It makes me feel sick. “No,” I whisper. “I’ve slept with him.”
Her jaw trembles. “Once?”
Fuck, I hate this. I hate how much every word I say hurts her a little deeper. “No,” I say again. “Many times.”
She flinches and looks away. Her tears come quicker now, and I want to take her in my arms, but I don’t think she needs or wants me touching her right now.
“I’m sorry. I know that’s not enough, and you have every right not to forgive me. But I’m so sorry.”
“Are you done now?” she asks through her tears. “Your affair is over?”
As if her words were cruel, my phone pings in my pocket and I know if I look, it’s Lemon. More than anything, I want to tell her it’s done. But it’s a lie. I crave this man.
My inability to answer is loud. Her face falls and she covers it with her hands.
Silence fills the kitchen. The only sound her quiet cries. Eventually she says, “We can go to counseling. If you stop seeing him.”
“You should hate me, Jess,” I tell her. The hope in her voice kills me.
“You’re not going to stop seeing him.”
I sink onto a stool and drop my face into my hands. “I wish I could tell you something you want to hear. It’s just… I’ve been trying. But there’s something about him I just… I can’t get away from.”
She sniffles and squeezes her eyes shut.
“I wish we didn’t move here,” she whispers.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“You just… so… what do we do? Can we move now?”
“If for no other reason than my team, no. I can’t do that to them. Not to the school. Our first game is tomorrow, and they’ve worked their asses off. I can’t abandon them, Jess.”
She gives me a smile. “I’m glad that’s the reason we aren’t moving.”
Every time she says ‘we,’ it feels like a shot through my chest. “Listen to me,” I say and her watery eyes meet mine. “We can’t live like this. More than anything I want to tell you that I can stop. That Iwantto stop. I’d love to be able to tell you that this was a mistake. An experiment. I was curious. Literally anything at all that is some semblance of an excuse. But it’s all a lie, Jessica. I don’t have a reason. I don’t have an answer. But I can tell you without a doubt it’s not over.”
Her tears fall like a faucet, but I push on.
“Wehave to be over. You and me. It’s not because I’m choosing someone over you. Although I know it sounds this way, this part truly has nothing to do with Lemon. You need someoneto love you better than I am. You need to be taken care of in a way that I’ve failed to do these last couple months. You deserve so much better than I’m going to be able to give you.”
“I just—I don’t understand.” She hiccups and struggles to catch her breath. “If you aren’t going to be with him, then why don’t you want to be with me?”
“Oh, Jess.” I get up and round the counter to take her into my arms. Then pull her close and hug her tightly. “I need you to see that I amnotworthy of the kind of love you’re giving me.”
I don’t point out that I didn’t say I’m not going to be with Lemon. Really, I don’t know if that’s the kind of relationship we’re heading toward. I’m not even sure how I feel one way or the other about it. Or how I feel about him in that capacity.
He’s fucking mesmerizing. Addicting. Iwillkeep fucking him.
But beingwithhim? I don’t know.
The thing is, it’s truly not the situation with Lemon that’s making me divorce my wife. It’s the realization that I’m never going to be the man that she deserves. There’s no way I can go back to being the husband she married. It has nothing to do with want. I can’t. I’ve fundamentally changed.
This isn’t even a sexuality thing. It’s just me. Like everything inside me has been rewritten. I’m not the man Jessica married anymore. I’m no longer the man she loved. This is one of those instances where we didn’t grow together as a married couple.
We grew apart and the separation is now inescapable. It’s a chasm that can’t be closed, filled, bridged, or ignored.
It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I know that.
