I Spent Six Christmas Eves Waiting For Nothing Chapter 06

I Spent Six Christmas Eves Waiting For Nothing Chapter 06

Garrett had left easily over a hundred missed calls on my log.

I walked out of the airport terminal and stood by the curb, waiting for the corporate shuttle the company had arranged. Since I had a moment, I finally decided to answer his next call.

“Hello? What’s going on?”

The silence on Garrett’s end was deafening.

The only sound traveling through the line was his breathing, growing heavier and more ragged by the second.

“Say something,” I pressed. “If you don’t actually have anything to say, I’m hanging up.”

Just as I was about to tap the screen, he finally spoke. “Where the hell are you?”

“I’m on an overseas assignment,” I said calmly. “I sent you a text last night explaining everything perfectly clearly. Did you not see it?”

“And by the way, the divorce papers are on the coffee table. Sign them and mail them back to me.”

“Don’t worry, I drafted the terms to be completely fair. I’m not trying to screw you over in the division of assets, so you can sign them without worrying—”

“Elena!”

I had to pull the phone a few inches away from my ear.

“Have you finally lost your mind?!” he roared.

“An overseas assignment? What kind of ridiculous assignment makes you move across the Atlantic?! You think living in a foreign country is going to be a breeze? You’re going to a place where you don’t know a soul, who’s going to look after you?!”

It was the first time in our entire marriage I had ever heard Garrett speak so many words at once.

“You barely get any vacation days as it is, do you know how exhausting it’s going to be to fly back to New Richmond?!”

I let out a soft chuckle. “I don’t plan on coming back.”

The line went completely dead silent again.

“Garrett, stop playing dumb. Just sign the divorce papers and mail them over to me.”

“I’m divorcing you. We’re going our separate ways.”

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He abruptly slammed the phone down, ending the call.

When I checked the app, I discovered Garrett had already blocked me — his profile picture and updates had completely vanished from all my social media platforms.

A second later, a string of text messages from Chloe popped up.

[Chloe: Elena, do you have any idea how completely furious you’ve made Garrett?]

[Chloe: Major decisions like this are supposed to be discussed beforehand! How could you just pack up and run away without saying a single word? You can’t just throw a tantrum and act this impulsively, it’s incredibly hurtful.]

I tapped the screen, shooting back a direct reply:

[I’m literally doing you a favor.]

[Aren’t you practically begging for me to divorce him so you can slide right into my place?]

The status bar at the top of her chat bubbled with a continuous ‘typing…’ animation.

Yet, no message ever came through.

[Still trying to figure out what to say?]

[Get lost, unless you want me to keep going until I make you cry.]

The chat window finally fell dead silent.

I had seen through Chloe’s intentions toward Garrett a long time ago.

It started the year we got married; Chloe was eighteen, crying and screaming that she wanted to move to our city for college. Her parents absolutely refused to allow it.

As a result, she had a massive blowout with her family, ruining her relationship with them so completely that she packed her bags and moved to Western Europe instead.

Her body was overseas, but her heart remained entirely fixed on Garrett.

During her first six months abroad, she insisted on FaceTime calling Garrett every single day. Garrett, validating her under the excuse that she was in a strange new environment and lacked a sense of security, accommodated her every whim.

Whenever Garrett and I were out celebrating our wedding anniversary, she would deliberately call to disrupt us. She’d claim she was being mugged, or scream that her roommates were bullying her, sobbing that she was too terrified to even crawl out from under her bed sheets.

And Garrett would immediately abandon me, buying a plane ticket to fly across the ocean to rescue her.

If it had happened once or twice, I could have chalked it up to an emergency. But it happened every single year.

Every single time, Garrett chose to believe her lies, ditching me to fly to Chloe’s side.

Our marriage’s ending, it seemed, had been written in stone from the very beginning.