It’d been three days since Duke came home from the hospital and every day spent with him here had been like living in hell. I was tired of pretending. Tired of forcing smiles and conversationwith him. I just wanted to get things over with. Wanted to just… tell the truth. Walking around pretending everything was okay was doing a serious number on my mental health.
Imagine pretending to be happily married to a man youwantedto be happily married to. Imagine forcing smiles and playing big happy family with a man who had a baby on you. There had been many nights that I slept next to him, needing to be held but going without because he was him. Imaginethat.
“You can’t do that without me,” he said.
I drew back with a frown. “Yes the hell I can. And I will... if you’re not on board.”
He paced and started to ramble about shit that went into one ear and out of the other. I was tired of Duke’s sob story. Was tired of him apologizing, explaining shit to me that didn’t matter. I didn’t care that the mother was dead. Didn’t care that he’d just found out about the little girl. Didn’t care about him not being able to live without me. Why would I care? Why would I give an inkling of a fuck? You think he thought for one second about how hard this had to be for me? You think he apologized for putting me in this position? You think he acknowledged what this was doing to me? Absolutely not. Everything was about him. He didn’t have sympathy for my broken heart—why in the hell should I give a damn about his?
I took a deep breath. Kept typing. Kept moving things around. Kept working. While my emotions began to build. Kept working through blurred vision. Kept working through my racing heart, with words sitting on the tip of my tongue. Words laced with pain and heartbreak. Words I didn’t get to spill because he kept talking. He was pleading. Begging me not to leave him. On his knees, kneeling at my desk. While I kept working. While he stared up at me, noticing tears he wouldn’t acknowledge. Ducati didn’t give a single fuck about me.Everything had been and always would be about his bitch ass. Fuck him.
“Fuck you!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, trembling. “Fuck you, Duke! I don’t give a fuck about your pain! I don’t care about how much this is breakingyou! Have you thought for one second about what this shit is doing to me! You think Iwantto leave you? You think Iwantthis to be real? You think Iwantto hurt my fucking kids? You…” I paused and laughed as tears ran down my face. “For years I ran away from this. For?—”
“For years?” He interrupted.
“Ain’t that what the fuck I said?! I’ve been…” I paused and laughed again. “I’ve been trying. Kept trying. Through knowing I should have left you years ago, I kept trying because I fucking loved you. I loved you more than I loved my got damn self. Duke I gave you everything. Every single ounce of love I had to give… Every single ounce of love in my veins. I didn’t just love you with all of my heart—it was yours! My heart… you… you owned it, Ducati. But—” I choked on tears and pushed away from the desk to stand. “You broke it. You didn’t just break it. I handed it to you and you just… slammed it on the ground and stomped on it. And then… you picked it up, piece by piece, and did it again. Every time you betrayed me. Every time you lied. Every time you cheated. And I just kept giving it to you and you just kept doing the same thing over and over again. Now you get on your knees and confess all of this love but where was it when it would have counted? The reality of all this shit is… you never really loved me, Ducati!”
He drew back, blinked a few times and stood. “Mahogany…. What? I—what? I never loved you? You can’t be serious right now, baby. I—I love you to no ends. I get on my knees now because I need you to know you mean more to me than my dignity. I bow to you because you are a goddess… a queen. And yes, I should have shown you this a long time ago, butdon’t discredit my love, baby. Don’t… please don’t talk like that. Yeah… I fucked up. I fucked up bad but don’t think for one second I didn’t love you in the middle of it. I made a lot of dumb ass mistakes. And they’re coming back to haunt me. I know they are. That’s why I’m losing you. But… baby… Mahogany…I can’t lose you.”
I shook my head and stepped back when he reached out to touch me. “Truth is… you lost me a long time ago. Diary was just the nails in the coffin.”
It was true.
Duke lost me years ago. I was present but was I really? Mentally and emotionally, I was miles away from him. There was so much more I wanted to say but I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell him how hard this was for me. Couldn’t tell him that despite how strong I seemed, I really wasn’t. I couldn’t tell him it was killing me too. Didn’t want to tell him how scary losing us was for me, too. I couldn’t tell him how hard it was for me to reach this decision. I mean… yeah… after Diary it was pretty easy. But at the same time, it really wasn’t. Leaving Duke was one of the hardest decisions I had to make.
You think I wanted this? You think I wanted to be alone? It wasn’t even about being in my thirties with four children. I literally couldn’t see beyond this. Beyond this life with Duke. It was foggy. It was dark. It was uncertain. I was petrified. But despite it all I had to let go. I had to go off into that darkness alone because in my soul I felt like it was finally time. It was the nudge I felt. It was the whisper from God in my ear that pushed me to walk away. It wasn’t just Diary. She helped me get here, but it wasn’tjustthat. It was a collective of things. And well… I was tired. I was tired as hell. Tired of ignoring God. Tired of ignoring my gut. Tired of getting less than what I deserved. If anything, I owed Diary a thank you. She saved me from more misery filled years.
“Damn,” Duke said with fallen shoulders, his head hanging low. I watched as tears fell from his eyes. “So…” He paused and sniffled. “This shit is for real huh? I can’t—I can’t even do shit to fix it? I…damn, Ne.”
My heart ached. It ached for us. Despite what Duke put me through, I wasn’t heartless. I felt. I felt deep and I started to feel for him, too. He tried. He really did try this time, but it was all for nothing. Been for nothing. This moment was inevitable. With or without Diary, to be honest. I was psyching myself out, thinking I could actually heal in the place that broke me. I had too much pent-up resentment. Too much pent-up sadness. Too much anger. Too many regrets. Like I said, Diary was just another nudge from God.
“I’m sorry, Mahogany,” he cried. “I’m really fuckin’ sorry, baby. I—damn man… fuck am I supposed to do without you?” He looked up at me. “Hm?”
“Fuck am I supposed to do without you?” I repeated back to him, pulling my lips into my mouth. “Hm?”
Yes, I had Crescent, but I didn’t reallyhaveCrescent. Truthfully, he was a crutch. He was something to run to when I was sad. He was something to feel when I wanted to feel something other than sorrow. He wasn’t real. What I had with him… it wasn’t real. I didn’t have anybody. Not even my kids. All I truly had was Mahogany and the sad part about that was I didn’t really even knowher.
Hours later,the kids were home, getting situated, and I was a nervous wreck, pacing my bedrooms floor. I took a deep breath and writhed my hands. Shit, shit, shit. It was time to tell them. I wanted them to get situated first. Wanted them to at least putsomething on their stomachs although I hadn’t put a damn thing on mine. All day I’d been running off caffeine and stress.
Swallowing, I looked towards the bedroom door at the sound of it opening. It was him, and he had a look of sorrow on his face. Brows pinched, eyes teary. Closing the door behind him, he walked over to me and took a deep breath.
“I know… I know what you said. I heard you loud and clear but…” he paused and I watched as his Adam’s apple raised and fell with him swallowing. “I just… I want to make sure… I don’t want to tell them if you’re not sure. If this ain’t really happening.”
After the talk earlier, he left and went down into the man-cave and I stayed in the office. It’d been hours since we saw each other. I imagined he was down there crying, just as much as I was sitting at my desk crying myself. This wasn’t easy. I said that before, but it really wasn’t. I wasn’t just losing my husband, I was losing my best friend too. Someone who’d witnessed me at so many stages of my life. We’d gone through so much, and I wasn’t just talking about the ups and downs. I was talking about in general. We experienced losses together, we experienced a lot of firsts, and a lot of growth in between. He was a part of me in a major way. But regardless of what he was to me, I was sure. I was more than sure. Had never been so sure about anything in our relationship until now.
“It’s really happening.”
He stepped forward and went to grab my hand. I stepped back and he stepped forward again, snatching my hand. “So, I can’t do anything? There’s nothing I can do to fix this?”
I shook my head. “No, Duke.” I sighed. “We already… we been here before.”
He tossed his head back with an angry growl. “I—I know that. I just… man… You know what Bry asked me to do the other day?She asked me to fix it. And before I could even get a chance to really try to… you pull this. I… I didn’t get a fighting chance.”
“You don’t have a fighting chance. Listen… I don’t want to do this anymore, Ducati. Let's just do what we’re supposed to do and leave it at that.”
He stood staring down at me for a few minutes, tears rolling down his face, in silence. I stared back up at him, with tears of my own falling down my face. This was heavy. Heavy in a sense that it felt like I was drowning. Like I was sinking. Further and further into the surface. Feet planted in quicksand type of heavy.
After a couple of minutes or so, he nodded and walked out of the office.
