“If you wanted to get married again, you’d have gotten married again,” she said carefully, wishing the thought didn’t hurt. “It’s one of those things that, you know, I’m willing to compromise on—”
“Idowant to get married again.”
“Oh, come on. You were going out with people like Boyd Kellagher because you were in the market for a life partner?”
“I was barely looking for a brunch with Boyd. But no, I’m serious. We can get married again. I think it would be a little awkward to make a big thing of it, the second go-round, but we could do something nice at city hall—”
“Don’t tease me about it,” she warned him, chest throbbing. “This ishardfor me. I’m not judging you for what you want, but you could at least be honest about it.”
“You didn’t get married again. And you wanted to. Still want to.”
Rose looked back at the empty road. Going on dozens of dates with strangers from the Internet, putting on lipstick and going out after work when all she wanted to do was watch something brainless on TV, breaking up with nice men—Good people! Men she liked!—when she realized they didn’t want kids or didn’t believe in forever. She’d tried. She was sure Tom hadn’t even tried. Adrian had once let it slip that Tom’s relationships turned over like the dairy case at the supermarket.
“Did you think you would?” she asked.
Tom exhaled through his nose. “No,” he admitted.
Lips pressed together, Rose nodded. That’s what she’d thought.
“But, babe, we alreadygotmarried,” he said. “I didn’t think I could get married to someone else.”
“What?” Rose asked, shooting him a startled look out of the corner of her eye. “Wait. You don’t mean in, like, a Catholic way?”
Tom paused. “I guess?” he said.
Rose snorted. “Is that what you tell people when you don’t want to commit? Oh, sorry, I can’t, I’m Catholic?”
“IamCatholic. So are you. Remember the priest at our wedding?”
“You’re notthatCatholic. You never went to mass.” Rose retorted, because she had all the receipts on this. “I went to mass more than you, and I went, just,when someone made me.”
Tom sighed heavily and spread his fingers in concession. “Okay, okay, so I don’t mean in a Catholic way. It’s more that—”
She had to keep her eyes on the road as they approached the outskirts of Oak Bluffs, because now there was traffic, but she could feel him looking at her. She couldn’t turn her head to look at him though, or she’d lose it.
“What,” she said.
“I took vows. I said I’d love and honor you. And I knew what I was doing, and I knew what I meant. I said for all the days of my life, and I meant it. That’s it.”
“Tom,” she said, like a warning. It was getting harder to drive.
“No, Rosie, listen. I meant it. I know I haven’t always livedup to my vows, not when we were living together, even, or in the ten years since, but I always thought I should. I couldn’t make those promises to someone else, because I already made them to you, and I meant it. I’m going to love you all the days of my life.”
He said it very fiercely, as though someone were going to come into the car and dispute it. But what could she say?Don’t? Please don’t love me?She would never have told him that, because what else had she been chasing all these years? No,love me, please. Just do it in a way she might notice. Do it in a way that mattered.Say it and make me believe it.
“You are—you’re off the hook though,” she said, aware that her voice sounded watery. “You don’t have to. I’m not going to hold you to it. You’re not stuck with me. You don’t have to want the things I want just because you made a promise when you were twenty-two.”
Tom leaned all the way across the center console so that his arm just brushed hers. She felt the big shape of his body next to hers without being able to see it, somehow sensing it through the noise of their hearts beating too fast. He put a hand on her arm for lack of any other part of her to hold onto.
“I don’t want you to let me off the hook for once. I want to stop screwing up. I don’t want to be the person I was when I was twenty-two. I want to be the guy youthoughtI was.”
She pulled off the road into the nearest parking lot, a deserted Cronig’s.
“I can’t drive like this,” she said, eyes welling up.
“I’m not in a hurry,” Tom said, even though his knee had to be killing him.
Once the car was in park, and the engine was shut off, she swung her head to check that there was nobody nearby, then lifted the hem of her skirt to wipe off her eyes, flashing Tom and Vineyard Haven both. She leaned over the steering wheel with her face covered by the loose fabric.
