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“Stop. You need to trust me. I love my job. Jobs. I love my DMORT work, even when I hate it. I love the travel and the lab work. I love living near my family. I love that your Yia-Yiá taught me how to make baklava. The woman is over ninety. How many years left do you think she has to be my surrogate granny? You really think I’d give up those years for a job? I love learning Greek from you in a classroom filled with kids. Gus, we have a life here, and it’s a good one.”
She took a breath and her face grew more determined. “So, I was never going to take it, even if they begged me. Even ifyoubegged me. And this is for the best, because now you’ll finally believe me.“ She smiled. A real smile, not a fake, patronizing one. “But… oh, this is the best part. They want Chris. And I think he wants it, too. I think he felt so guilty over wantingmy thing, he threw me on the sword. Or pushed me to the front lines. Or, I don’t know… some battle analogy.“ She laughed and blotted the tears from her eyes with her sleeve.
“Fucking Chris,” I shook my head.
“Fucking YOU!” She pushed me hard on the shoulder. “You and him. You’re both the same. You both accuse me of being a people pleaser, of not asking for what I want, but I’m the only one who did!Iproposed toyou.”
“Because you were doing me a favor.”
“I was doing myself a favor. I wanted you. All this time, I wanted you. You assumed I was being altruistic, but I never was. Marryingyou was the most selfish act I’ve ever done. I just wished we’d been honest from the start. We would have earned our stapes by now.”
“Ourwhat?”
“The tiniest bone in the body. In the inner ear. It doesn’t matter, though.” She lay down and tucked her body under my arm. “I love you, Gus. I don’t know if I’ve loved you from that first night we met, but if not, it was really soon after. Sometime after we started watching Netflix over the computer, and I realized I was texting you more often than Soula and Bethany. That’s why I proposed. I know what I did was cringy and manipulative. At the time, I convinced myself there was nothing self-serving about it. We were great friends, so we’d be great roommates. But it was selfish. I married you in the hopes that, one day, you’d stumble, and I’d catch you when you fell—in a really romantic and not at all creepy way. And then you’d start to see me in a sexy new light. That part’s pretty awful. I’m sorry.”
“Decca, you sweet girl.” I pressed my forehead to hers. I kissed her and cupped her cheek with my palm. “Your proposal was the answer to a prayer I was too afraid to speak. I wanted you desperately, only I didn’t think you’d ever consider being mine.”
Now she was tearing up again, and it tore at my heart. These tears were mine. She was crying because she was hearing the words I should have said all along.
“Gus, can we stop being afraid of each other? Of what the other might think or say when we tell the truth? You’re my home. And I think I’m that for you.”
I shifted my weight onto my back and stared up at the cracked plaster on the gabled ceiling. “Do you remember the cards you pulled? The last night we… the night I tried to push you away?”
“Not specifically, no. I remember the interpretation was clearly meant for me to run, which I’m blatantly flaunting now, but cardsare just cards. There are no ramifications if I don’t follow the stupid advice they might give me. Not when everything goes against my own intuition.”
“I remember them. I’ve thought a lot about them, actually. Before you left and while you were gone. You left your tarot book at Dad’s bedside.”
She laid on her side and propped her head on her hand. “Oh yeah?”
“I think there was an interpretation you missed. Did you get any reversals?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, good, because I didn’t look up reversals.”
“I didn’t know you even knew what a reversal was.”
“Crow. I study everything you say like there’s going to be a test on it later. That reading was about us. Not the job. That’s why it was about one phase ending and another beginning. It was about us taking an impolite approach. It was about expanding our love, letting it radiate outward. Not blazing new trails somewhere you don’t want to go.”
“The Kight of Pentacles,” she said. “It wasn’t about taking action and charging ahead, it was about going deeper. Doing the hard work to step out of your comfort zone.”
I nodded. “The Two of Swords. Your book says you were right about a crossroads, but it didn’t mean you had to veer ninety degrees left. It’s all about trusting your intuition. You tried to trust yours. I’m the one who pushed you against it. You were right all along.”
Her smile was wide and bright as she tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear.
“I love you, Decca. My sweet wife. I’m so in love with you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that every day of our marriage. I’m sorry youhad to be the one with the guts to propose, but that makes me love you even more.”
She sat up, leaning over and kissed me hard on the lips with a sob. “I love you. But I think you’ve known that.”
Her hot breath brushed against my neck, and I groaned. “It’s been so long since I’ve touched you. The past month was unbearable.”
“You locked the door, right?” she asked, before brushing her lips to the tender corner of my mouth.
“Not here.”
“We’ll be quick.”
I groaned. “We’re never quick.”
