Page 112 of The Warmth of Our Closest Star

Or had it all been in my head?

It wasn’t like Peter and I had sat down and discussed our feelings or what was going on in our lives. We had faced our first big enemy as a married couple, and we hadn’t pulled together and worked to defeat it. Closing ourselves off from each other, treating our feelings as secrets we couldn’t share, we had pushed each other away. Certainly, I had been worse, but Peter wasn’t without his faults. But if we could discuss them, we could get past them.

If only I could understand what was anchoring me in place, making it impossible to continue on into the next chapter of my life.

I needed to put my past, my trauma, and my old family to rest. I could keep them in my heart, but I had a new family now.

I wanted to have my own family.

Figuring out how to make that happen was nearly impossible.

After weeks of our arrangement—dinners and snuggles and television programs and sex after work each night, with more of the same on the weekends—I could feel Peter growing tired of it. Not that I expected Peter to heave a great sigh one day and proclaim that he was tired of waiting for me to move back home—to do as he wanted—but I knew he was tired. Regardless, I didn’t have to wait for a great sigh or for his frustrations to bubble over in some other way.

On a Saturday, the one before Thanksgiving, we were sitting in my living room. We were next to each other on the couch, our feet propped up on two cushions. I was reading a book and Peter was scrolling through the news. Minneapolis was gloomy again, the city barely visible through the giant windows due to the fog and mist. Peter had draped a throw blanket over us to fight off the chill of the day.

“I’d like you to be back home before Christmas,” Peter said out of the blue, not looking up from his phone. “Mom and Dad are coming to visit. It would be nice if I didn’t have to explain your absence another year.”

It was cruel of me. A bit petty, what I said next.

“Is that why you want me back home?” I asked. “So your parents don’t think your life is imperfect?”

I had said it on a whim. Not necessarily to be cruel, or to start a fight, but it was something that I wondered. Peter had always been concerned with the enjoyment his parents experienced while visiting. He had never been concerned with my needs when they were staying at our home. So…while cruel…it was a valid question. Peter visibly tensed, but surprisingly, he didn’t lash out at me like I’d done to him.

“Maybe I said it wrong,” he said, his voice tight, “but that’s not what I meant. I want you back home because I love you and you’re my husband. You’re part of my family. Like my parents. So…it would be nice to not have to tell one part of the family that the other part didn’t show up for some unknown reason.”

I chewed at my lip.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Peter sighed. “Forgiven.”

“Do you think,” I said, laying my book down, “that maybe we’re just too…opposite? Maybe that’s part of the problem?”

Peter put his phone to sleep and laid it on the arm of the sofa.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, turning on the sofa to face me.

“Now who’s rude?”

“I’m not trying to be rude,” he said. “But you’re grasping at straws, Enzo.”

“Am I?” I asked. “You’re older, I’m younger. Your friends are not like my friends. You read the news. I read novels.”

“I read books.”

I chuckled. “You know what I mean. You like weird television shows and don’t care about the movies I love.”

Peter rolled his eyes.

“I’m serious, Peter. Don’t make fun.”

“I’m not making fun,” he said. “But this is ridiculous. You’re just listing off arbitrary things about us.”

“Things that help define who we are.”

“Well,” Peter said, “how about…our feelings about family? How we feel about our careers? How we want our home life to be? The way we view the world and how we hate injustice and inequity? The fact that we love having sex with each other and can’t get enough? How we love to snuggle and say nothing and watch the weather? How we can be silent with each other and it doesn’t feel awkward? How even if we don’t understand the things the other person loves or the things they want to accomplish, we support and encourage each other? We’re each other’s biggest cheerleaders. How about those things?”

I stared at him.