He lifts his polo up and pulls it over his head. “You said you didn’t want to be bothered,” he says. “And if I’m being honest, I don’t care to stay if it means all we’re going to do is bicker with one another. This house has turned into a goddamn trap, Emory, and I can’t handle that. I’m tired of feeling uncomfortable in the space I’m supposed to feel relaxed in. Not to mention that I don’t even know what to think about the fact that you’re no longer interested in planning our wedding.” He shakes his head. “I wanted this to work between us, but as the days go on, it’s getting harder and harder to see what our future looks like. I mean, you don’t even like my parents and find issueswith everything my mother suggests. As much as you’ll probably disagree, you’re not an easy person to work with.”
Guilt trips me up. I wonder when I went from being hopeful for our future to not giving much of a damn—or being able to visualize it like Lance said. There’s a sorrow that follows, that fills me, that beckons me forward and asks me to fix everything—but I don’t know how to. It feels like we’re already far beyond a solution that won’t result in us hating each other.
I take a tiny step forward, my walls crumbling as I watch my fiancé prepare to leave me, and not for the first time. The number of times I’ve watched him head out for work when all I wanted was for him to stay is astounding.
I wonder if that’s telling enough. If maybe I’m not the one who gave up first. Or maybe we both gave up at the same time.
I understand that not everyone can handle someone’s weakest moments in life. That they might not know what to do to help the situation. Or that it’s possible for them to have struggles of their own in response to it. But…I’m supposed to be hiswifeone day. On our wedding day, he’ll vow to take care of and love me at my best and worst.
Him leaving to go golfing in a moment like this isn’t something that calms my soul and makes me feel safe. Instead, it’s showing me he’d run at the first sign of difficulty.
I feel like I deserve better than that.
Hell,hedeserves better than that, than this, thanme.
“Lance—”
“No,” he says, brushing me off as he loosens his belt and whips it out through the loops of his slacks. “It’s fine. We both should take the time to cool off so we can come back later more grounded. Maybe by then, your head will feel better and we can talk about if what we have is salvageable after all we’ve been through.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I say, even though I’m wholeheartedly aware.
He gives me a look. “It’s obvious that we’re both unhappy. I’m not sure when it happened, but it did, Emory. We both need to recognize that for what it is and decide if that’s something we want to work to fix or not.”
“Are you saying you’re done?”
“I’m saying,” he lets out a breath, “that I need time to think. You need it, too. A lot has happened recently, and we’re both going through things. I think it’s best if we continue living life how we’ve been and wait to talk about it in more detail when we’re both more level-headed.”
“Fine,” I mutter out quietly.
I stand there stunned, unable to move myself out of the room, my heart splintering and accepting that this very well could be the end of Emory and Lance, a couple that was once deeply in love.
He finishes changing and slips past me, not bothering to stop and give me a kiss, a hug, or any other type of physical affection.
8
DR. DAWSON COLE
She hasn’t sat down since she arrived. I can’t help but be pulled in each direction as I watch her tread from side to side, her simple tennis shoes wearing a damn hole in the floor.
Something is bothering her. Something she hasn’t mentioned. Something I’m not sure if I should bring up, because, in a way, it seems bigger than her accident. I won’t know if the two things are linked to one another until she opens up. So far, that hasn’t happened. I’m hoping she’ll turn in my direction, lower her guard, and trust that she can be honest with me.
Her gaze focuses on the walls with every turn of her heel. I watch as her loose sweater swishes with every step. It’s nothing more than a thin-looking robe that slips over her shirt, the fabric a creamy beige, like the sand I remember seeing in her photographs. It’s nothing remarkably special, and yet, it draws my gaze to her slim figure, to her waist and hips as they sway back and forth in an anxious jaunt.
I curl my palm around my ankle, the one that’s lifted and settled on my knee and look away. I’m still trying to put a fingeron why I’m drawn to her. Why, when I look at her, a melancholy soaks into my extremities.
You’re going to be alone for the rest of your life.
Those words are forever scripted in my mind, engraved in my brain tissue as a promise that will eventually play out. My ex-girlfriend’s face materializes in my mind; blonde hair, eyes as blue as a clear sky, thin lips that didn’t give me a goddamn ounce of wiggle room after my accident.
She was there one minute and riding off into the sunset the next.
Apparently, she couldn’t handle my post-accident haze—the restless nights, the silence that came over me while I was trying to process what happened to me, my pain, and the scars both left behind.
She didn’t know how to be there for me when I needed someone the most. And because of that, she spit nasty words that sank deep inside of me and came to life. Her leaving was the final straw in making me realize I needed help, that I needed my own therapist.
I think about all of that as I observe Emory, wondering if she’d be like her or if she’d be able to handle someone at their worst. If she would have been able to handle me the weeks after my stabbing. If she would have cleaned my wounds and changed my bandages like my nurses did.
She thinks that her worst is terrifying to others. And maybe to some degree, it is, but it doesn’t scare me. It only ignites a flurry of something unknown in my chest.
