This. Is. It.
CHAPTER 21
Very little aboutmine and Gabriel’s relationship is the way it used to be. A rock, a boulder, a mountain sits between us now. I get home from work, and on the nights Gabriel is home, he has dinner ready. We sit at the table and make small talk. We wash the dishes and clean the kitchen. We go for walks, we watch new shows. We have perfunctory sex twice a week, checking the box. We’re putting on a show, even when there isn’t an audience. We’ve never tried harder to be normal.
A touch is no longer simply a touch. The thoughtlessness of it has disappeared. Everything has weight. Consideration. A marriage that used to be second nature has become real work.
Now, he hides it.
I want to hold him. I want to tell him I will do whatever it takes to help him get better. I can’t do that, because I don’t know how receptive he’ll be. People with addictions don’t like being told they have addictions. I see it in my practice, over and over. But Gabriel isn’t a person seeking my services. And I am absolutely partial.
I don’t know what to say to him, and so we dance around it. A marriage that used to feel ironclad, now is made of dust.Something about what happened in St. Lucia changed him, and us.
Every day is a tightrope walk, and I’m in a constant state of nausea. I suck on ginger candies and eat tablets of antacid as if it doesn’t taste like chalk.
Every time he comes home and leans in for a routine kiss, I hold my breath so I won’t taste the sting.
I hate the way we’re living right now.
Maybe I wouldn’t be so disappointed if I’d believed people when they told me marriage is hard. Turns out, Gabriel and I are not special. We are not lucky, or chosen.
I don’t know what we are.
I only know what we aren’t.
Happy.
Until now, I didn’t know a person could be in a marriage, and still get their heart broken.
This isthe only place I can think to go. Still, I can’t believe I’m doing this.
Desperate times, desperate measures.
“Avery?” Corinne opens the front door. “Everything all right?” Her voice is high-pitched, anxious, everything it should be when your daughter-in-law who you are not close with shows up at your front door.
“Everything is fine,” I assure her, though it isn’t.
She backs up from the door, inviting me in. I step inside, into a home I don’t visit often. Gabriel doesn’t see his parents here, mostly because he sees his dad at work, but also because being here reminds him too much of what hurts him most.
Corinne takes me into the living room. She walks out, returning a few minutes later with coffee. I take the offered cup and thank her.
She sits down across from me. Her living room is set up for conversation, and I’ve always liked that.
“It’s a Friday. Why aren’t you at your practice?”
“My first patient isn’t until eleven, so I thought I’d stop by.” I sip my coffee, the liquid hot and black. The way I used to take it. Over time, Gabriel turned me into a sweet, flavored coffee drinker.
Corinne slides a coaster to me, and I set my coffee on the table in front of me. I had planned to tell Gabriel’s mother everything, to ask her for help in getting through to Gabriel. Now that I’m here, I’m worried this is a betrayal of his privacy.
This experience is a mind fuck. I’m starting to not know up from down anymore.
“Gabriel has told me a little about…” The words are in my mouth, but I don’t know if I should say them. The Woodruffs don’t talk about Nash. Ever. “Gabriel told me he used to have a problem with alcohol.”
She nods, watching me over the rim of her cup. “Yes. That’s why he doesn’t drink anymore.” Her eyes narrow. “Why?” There’s fear in her voice. Fear and hesitation and something else.
“It’s just…” I run my palms down the front of my black pants. I already regret coming here. For her, and for me. Corinne holds Nash’s death so close to her, and I can’t blame her for that. I don’t know how I’d be in the same situation, but I can’t imagine the heartache of losing a child would do anything other than consume a person. Can Corinne withstand her only remaining son being less than everything she wants him to be? Everything Nash didn’t get to be?
“Gabriel had a drink in St. Lucia, and I’m curious about his history with alcohol. He doesn’t like to talk about it, and I don’t want to ask him questions that upset him.” I shrug, as if it’s not a big deal. “That’s all.”
