“Okay.” I signal him over so that we’re both sitting on the couch and facing each other. Much better than facing off with the dinner table between us. We’re here. We’re making headway. I’m determined to plunge us on through the tundra. “When I saw the lease, I understood that you wanted out…And you clarified that that meansspace.So, okay. But now…Vin…everything you’ve been doing for me lately…are you…trying?”
He picks at a hangnail. “Trying at what?”
“Us.”
He stills, nothing moves except for his green eyes slicing to mine. “And if I was?”
“If you were…I’d be…confused.”
His eyes drop back to his hand. “Why?”
“Because you asked for space! Our marriage is in shambles! You sleep in the guest room, we are never on the same page, we haven’t slept together in a year and—”
His eyes are still on his hand and I just can’t take it anymore. I can’t believe that I’ve been in a cold war with the person I, apparently,infinity.
“Vin!” I shout, about to snap right in two. “Lease or not! Are. You. Leaving. Me?”
Green eyes. “Literally never.”
And I just absolutely break.
“What. The. Fuck?”
These are the same ugly tears I cried into his shirt last weekend. This is the bad stuff fighting its way out of me with dinner forks. I’m shaking and disconsolate, hiding my face in my arms and praying for air. My muscles are seizing, my fingertips digging into my biceps as I hug my legs. When I open my eyes, Vin is staring at me desperately, his hands folded on the top of his head, his eyes wide and stressed.
“Well.” I point at my general devastation. “Help!”
He lunges across the couch and gathers me up in a ball. He’s pushing my hair behind my ears, squeezing me, rubbing my back in big circles. He’s telling me I’m all right. He’s saying I’m doing a good job. He guides my face into his neck and it’s so scratchy-warm-familiar in there that I nearly start these terrible tears anew.
“How could you sayliterally neverwhen you signed a lease to move out, Vin?”
I pull back and even the beard can’t hide the worried tenderness on his face when he swipes his thumbs below my swollen eyes, brushing away the tears.
“I keep trying to tell you. I didn’t.”
“What? Yes, you did, youjustsaid it!” If he’s taking it back, I swear—
“No. No. That’s not what I mean. I mean I didn’t sign it. I never signed the lease.”
I flash back to the other times we’ve talked about the lease.
When you signed that lease,I said.I didn’t,he’d replied.
Well, you’re the one who signed this lease,I said.I haven’t,he answered.
I scramble up off his lap and he resists for just a moment, like he doesn’t want me to get off him. But I can’t be stopped. I’m through to the kitchen, lifting trembling fingers to the Coney Island magnet that keeps the grocery list pinned over the top of the lease. Gravity sweeps the papers to the ground and there, poetically, on top of my bare feet is the last page, signature line completely blank.
“I…I never checked,” I say dully. “I never checked if you signed it.”
And then he’s there, in the kitchen with me, lifting me out of the wreckage of the hated lease, and setting me on the countertop.
“I tried to tell you over and over that I hadn’t signed it.”
I’m stumbling over concepts here. “Tried? What do you mean you tried?”
“Whenever you brought up the lease, I tried to explain—I wanted you to see it the way I see it. I didn’t want you to think that I’d already signed it.”
“I’m sorry.” I’ve got two hands up. “What do you meanthe way you see it? And if you didn’t intend to sign it, then why didn’t youtellme that? Vin, it’s only three words!It’s not signed.That’s it! You couldn’t have said even that?”
