I push my cards aside and stand up. “You want some fury? Here it is. It’s bullshit that you can call out my compassion as your reason for letting me go.” I smack a palm on the table. “Do you think you’re the only person in this world who has been looked at with pity? Because you’re not.” Even now, chest heaving with heavy breath, I see the people at my mother’s funeral. My teachers making special exceptions knowing my mother had passed away. The neighbors inviting me and Camryn to eat dinner at their house because they knew my dad would work late and we were alone.
And then, of course, the pity on everybody’s face after Gabriel went to prison. Cam, Dani, Joseph, my dad. Everyone I knew wore the same expression. The only person who didn’t look at me that way was Gabriel, because he caused it all, but I can only imagine that?—
Oh, my God.
Even remembering it, I feel small. Tiny. Isolated. Like a person without power or agency.
I’m Gabriel, and…
…I’m afraid to go home and face my wife.
…I have hit someone with my vehicle, and injured them.
…I have hurt my beloved spouse beyond measure.
…they refuse to be angry with me, even when it’s impossible for them not to be.
…they choose to pity me.
…I feel ashamed and pathetic.
…and I hate it.
“I am mad at you.” My voice wobbles. Dr. Ruben told me I’d have to deal with this, but I didn’t think it would be in this form, in a moment that looks like this. “How dare you? How fucking dare you take my marriage from me? It was mine, and your addiction ruined it.”
My hands tremble. I must look like a crazed woman, overtaken by her emotion. I gesture up and down the length of my body. “Is this what you want from me?”
Gabriel stands, rounding the table and placing his hands on my shoulders.
“I want whatever you feel.” His gaze is intense, imploring me. “That’s all I wanted back then, I just didn’t know how to ask for it. I was buried in my own self-hatred. I still am in some ways, but I’m trying. I really am.”
I look into those dark eyes, trying to understand Gabriel. What he experienced back then. What he’s experiencing now.
“I’m sorry, Avery.” His voice reverberates with meaning. “I can’t take it back, and I’ll never stop being sorry. It kills me to know I hurt you.”
“You did so much more than hurt me. I wanted a life and a family with you. You tore apart my dreams.”
Gabriel only nods, accepting everything I’m sending his way. This is what he wanted from me. My acknowledgment that he split my life into pieces. What good is it doing for him, though? He knew all this already, even when I refused to say it. He knew what he did, how he shattered everything.
This is for me.
Gabriel is asking me to walk through my pain and offering himself up as a target for fury I did not want to feel toward him.
Something else rises through these unpleasant emotions. A tiny memory, poking its way out from the recesses of my brain, something I learned when I was researching longevity in marriages.
My throat is too damn dry to speak, so I go to the kitchen for a drink of water. It gives me time to think. Gabriel’s eyes are on me as I go. Snow falls fast outside the kitchen window.
I return with water for both of us, and hand one to him. “Have you ever heard of a near enemy?”
He drinks all his water and sets the empty glass on the table, then shakes his head.
I lean against the edge of the table and cross my legs at the ankles. “It’s a concept in Buddhist psychology. It refers to a mental state that mimics a positive emotion but actually undermines it.” I feel sadness creep onto my face. “Pity is a near enemy of compassion.” I drink half my glass of water, then set it down beside his. “I’m sorry I pitied you.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Avery. The fault is all mine.”
I shake my head at his words. “There’s more. I didn’t take you seriously when you told me you didn’t drink. I drank with you when Ryan died. I got drunk with you. I shouldn’t have agreed to that. I should’ve known better.”
Gabriel steps in front of me. His hands go to my shoulders, his gaze insistent. “That was not your fault. That was all me.”
