Then there are betrayals that don’t dull at all. They just keep finding new ways to cut you.
I met Marcus when I was twenty-six and still young enough to confuse confidence with character.
He was a junior financial advisor at a downtown Denver firm and the kind of handsome that arrived before the rest of him did—tailored suits, perfect teeth, a laugh that carried across rooms. He made everyone feel chosen. That was his gift. Or his trick. Back then I didn’t know the difference.
I was working as a respiratory therapist at St. Joseph’s, doing night shifts, eating vending machine crackers at three in the morning, and building my life inch by inch. Marcus liked that about me, or said he did. He told me I was strong, grounded, not like the flaky women he’d dated before. He brought coffee to my shifts. He waited outside in the snow once just to drive me home after a sixteen-hour day because he “worried about me on icy roads.” I thought that was love.
We married two years later in a small church with white roses and my mother crying in the front pew. For a while, it was good. Not fairy-tale good. Real good. Sunday pancakes. Furniture from Ikea. Shared jokes over burnt lasagna. The kind of ordinary happiness that makes you think maybe all the caution in your life can finally soften.
