Boys Don't Dance: A sapphic second chance romance by Ivy Whitaker

Author:Ivy Whitaker [Whitaker, Ivy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 2024-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

twenty-six

ALEX

Alex couldn’t stop thinking about the last time she had seen Lyra. She replayed the moment over and over, until she had come with every conceivable outcome. One even included a lover’s tryst in the bathroom of the grocery store—a fantasy that should have been easier to brush aside than it was.

Without Nick around, she had realized a few things about herself.

First, that the home was carefully balanced and curated to cater to him. Her schedule was always subject to change based on his. He also—without meaning to, of course—tended to suck all of the air out of whatever space he entered. For as gentle and as kind as he was, there were always unspoken expectations of her. Food on the table, a sink without a single dish left.

In a quiet fit of rebellion, she had gone to bed without washing her wine glass. When she awoke, ragged from her night of tossing and turning, she smirked when she saw it there.

Alex finished the last of her washing while she waited for her English muffin to finish baking.

Habits die hard, as the saying goes.

Having grown up in a fastidiously kept home, she had no inclination of allowing hers to fall to squalor. But it was nice—that quiet, solitary act of rebellion. For the first time in her life, she could do what she wanted and when. There was no one else to worry about. No needs she had to place above her own. Except for her children, of course. But they were both independent in their own rights. They fell too easily into routines. Thanks to the burgeoning extracurriculars that kept her gas tank perpetually near empty, her home was, largely, unoccupied.

In his absence, she realized there was a future for her. One that she could mold into whatever she wanted. If she wanted to never work again, Nick had already said he’d support her. If she wanted to go back to school, he said he would support that, too. He’d help with the kids in the way he could—help her with money. A part of her wondered if he felt guilty of the future he’d taken from her. Because he had. Not with the children he gave her, but with his insistence that she should be a homemaker.

Or, perhaps, he was trying to show how supportive he could be. A last ditch attempt at showing her that they could make things work.

The more she thought about their marriage, the more she realized that she had simply been holding things together. She was forever walking the tight-rope, while trying to hold the weight of the world on her shoulders. It bowed, it frayed, it thinned until she could feel the strings begin to snap beneath the excruciating pressure. But now she felt levity. A lightness she hadn’t known she could feel.

It was shameful how often she thought about how things would be different with Lyra. She knew that she wouldn’t allow an errant dish to lay unattended—because she knew Alex didn’t like the mess.

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