“It’s fine,” he assured her. “You know, I wish we could have talked about how bad things had gotten before you did what you did.”
He was a hypocrite, he knew. Because he’d never spoken to her about the ideas inhishead, and now he would never have to.
“Thomas, I’m sorry,” she said gently, her hands still steady, clasped together in front of her. Now instead of having a matching wedding set, they had matching tan lines. The absence of a whole life lived together, and for what?
Nothing.
“I said it’s fine.” He turned to the paralegal. “Are we done? What happens next?”
“Nothing, honestly.” She looked down at the paperwork and used her fingers to do some quick math. “The two of you wait it out and when May 10th rolls around, you’re single in the eyes of the court.”
“May 10th.”
Thomas snorted, pushing his chair back so he could get up and leave. The room was obscenely large to accommodate the table that could have been used to lay out strategic attacks in a world war, but it felt small in that moment, nearly claustrophobic. He needed air. He needed to be away from his wife—his almost ex-wife, rather. He needed to get back to his apartment that would never feel like home and try to decide what the rest of his life looked like.
“That’ll be a nice birthday present for you,” she said.
He wanted to snap at her, to tell her this wasn’t ever what he’d wanted, even though he’d asked for it. Thomas would have gladly gone on blindly, married to the woman he’d built a life with, built a home with, raised kids with. He would have never breathed life to the ideas that rattled around in the back corners of his brain. He would have never thought her capable of the things she’d done. And while part of him felt like he should be mad about it, like he should resent her for what she’d done, he found himself thankful.
Thomas was…relieved.
“Well, since you haven’t gotten me one in years, I’ll take it.” He checked his pockets out of reflex, making sure he had his wallet, his phone, and his keys. He said goodbye to Jennifer, hopefully for the last time, and made quick work of getting to the parking garage.
He supposed it was a blessing that their children were grown and he wouldn’t have to deal with custody arrangements and seeing Jennifer every week to trade them off. And it wasn’t that he held any animosity toward his wife. He just…didn’t want to deal with her anymore. The life they’d shared was no longer his.
Getting to the paperwork had been a long time coming because they’d made the decision long before pulling the actual trigger. They sold the house they’d owned since just after their youngest child was born, separated their finances, and settled into the tedious process of starting over. It was a shock to go from a two-thousand square foot ranch house filled with comfortable furniture and decades of memories into a small apartment with one bedroom and a noticeable lack of windows, but he’d done the best he could.
Thomas tried to find the best in the situation, immediately buying all of the plants he’d always wanted, but Jennifer never had. He painted the bedroom black, another thing she’d been adamantly against. He liked the neutrality of the color and the way it made the room feel small and cool. He appreciated the way his white down comforter—another thing she’d never liked—looked like it glowed on his bed for how bright it was. The separation gave Thomas the chance to make his homehis.
Jennifer had taken her half of the proceeds from the sale of the house and put it down on a condo in the city, which seemed to suit her just fine. He’d not seen the place, and he didn’t think he ever would, but that didn’t stop her from telling him about it. He realized Jennifer wanted to stay in his life, wanted to be friends. He didn’t blame her for that. He sometimes found himself wanting to tell her about his day or something funny he’d seen on TV. But that wasn’t their relationship anymore.
He honestly didn’t know if they’d ever have that kind of relationship. Thomas wouldn’t close the door on it with no reason, but he knew it was important for them both to embrace the separation in order to learn what it meant to be single again. So much of his identity and his personality had become tangled up with hers that it was hard to unlearn things and re-learn them in a way that felt authentic. But every day that passed, Thomas found himself feeling more comfortable with the path his life had taken.
He picked up some fried chicken at a drive-through on his way home and let out a long breath once he finally stepped back into his apartment. Even though they’d decided to separate months before, and even though the divorce wasn’t final for another three months, he already felt an unexpected sense of relief. Tension he didn’t realize he’d been holding rippled out like it was being unrolled, shaking from the center of his spine and out, through his bones and nerves and out his fingertips.
Thomas set his dinner on the small dinette table tucked by the window and let his body lean into the shiver, releasing whatever energy his body was trying to part with. Gooseflesh broke out up the length of his arms and he blew air out of his lips so forcefully it made a sound like he was cold. Jennifer hated when he did that. But Jennifer wasn’t his wife anymore and Jennifer wasn’t there, so he did it again.
And again.
One more time until the hairs on his arms settled, and he was left feeling silly and alone.
“You got this,” he told himself.
Thomas didn’t bother to get a fork from the kitchen. There was no point in making dirty dishes. He sat down at the table and unwrapped the small plastic spork the restaurant had provided and set to eating. The chicken was good, better than Jennifer’s if he was being honest, and he ate until he was full.
While he did everything he could to appreciate the change his life had taken, he still found himself lonely sometimes at night. He threw away the trash from his meal and took a quick shower, washing off all of the complicated and messy ways the appointment at the lawyer’s office had made him feel. Thomas grabbed some basketball shorts from his dresser and pulled them on, padding back to the living room barefoot to watch TV until he got tired.
He briefly thought about reaching out to one of his kids, but Dakota and Kenzie had both been moderately icy with himandJennifer about the divorce. Before telling their kids, the two of them had agreed that neither of them would disclose her infidelity. Their divorce didn’t require anyone to pick sides and he wasn’t interested in turning the kids against her. They were both grown and had their own lives to worry about. To them, the separation came out of left field and, in a way, it had.
They’d spent one last Christmas together before he and Jennifer put the house on the market. His daughter, Kenzie, had dealt with packing up both her things and her brother’s, since he couldn’t be bothered. He’d taken the separation the hardest, for some reason making the assumption that Thomas was the one who’d been unfaithful, acting like he’d somehow wronged Jennifer in ways so bad they didn’t dare speak of it.
Thomas didn’t attempt to defend himself because he and Jennifer had agreed to keep her secret. At the time, he hadn’t foreseen the blowback they were getting. It wasn’t fair for him to bear the brunt of his kids’ blame, but he’d manage it. Maybe when more time passed, he and Jennifer would talk about telling the truth.
But until then.
His life was what it was.
Whatever show he had on ended, the characters and plot blurring into the episode that followed, and the one after that. Thomas realized he wasn’t even paying attention. Instead, his mind had wandered to the secretshehimself kept. The ones he’d never dared speak out loud.
