It was arsenic, tearing us apart from the inside and ripping us away from each other.
Maybe it was more like Brody’s cancer, eating away at everything that mattered until the body of our marriage was too weak and couldn’t sustain itself anymore.
I got distant. I got angry.
Jules found comfort in someone else.
I don’t know how long it will take us to clean this up, and I don’t know if things will ever be the way that they were before, but I had to do something.
It’s a start.
Chapter 22
CONNOR
Other than a city maintenance truck, Tripp’s bike is the only vehicle in our lot when I pull in; which would be fine, if I wasn’t all but certain that he wants to tear off my head and use it as shark bait.
My keys spin around my index finger as I approach the door, blowing out a breath before I pull it open and walk inside.
The shop’s playlist is on and he’s sitting at his station like he always is. I’m not sure if that bodes well for me or not. I watch him while I drop my helmet and jacket at my station. He’s got both of his earbuds in; a wordless message, but loud all the same. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone.
Clearly, I’m not one for making the best of decisions, so I step closer to him against every instinct telling me otherwise, tapping him on the shoulder. When he glances in my direction, his face melting into a hardened glare, I tap my left ear.
“What the fuck doyouwant,” he demands as he pulls one of his earbuds from its place.
“Listen, Tripp—”
“Don’t talk to me,” he says, moving his eyes back to the sketched piece in front of him – some sort of snake. Its bodyis almost skeletal, its jaw overextended into a gaping maw with fangs which look like they might be able to not only pierce human flesh, but tear through it. A spider’s web is stitched into the open space, some sort of widow dangling from it.
I cringe as he harshly tosses his pen into the holder in front of him before standing to reach into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, which he then tosses onto the top of his desk. He drops back into his chair with a hard clink of the metal joints and he adjusts the sketchbook in front of him in a single forceful motion.
“T-Mo—”
“I’m serious,” he snaps, rounding on me. His eyes narrow at me and muscle rolls against his jaw. “If you talk to me right now, I’ll break your jaw.”
Why hasn’t he already?
An uncertainhand inches toward his shoulder and his body jerks away from my touch, just by an inch or two, his hand raising to stop me from coming any closer to him.
“Touching me is talking to me,” he snarls.
Holding up my hands in mock surrender, I take a step away from him.
“Alright, I’ll just go screw myself, then.”
I heave a sigh, moving instead to my station, where I sit and I watch. For hours; through clients, through lunch, through phone calls and silence, I watch.
I watch and I wait for whatever it is that Tripp’s next move will be. For the moment that he finally decides that I’ve done enough breathing or sharing space with him on this planet, and he stalks over here to kill me.
But that moment never comes.
Even as everyone’s stations are cleared, as the doors are closed, and as the blinds are drawn, he doesn’t do…anything.
There’s no screaming. He doesn’t hit me or look for something in the shop to use to stab or otherwise maim me. He hardly even acknowledges my existence until he’s pulling his helmet over his head on his way out of the back door.
“Pull the shutter out front when you leave,” he tells me.
“I…what?”
