes met knowingly.
“We’re making a baby,” I said to him.
“Yes,” he replied, thrusting himself deeper into my soul.
That night, we lay on a beachside hammock looking up into the night sky.
“Look! A shooting star,” Dean pointed.
“It’s a sign,” I said. “I’m pregnant.”
Of course, it was too soon to know. It had only been hours since our lovemaking. The tiny army of sperm would still be forging a path through the dark canal of my fallopian tubes in search of its egg – much like Dean and I finding each other across time and space. As far as I was concerned, it was written in the stars.
It’s what we’d wanted from the beginning, to round out our blended family with one of our own.
“Whether it’s a boy or a girl, we should call it Luca. After St. Lucia,” I said.
He nodded. “It’s a good name.”
As we checked out of Paradise, Dean made a few international calls to clear space on his credit card for the hotel charge. I raised an eyebrow, wondering how and why the hardworking, well-paid cinematographer was surfing the edge of his credit card limit for our extravagant adventure. I stayed out of it. A tiny question mark crept into my consciousness. Then, just as swiftly, the thought evaporated from my mind in place of more romantic gratitude for this man and our experience together.
**This is a work of fiction, loosely based on true events and written in the style of a memoir. Names and details have been changed.
addictively good .. love the foreshadowing !
👏