Disclosure:  This is an original work of my own.  Please do NOT use it without my permission. 

Pre-Edit Count –   1,932 Words

Song I listened to for this chapter: Secret by Maroon 5.

Lying in bed one, two individuals are facing away from each other.  Even though it is a full sized bed, the space between them was enough to fit another person in between them.

The female, has blond hair, big green eyes with a full figure.  She is staring at nothing in front of her.  Thinking of her life, on how everything has gone so wrong.  She has married a man that she settled for.  It is the story of her life, she has settled for everything.  Whatever love her family wants to give her, whatever attention she gets from others, whatever she can get for a job.  Everything has floated her down her path that she is on now, and she wishes desperately that she had taken control of her life at some point.

But her life has never allowed her to take control.  Each time she has done something she wanted to do, nobody supported her.  She was an afterthought.  Running track?  No one came to any of her track meets.  Playing in the band?  No one came to the concerts.  Nothing she did on her own was supported.

Doing what others wanted her to do?  Loads of support.  Cooking, she is in charge of it in her household and still is to this day.  She can cook better than most, and knows how to make up her own recipes.  She can bake better than most bakers.  She can crochet and cross stitch.  She can do ceramics, watch the kids with no problems.  This is all stuff her family supported her on.

When she tried to decide certain things that are important to her future, her family stepped in and told her how awful that choice was.  Learning German instead of Spanish?  ‘Oh she will never use it and Spanish is widely used.’  She wanted to be a computer programmer, ‘Oh there are too many, choose something else.’ She wanted to write, ‘There is no future in it.’

It got to the point she just didn’t try.  It was a passive way of making her do what they wanted, and they succeeded with great success.  She cannot bother doing anything she wishes to do and it ended up that a driven individual with her own mind is trapped in a mind that is doing nothing but living day to day with no real drive to do anything.

Her marriage is the same thing.  She fell into the relationship, and the one time she rebelled against it, she was not talked to by anyone, made to be by herself.  She tried to start over in a new state, and it broke her.  Everything was removed from her one by one until she was trapped in her apartment with two psychos.  Going back to her boyfriend was a give up.

The only times she stood up for herself was when people drove her to the wall, but unless she is mad, she never speaks what is on her mind.  She cannot when everyone makes fun of her when she opens her mouth to speak.

So she went along with the flow.  Married her boyfriend, having no part of the wedding plans.  She tried to say what she wanted, and nothing was done that way.  Then she attempted to take control of her house and decorate it, and her in-laws jumped at her for it.  She is constantly brow beaten down and that is her life.

Her secret?  Is that she hates it all.  She wants nothing more than to break out of it, to be herself.  But the background she has had slowly removed all that fire and determination until she feels nothing but trapped.  It is not her husband’s fault, but she is sick and tired of not being in charge of her own life. So she prays and wishes for another chance at life, remembering all that brought her here to make sure she lives another life.

At the other side of the bed, a brunette with deep green eyes lies there.  He is trying to figure out when he failed his wife.  He knows she is not happy, but nothing he does seems to make her truly happy.  She is miserable, and he knows why.  He hates her family with a passion few would understand.

They had a woman on their hands who dreamed big, but when she tried to act on those ideas, they demeaned her.  It is always about them and them first.  Who cares about a woman that they used as their babysitter?  Her doing extracurricular activities?  Ok, as long as it doesn’t hurt their plans.

A brain that should have been encouraged, nurtured, was instead wasted on nothing.  By the time he came along, there was very little left of her real personality.  What there is, he and his friends try to encourage.

But there was the time she left him.  And no one can blame him for being hurt.  He tried, oh how he attempted to support her, knowing that she was trying to place herself in the world, but her family slowly eroded her until she was broken.   She thinks she failed to live on her own, but to him and the rest of the people who actually care for her, they see that she succeeded, proved she needed no one to be with her.

His wife never truly could see herself.  And that is his secret.  He had always seen the fire in her when she came in the back where they worked for the first time, she was mad at one of the people working there.  Her fire had captured his attention and never let it go.

He watched late at night when she sparred with the guys then.  He watched when she was tired and never watched what she said in the mornings, put down some of the older men and not realize it.  Everyone there knew that she had that fire.  They encouraged it, and as she moved out from her family’s thumb, and was in Tucson more, that fire grew.

He always watched her, wanting her.  And he got his chance when everyone conspired to get them together.  The problem, though?  He wasn’t what she needed.

She needed her friends from there.  She needed the boy who showed her being smart was not a bad thing and competed with her in classes.  She needed the girl who took time out of her life to bring the lost girl into her life and allowed that fire to be encouraged.  Whom would come down to her house and clean it while her friend walked 5 miles to work in heels.

She needed the guys who encouraged her, accepted her into their volleyball team.  Who took the time from their practices to teach her how to set a volleyball better than anyone else, and could drop a volleyball in serving right inside of the net to make points.

She needed the guy who broke up with her knowing that his friend would pressure her into having sex with him when she didn’t want to.  It broke their hearts, and he protected her with a conviction that surprised many.  She needed the ex-boyfriend who talked to her one night as she was the stage manager for his play and missed his cue becoming the friend that every female needed.

She needed the guys who she adored, one of them, she had a crush on for the entire length of her high school life, and they somehow became close friends with him and the rest.  He had made sure she had rides home and was always there for her.  His friend joined with her ex-boyfriend to defend her when she didn’t even know it.

He did.  Every, single one of those friends had contacted him and told him in no certain terms what they will do to him if he hurt her.  And that is the last thing he ever wanted to do.

But somehow, he did.

He tried to nurture that fire, and instead helped put it out, and he has no idea how! He had never wanted it out, but somehow, in their messed up life, he had.

And he wanted nothing more than to give it back to her.  He loved her more than anyone, but if their fate were for him to be her friend, than her lover, her husband, then this he would gladly do, if it only brought back that fire inside of her.

He never told her to give up her friends, but they slid away in the growth of their lives.  They would be horrified if they saw her now.  Instead, he imagines that they think she is enjoying her life.

Don’t get him wrong, he admires how she is taking what she has and makes it work for her.  She can make her life better and tries.  But that is not enough.  Nope.  He wants her to take life by the horns and wrestle it.  He has seen her do it in the past.  However, during the time they split, it was taken from her, ripped from her even.

He will never forget the day she called him, terrified for her very life.  He came out to rescue her and was pissed.  She had dated a man who played her.  She had chosen the wrong man, and he had pulled her apart with his actions.  She hardly ate, and her job and him slowly killed her fire.  She had ditched the man, and with a few friends in her life, tried to put it together.

The downfall? Her roommate.  She had pushed and pulled, telling her she needed to get out more and took over her life.  To the point that his precious love had thought she was good for nothing.  Her few friends at that point were not, sure enough, to know that she had fallen, he had no doubt that they would have helped her had they known.  She always seems to find the right ones.

Nonetheless, that one time appeared to be full of people who played her like a finely tuned instrument and destroyed her. Three people did the job that had taken before an entire family.  And they did it so well that she has never been the same person again.

And this has made her very withdrawn.  Where she had started to come out of her shell, she is firmly back in it and hiding.

Their marriage is a sham.  And none of it is her fault.  It is his also.  They had given up. And that is the worst thing he could have done.

So now they are both lying here, in their bed, both wishing the same thing.  To be able to go back in time and change her life.  To make it better.  Neither wants the other gone, so that is in the wish, that they are friends.  But both realize that more is not wise.  They are not good for each other.

And out of nowhere, a voice came into both their brains.  “Your wish is granted.  All I ask for is that when I call, you come.”

And then there is a white flash.  After the flash is gone, the bed is empty, as though no one had never slept there, and that is because no one has in this timeline.

Final count, 1,930 words.

Fairfarren~