39 & Holding

-DEDICATION-

To all the women born in 1974.

The ones who are beautiful inside and out.

The ones who may feel that the outside is more important than the inside.

To the ones who also need to know that it really is what's on the inside that counts.

The ones who are passionate about life.

The ones who are passionate about love.

To the ones who have found real, true love, and have treasured it.

To the ones who think they have lost hope in ever finding love again.

The ones who realize that love may come along when they least expect it.

And to the ones who do not realize it yet.

The ones who live hard.

The ones who play hard

The ones who love hard.

The ones who have friends who make them feel like a million bucks.

The ones who have men in their lives who make them feel that way too.

And fuck the ones who don't.

This book is for you.

-NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR-

When I first had the idea for this book I was on the verge of turning the big 4-0. I always thought it was just a number. It had no significance because I felt mentally twenty! Well, I was very wrong. It was hard. Even though I was in a great place in my life- I still am. I have a wonderful, supportive husband, awesome kids, a loving family, and i'm blessed by having so many beautiful friends in my life. But it scared me to turn that number. It really did. I've spent my adult life laughing at fart jokes and other silly stuff and on the day I turned forty, I thought, Well, this it is. Time to grow up. I cried when I woke up. I cried when I was in the shower that morning, I cried when I went to work that day. I cried that night when I left my family because I was traveling to a book signing. I cried myself to sleep that night. No one knew. I'm just telling this now. I felt alone- even though I knew I wasn't. Even though I knew that in this same year most of my friends- the forever ones and some new friends would eventually be in the same boat I was in. I dreaded the next day because I knew I would be forty and one day old. Just another step towards my demise.

As I was on my flight to the signing I was attending, I sat back-looked out the window of the plane into the endless horizon and I kept going over in my mind why I felt the way I did. Then like all women do- I over analyzed. I over analyzed my forty years on Earth. Where did the time go? I thought about my mom and how she must have been feeling-having a forty year old daughter. Sorry ma, I bet that felt like crap. Just kidding.

I went over in my head the things I did in my life and not just what i'm doing now, but what I did when I was a child. I grew up in a big, loud, loving Italian family. I was constantly surrounded by dozens of relatives and family dinners and wonderful Holidays. I thought about how I would be the after dinner entertainment and how I would belt out in front of a living room full of people 'Tomorrow' from 'Annie'. I thought about my eighteen years of dance training and how the dancing and the singing brought me into the theater in high school and how for a short time thought I wanted to be on Broadway. I was even accepted to one of the top Theater schools in the country. I didn't last long. It wasn't what I wanted and it was okay.

I thought about those years after I left school. I met a boy who changed my life, my father got ill and passed away. I attended school to be a medical assistant and worked in pediatrics for almost six years. I married my Prince, had a little Prince, then a Princess. I lost a few of those in between.

Being a mom and a wife was all I wanted. It wasn't rainbows and unicorns all the time but my kids were the reason I was born. My husband was my savior.

I went through my whole life those few hours on that plane.

Then it hit me! I was grown up and yes- I was forty. But it didn't matter. It was still okay to laugh at fart jokes and to be silly with my husband and my kids and my friends. I could still sing and dance and be happy no matter how old I was. I accomplished things in my life I never thought I could or would. I had writing in my soul and I never knew it.

I thought about all the wonderful things and the sad things I've seen in my forty years. Some I never want to forget, others I wish I could. And that was all okay with me because when I looked at it all-forty was good. Forty years were good to me and bad to me. Some things I could control, others I couldn't but it really was just a number and for that I can hold my head up high, dry my tears and say, 'Here's to the next forty.'

I hope you enjoy the story.

Xo-

M.R.

-PROLOGUE-

I was blind. Blind as a bat. I mean I was actually more blind than a bat. At least a bat can see what it needs to see when it needs to see it, or what it wants to see.

I didn't see it and it was right there in front of me.

For months.

I guess I should have really spotted all the warning signs. They were as bright as the lights on a neon sign that hangs above a bar, or a tattoo shop, or a strip club. You know the ones that practically flash in your face and say, Hey, come on in and open your eyes, moron. Well, I was not that person. Like I said before, I was blind.

Oh, right, back to the signs. Okay, so the first, let's call this exhibit A. This would be the new job, late nights at the office, and late dinner meetings with clients. Totally acceptable. You have to start at the bottom if you want to make it to the top. I got it. Back then, I got it.

Then there's exhibit B. Last-minute business trips. Yes, spare-of-the-moment trips that required a bathing suit and a crazy looking Hawaiian shirt, and a trip to Macy's for some new underwear. Sigh...yes. Fucking boxer briefs. No more tighty whities with the wet fart stains. I tried to bleach them out for fourteen years. What the fuck was I thinking?

Well, I wasn't.

Let's not forget about exhibit C. See C is a big one. It's the one that made me start to question my sanity. Electronics. They are the devil. If I could rid the world of cell phones or email, trust me I would. They are the spawn of Satan himself. If I didn't have to use a cell phone to keep in constant contact with my kids, I wouldn't have one. But this is the age of electronics and the be all and end all of love, hope, and forgiveness. And don't even get me started on girly, fruity, sexy fragrances. They are the eye of newt in this witches brew of lies and deceit. But I'll get back to that later.

I'm still on electronics. Yes, phones buzzing in the middle of the night and feeling the shift in the mattress as the phone that was buzzing is picked up and taken out of my earshot. I heard the whispers, thinking maybe, God forbid, someone forgot to tell someone about a big audit.

Big audit problems at one a.m. Yeah...audit my ass.

Emails. Ha, ha. Oh, yes. Emails. Such a brainless way of getting information from one person to another via the computer.

Whether for business or pleasure—well in my story it was for someone else's pleasure—it's the cherry on the proverbial top of the sundae in the form of communication or miscommunication. Depends how you see it.

In my case, it was simply the means to the end.

One email. One stupid email that sent my happy home into turmoil and into a tornado of absolute disarray.

I'm not a violent person by nature. I mean, I don't even own a fly swatter and I hate those outdoor bug zappers. Just listening to a mosquito in the summer sizzle as it’s electrocuted by a thousand bolts of electricity...I just hate it. But when I saw the words written in an email to my husband when I accidentally—yes accidentally—clicked on his account, I felt violent.

Ryan,

Can't wait for you to fuck me even harder tonight, baby.

xx- Giselle

Who names their kid that unless she's a princess in a Disney movie or some shit like that?

Giselle. Christ Almighty. That name. I can't even say it without green, acid-inducing vomit rising up in my throat, which will probably be the cause of esophageal cancer somewhere down the road.

But back to the email, oh and my distaste for swatting at innocent insects. Remember me telling you I'm not a violent person? The night I found the email, when my husband of fifteen years was fast asleep in our marriage bed, the man I had been with since I was nineteen and in my final semester as a freshman year in college. Yes, that one with the thick dirty-blond hair. Well...that night he had a little less of it because a clump rested in the palm of my hand after I dragged his sorry ass out of bed by the roots to confront him. The man is dead weight when he's asleep, but the adrenaline I felt that night took over any weakness or guilt of harming another human being, animal, or insect. Ryan Walker was all of the above except for the human part. He was the animal and the insect. If I had one of those outdoor insect buzzy-killing things, I would have thrown him in it and watched his body be charred to a crisp. Like he did my heart.

Sound a little violent to you? The dance instructor turned murderer? I guess you could say violent. I mean I wouldn't have done it...that way. Arsenic-laced cupcakes anyone?

He didn't deny it. After I screamed and cried and clawed at his face—and smashed the laptop jumping on it like a two-year-old—we just sat there in silence. We leaned against our bed like we were two strangers. Not two people that had been together for twenty years. We leaned our backs against the bed we picked out when we got home from our honeymoon. The bed we fucked in, watched movies in, had tickle fights in, and made two amazing children in. Now, it was just holding us up from falling. Me mostly. I learned he fell about six months before that. When he had her in my bed. My husband fucked Giselle, the long-legged, half-French-half-whatever whore, when I was away in Phoenix for a master class in Ballet, in my bed. Did I mention it was in my bed? My loving husband said he had to work that entire weekend and thought it would be better if the kids went to my dad’s because he felt bad he would not be able to spend ample time with them. He would not be able to take Cole to his baseball game or go watch Sophie take her dance class. What a good dad. Thinking of the children before himself.

Enter sarcasm here. Asshole.

Have you even tried to figure out what to do with a broken fifteen-year marriage in one sleepless night? I have. Trust me, you don't look like Miss America after a night of crying and lack of rest. The bags under my eyes—yes there was enough of them to take me to Mexico for a month. And the leftover mascara that streamed down my face, ha, ha, it made me look like Courtney Love from Hole. It's sad really. You think you know someone. You sacrifice for that person, you give them everything, and what they give you in return is heartache.

Do you know what it feels like to have someone tell you they are no longer in love with you? You don't? Truth is, I don't want you to know. I would never want anyone to feel the pain that I have felt. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

Did you know that your heart actually hurts when you break up? I mean that fateful night I thought I was having a heart attack. Here it was just my heart cracking inside, dying—weeping—in total agony. That's exactly what a broken heart feels like. Doubt me? Think I'm exaggerating? I wouldn't think those things if I were you.

I told him I smelled her in our bedroom but at the time thought it was the scent of the new laundry detergent I had recently bought.

Remember the fruity, girly, sexy scent I told you about? Yeah, well laundry detergent doesn't smell like that. Guess I couldn't smell that well either.

He told me he loved her. I think I would have tried to make it work with him if he would not have told me that. He told me he loved me for being a good mother to our kids, but that he was no longer in love with me.

He left the next day.

Please don't get me started on how my kids reacted. Cole, my thirteen-year-old, bad, I mean real bad. He said he hated Ryan. I told him that was wrong. Daddy just didn't love Mommy and sometimes that happens, but he would always love him and his sister. Sophie, my six-year-old just asked questions about having two Christmases and then she went back to play with her Barbies.

The first hard thing was seeing his side of the closet empty and his medicine cabinet in the bathroom bare of all his shaving things and colognes. A few days after he left I still smelled his scent lingering in the air, and I have to admit, I clung to it. Inhaled it and kept it in my lungs until they burned with remembrance. I had grown tired of that.

It eventually left. There were no traces of Ryan Walker in my home. Our home. The one we once shared. He gave me the house. I earn enough to keep it up. He pays the mortgage out of guilt I suppose and lives with...oh, God forgive me while I swallow my vomit...okay...I'm back...while he lives with what’s her name.

I got rid of the bed by the way. I wanted to set it on fire like Angela Bassett did in ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back.’ Torch it in the front yard for all the neighbors to see.

The trash men took it instead. That's what it wound up being. Trash. Like the way I felt. Left out on the curb. Discarded. Replaced.

So here I am.

Greer Walker, thirty-nine, and single after twenty years. My kids are gone most weekends with their dad and one night during the week.

And I'm alone. But that's okay because I won't ever let my heart or my pride be smashed beyond recognition again. I'll be a cat lady once my kids are grown and out of the house. No offense to all the cat lovers out there.

I'm done with giving myself completely to one person. I can do this. I'm a big girl. I'll be okay.

Being single isn't so bad. Being thirty-nine and single isn't so bad.

Soon forty will be knocking at my door and I'll answer it with my head held high. I'll do my best to welcome it.

Forty. The big 4-0. The over-the-hill; the crest of going from a Lamb to a Cougar.

God, I hate that analogy. But it is what it is. I'll hold on to thirty-nine as long as I can.

I'm Greer Walker and this is my story.

-CHAPTER 1-

Cole? Your dad just pulled up. Better grab the rest of your gear, I yell up to my thirteen-year-old son who is obviously stalling for time. Ryan knocks at the door, which I'm thankful for because when we first divorced he'd just tap once and walk in. How annoying is that? What if I was entertaining a gentleman and was making myself into a human ice cream sundae for him to lick off or something like that? I don't need to be reminded that that scenario would never happen. I'm speaking hypothetically. Yes, I know, he pays the mortgage, but that was his idea.

We live in a four-bedroom, bungalow-style house with a large eat-in kitchen that made me want this house as soon as we saw it. It's my dream kitchen and back in the day Ryan wanted me to have everything my heart desired. The house itself may have been a little smaller than what we envisioned, but to me, the kitchen is the heart of the home. It's where you join together when you wake up in the morning, and at the end of the day, it's where you sit and eat and talk about the day’s events.

We used to laugh and tell stories about the day. I'd told Ryan and the kids about the three-year-old that peed herself on the hardwood floor of the dance studio that I co-own with my business partner, Monica, and how she then walked in it and slipped. Then I went to help her and I slipped. Or how Ryan, when he was at his old firm, told us about the president of the company clogging up the toilet in his private bathroom and it flooding the entire office. An office full of shit. For lawyers and accountants, that sounds about right. And don't think all of our dinner conversations were about piss and shit. We talked about other things, too.

Now dinners are sort of quiet on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Wednesdays they go with Ryan right after school and stay over at 'Silicone Valley's' and his place. Yes, that's the name Jules, one of my best friends, gave to Ryan's girlfriend. Why? ’Cause her boobs are the size of Kansas. She's tall, leggy, and thin, with long blonde hair and she's rich. Her father owns the firm Ryan works at as an auditor.

Anyway, for now, enough about them. They aren't worth the air I breathe.

I open the door and see Ryan standing there. His one arm perched above the frame of the door and one arm dangling by his side. He looks up at me with his big brown eyes and I see the crest of his broad shoulders. God, he's still so attractive to me. I've always been attracted to him. Since the first time I saw him at the college frat party where we met. That seems so long ago. Unfortunately, the ugliness of his heart outweighs his good looks, and to look at him still churns my stomach. Even after a year.

Hey, Greers. He smiles cheerfully at me. I don't make much eye contact because I still fantasize about gauging his eyes out with red-hot pokers laced with lice and Hepatitis C. Too harsh? Yeah, well you wouldn't think so if you looked in your driveway and saw your husband’s mistress/girlfriend waving her hand at you like she's on a float at some goddamn beauty pageant parade. And see I just can't...seem...to...get...my arm...up to greet her with a wave. And I re-enact it for Ryan. Taking my other arm as I try to raise it for a wave. I pretend it's too much to bear. Like I have no strength to do it, so I don't, and simply roll my eyes.

He just shakes his head and laughs.

I open the door a little wider and lean against it as I wave Ryan in.

Kids will be down in a minute, I say to him with my arms crossed in front of me. We stand in silence as we hear Cole and Sophie run around upstairs gathering their gear for the weekend.

The air is thick with discomfort. He rocks back and forth on his heels as Silicone Valley beeps the horn in the driveway.

Annoyed, I tell him, Christ, Ryan. Can you tell her to stop doing that? You're early and the kids just got home from school and we had practices last night so they didn't have time to pack. My tone is one of fierce annoyance, but I don't care. I feel like kicking the door that my back rests against but I don't. I just shut my eyes, bow my head, and take a deep breath in. He motions to his love muffin to wait one minute. Then a blanket of silence comes across again.

Greer? You gonna be pissed off at me for the rest of your life?

Without looking directly at him I look up at the ceiling and say, Probably, as I shrug my shoulders.

He sighs and runs his hand down his clean-shaven face. The hint of that oh-so familiar cologne comes in contact with my nostrils when he makes contact with his skin and for a microsecond, I miss him. That feeling doesn't last long because when I look to my left and see in my driveway a part of the reason he is no longer my husband, it leaves me.

Silicone Valley beeps again and I let out an aggravated sigh and I look at him sternly.

He smiles and looks over his shoulder at her.

She's not so bad, Greer. She's really good with the kids. Especially Sophie.

I could give a shit less if she's good with my kids. If they knew the truth—what he did to me—they would hate him. More so Cole than Sophie, but I'd never let them know. It's not like Cole hasn't asked, because all Ryan did was spend a weekend with his asshole father and by Monday he moved into her place. My opinion? It was all premeditated. But I don't think Cole is stupid. People talk and I'm sure he's heard stuff. I just don't bring it up.

Ryan wants me to say something, like maybe agree. That's so not going to happen and I've learned over the past year how to pick and choose my battles.

But I'm a I-need-to-get-in-the-last-word person so I mumble, Oh, I bet. Then I push off the door and yell up to my kids to get a move on.

Sophie comes running right into her dad's arms and he picks her up and swings her around. Ryan Walker may have wound up being a douche of a husband but I can admit he is a good dad.

Hi, Petunia. You ready to have some fun this weekend?

Sophie nods her head excitingly. What are we going to do, Daddy?

He still holds her in his arms and her little legs are wrapped around his waist.

Well, Giselle's family is having a bar-b-que and we are going there. They have a pool and horses, and are having a magician to entertain all the kids that are going to be there.

Cole methodically makes his way down the steps. One step at a time. His duffle bag swung over his shoulder.

Gee, sounds like fun, he mumbles.

My son, almost fourteen, full of hormones and attitude.

When Cole reaches us in the foyer of the living room, he drops the bag in front of him and fixes his much-too-long hair under his baseball cap.

Hey, Cole. It will be fun, dude. Give it a chance.

Bitch beeps the horn again and I'd very much like to go out there and rip her thousand-dollar hair extensions out of her head.

Cole lashes out, Jesus Christ, Dad. Can you tell her to stop it?

In unison, we say his name sternly, shocked he used such language. I don't know where the fuck he gets his mouth from.

We better go. Kiss your mom ’bye, guys.

Ryan sets Sophie down and I get to her level and smooth out some of her unruly curls.

Be a good girl for Daddy, baby, and make sure you mind your manners. Pleases and thank yous, okay?

She nods. Yes, Mommy. Love you.

I kiss her sweet little face. Love you too, bug.

I stand up and go to Cole. I take his hat off his head, smooth out his thick, blond hair, and then place it back on his head, tapping on the lid of it. He looks pained and I'm concerned. The look in his eyes tells me he wants to tell me something.

Ry, why don't you and Sophie go to the car? I just need to talk to Cole for one minute.

Okay. Have a good weekend, Greers.

I don't reply.

When they walk out and the door closes, I tell Cole to sit on the steps with me.

What's up, Buddy? You look like you don't want to go.

He flings his hat off frustrated and it falls to the floor.

Ya think, Ma? I never want to go there. That place is cold. She doesn't even have curtains on the windows and she has this cook come in and make us food. But she's like some kind of person who doesn't eat meat and she doesn't eat anything that's got eggs in it or something like that. Who does that?

I smile at Cole. He's such a teenager now. I wrap my arm around him.

That's called a vegan. She's a vegan, honey, and it's her choice. She's very different than us. Not everyone has the same beliefs.

Cole rolls his eyes. I'll say. All I want is for Dad to get us a burger and he won't. Apparently, last time he got us burgers and fries at the drive-through, Giselle smelled it in the car, got mad, and dad said no more ’cause she cut him off for a week. I have no idea what that even means.

I have to laugh at his innocence. Ryan's an ass for even saying something like that in front of Cole, but he paid the piper when he banged Silicone Valley in my bed. So I'll encourage Cole and Sophie to hound him for greasy, fattening food.

Revenge is sweet and oily.

Don't worry about what it means, just know it makes Mommy very happy. I bring him into me with a hug and kiss his forehead.

Cole, try and have fun. Spend time with your dad. He really loves you. You know that, right?

Yeah, I know, but I can't stand her, Mom. She acts all sweet around us but I hear her bitch and complain when I leave a dirty sock on my bedroom floor. You don't even yell at me for that. She complains to Dad about my hair and my clothes.

I smile but it's a wicked one ’cause I'd like to rip her fake tits off her body for complaining about my kids.

Cole, like I said, she was raised differently than us. I just want you to always be respectful, especially to your dad. He loves you very much. Cole gives me a look as to say yeah right, Mom, but truth is, no matter what happened between Ryan and me, he's still a good dad. He genuinely wants to see his kids as much as he can. He helps me out a lot when I have a late class to teach or I have to go away for a master class.

I'm serious, Cole. I put on my mom face, which if I looked in the mirror would look like my own mother.

I stand up and get in front of Cole pulling him up off the step by his long, lanky arms.

Okay, young man. Let's go. Make the best of it and I'll see you Sunday night. I take my not-so-little boy in my arms and pull him in for a squeeze. He's not been the most affectionate kid lately but I'll take whatever I can get at this point. I walk him to the door. No way I'm going toward that car. I stop at the arch of the door and Cole swings his bag over his shoulder. He walks toward the car, dragging his too-big-for-his-body feet.

Sophie waves to me excitedly from the back seat as Cole makes his way inside to sit next to her. He turns his face away from everyone and stares out the window. Silicone Valley waves to me and flashes me her bright, white veneers. Fantasies of me breaking each of the fingers on her bony hand come to play. God, maybe I need therapy.

When I see Ryan happily climb into the driver’s seat, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the kids are belted in, then look over to 'Big Tits Magee' and smile, my stomach flip flops. They look like what we once were. The happy family. My family.

As they pull out of my driveway in the bitch’s BMW convertible, I'm faced with what comes almost every weekend for the past year.

Solitude.

After a year of this, it should feel like second nature. I should be used to it, but I'm not. It's not like I want Ryan back or anything. Once the soul has been damaged by one there's no recovery. I can hardly look at him when he comes to pick up the kids or when we have a function at school. I haven't made full eye contact with him in over a year. Strange, I know.

I close the door and lean against the back of it. I go back and forth in my mind about doing laundry, which makes me angry, or going to the basement studio to work out a new lyrical routine for the senior class, getting my anger out in the process.

Fuck the laundry. I want to dance.

I put on the powerful song. A mixture of love, anger, and passion, and I whip this aging body around my mirrored basement. Every wall is covered in mirrors with a wooden dance bar that stretches from one end of the largest wall to the other. This is where I can be free, express myself, and push my body to the limits only I know of.

When the music stops, I sit on the cold floor and catch my breath. I'm thirty-nine, and I have to admit it gets a bit harder nowadays to catch it. I rest my head on my knees, which are pulled up to my chest, and I squeeze them, shutting my eyes tight. My chest burns from over exertion. Ryan used to love watching me dance. He would sneak down here and sit on the steps watching me. I would see him in the mirrors. He would smile at me, and I'd wink at him. He used to tell me that watching me dance was the sexiest thing he had ever seen. He loved to watch the way my body moved along to the music. How fluid it was and the gracefulness it possessed. I moved like that in bed,