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“You think because my love isn’t loud that it isn’t real? That just because I don’t make you fucking kill yourself for my affection?—”
“What affection?!” It’s my turn to interrupt him. To remind him of just how dead our marriage became. “I can’t remember the last time I felt like our sex life wasn’t a chore.”
Before I can say anything else, he stands, gathers his things, and storms out of the house. After a moment of silence, I hear a quiet voice from the top of the stairs.
“Is daddy not staying for dinner?”
Penny’s eyes are wide and Jilly’s are full of tears and I rush up the steps to gather them in my arms.
“Come on,” I whisper, “we’ll order pizza and eat it in my bed.”
All while I spend time with my babies, trying to erase the fractured moment they witnessed, I’m reminded of the night I asked Peter for a divorce.
Of his anger then, much quieter than tonight.
He’s never left without saying goodbye to the girls before. Never been so upset with me, even when I first told him about Abraham.
Is all of this coming out of nowhere for him? Was he unable to see the subtle shifts in me; the way I spent more time at work than at home? The way I took work trips without him and shied away from alone time with him?
Because all alone time would do is make it painfully obvious that he and I are devastatingly incompatible.
Men will never understand the language of women.
What is seen as emotional is intuitive. What’s seen as selfish is self-preservation.
And what’s often seen as an abrupt departure is a long-suffering denial, finally acknowledged.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
IT ISN’T YOURS
PAST
It’s been two weeks since I agreed to be Peter’s girlfriend. Two weeks since he bought me the flowers that I just dumped in the trash.
It’s been eight weeks since I tiptoed out of Abraham’s hotel room.
It’s been ten weeks since my last period.
Sitting on the bathroom floor, waiting on a timer to go off isn’t how I thought I’d be spending my Friday night.
The cool tile under my bare thighs has me lifting my knees to my chest and I hold onto them for dear life.
Fuck.
In all of the business preparation and excitement, I hadn’t realized?—
The timer goes off and it jolts me from my thoughts. I scramble to stand, reaching blindly for the edge of the sink behind me.
The pregnancy test clatters to the floor, and I suck in a breath when the plus sign stares back at me.
I can’t tell Denise. It’s the first thought that flashes to mymind. My sister’s pain from her miscarriage is still entirely too fresh for me to be able to call her with my freak out. But she’s the person I want to call as a single tear falls, my vision blurring.
I hear knocking in the distance and I sniff as I wipe away the traces of my panic. I lean down to grab the test and, not sure what to do with it, I tuck it into the waistband of my shorts. It rubs against my back as I straighten and walk toward my front door.
Peter walks in, a fresh bouquet of flowers in his hand.
“Hello, dearest,” he greets me, kissing me on my forehead. I’m numb as I let him in, unable to return his affection. He’s going on about something, grabbing an empty vase from my cabinet, filling it with water and arranging the perfectly beautiful red roses he got me to replace the ones I’d just tossed out.
