He dropped the cigarette in the ashtray and turned to face me. “No, Sam.Weare babies. Babies shouldn’t be getting divorced. I’m too young for this.”
I looked over at the screen, but all I could make out was jumbled text.
“Babies shouldn’t be getting married. We’ve been through this. And you’re thirty-three. You’re not a baby anymore,” I said, sounding more exasperated than was fair.
He took a slow drag of the cigarette. “I thought I’d be having kids by now, not starting over. But that’s the choice you forced on me.”
I took a deep breath, unsure if this was a productive conversation. I knew I wasn’t the right person for him to talk to, but I also wasn’t sure it was better for him to be putting it all down in some cynical book.
“I’m sorry, Ben. I really am. But imagine waking up in twenty years, resenting each other, and having to facethatreality in our fifties.”
“Your parents did it.”
“There you go.”
He turned and stared out of the window. “Is there something else you need? Because it seems to me that you got everything you wanted.”
I couldn’t deny it. He was right. My own happiness had cost him his.
“I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m notokay, Sam. But I think you know that.”
I had another split-second internal debate about rationalizing with him, then bit the bullet and took my shot. Like an idiot.
“Look, Ben ... we had a good marriage. We just grew in different ways. Why does it all have to be a failure because we didn’t end up spending the rest of our lives together?”
He shut his laptop and shot me a look.
“It’s an honest question,” I said quietly.
“Jesus Christ, Sam. This idea that you keep trying to shove down my throat—that divorce doesn’t mean we failed becausesomeof our marriage was good—I don’t buy it. I’ll never buy it. You find one person, and you love them through everything.That’snot failing. You’retakingthat away from me. I wanted to be with you for the rest of my life. Maybe that’s old-fashioned. You’re forcing me to throw it all away just because you decided you don’t want the kind of life you think I want. But you used to. And that fucking sucks.”
“Idon’t even know what I used to want, Ben. I was twenty-two when we got married. That was seven years ago. People change.”
“Is that what your therapist told you to say?”
I frustratedly swallowed the lump in my throat. “I know it doesn’t mean anything, but ... I’m so sorry. I really am. For everything. I never meant to hurt you. I shouldn’t have married you when I didn’t even know who I was. It wasn’t fair to either of us.” I took a deep breath as I picked up the signed paper off the coffee table. “You don’t deserve any of this.”
He put his hand up. “I don’t need you to keep telling me you’re sorry. I need this nightmare to be over.”
I drove back to campus feeling like I couldn’t breathe in deeply enough. I was still barreling toward New York at warp speed, but something in the narrative I’d been telling myself had been punctured. Making the decision to leave had nothing to do with knowing how to move forward.
Chapter Twelve
Monday morning, I woke up to a note from Patricia saying Eddie wanted to take Andie to dinner before she headed back to LA and to meet them at the Palm at six o’clock.
I reread Ben’s email on the subway to the office. I knew I needed to respond, but the memory of the last time we’d seen each other was still palpable. Ever since my wine bar unraveling after I filed the divorce papers, I couldn’t trust that either of us was ready to see the other.
Charlie was downtown again for the day, and the hours crawled. I read through the memo again and again, refreshing my email dozens of times and anxiously wondering if Eddie had read it yet.
He still hadn’t responded by the time I had to leave for dinner.
When I arrived at the Palm, I spotted Andie sitting alone at the corner of the mahogany bar and momentarily panicked at the thought of another uncomfortable one-on-one. She was engrossed in her phone and barely noticed me sit down.
“Nice to see you again,” I said with so much forced enthusiasm there was no way she couldn’t pick up on it.
“Hi. Eddie’s running late again.”
