“Oh, stop.” I nudge him away from the suitcase. He’s just tossing things onto shelves. “I won’t have enough room for my things if you do it like that.”
“Nina, don’t.”
I ignore him and take one of his T-shirts from the suitcase. Dolce & Gabbana. I run my fingers over the pilled fabric. I gave it to him five Christmases ago. One of the few items of clothing I’ve ever bought new. I spent far too much money on it, but Ollie wears it all the time, so I suppose the investment was worth it, though he never washes it the right way. I set it on one of the shelves before grabbing another.
Ollie takes hold of the shirt in my hands. “Nina, stop.”
“It’s easier if I do it,” I say. It’s childish, but I need something to do.
“I’ll do it right this time. Just. Let. Me. Do. It,” he says, tugging on the shirt with each word.
“Fine.” I let go of the shirt at the same time Ollie pulls. It surprises him, and he stumbles back, banging his head against the top bunk. His suitcase tips over, and everything inside spills onto the floor.
“Oh shit.” I drop to my knees so I can scoop his things back into the suitcase. “Sorry, Ollie. I didn’t—”
“I’ve got it, Nina.” He sinks to his knees across from me and massages the back of his head with his hand.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “You’ve hurt yourself. I’ll clean this up, and then you can knock yourself out unpacking.” I glance over at him. “Sorry, that was a bad joke. Don’t actually knock yourself out.”
“Nina, I can—”
“Hush up and let me do it.” When I look down at the mess on the floor, my eye is drawn to a folder that’s fallen open. A stack of papers spills out on top of a pile of Ollie’s underwear. My name jumps out at me from the top sheet.
“What’s this?” I say.
“Don’t—”
We reach for it at the same time, but I’m quicker. I glance down at the paper in my hands and immediately wish I hadn’t.
“Ollie, what is this?” I feel as if I’ve sailed through the Bermuda Triangle and into another reality.
“This is why I wanted to talk off the boat,” he says.
I open my mouth but don’t have a single quip ready to fire. All I can do is stare at our names written in Ollie’s neat block letters, so different from my slapdash cursive.
In re: The Marriage of
OLIVER DUNNE
Petitioner
And
NINA LEJEUNE
Respondent
I tear my eyes away and look up at him. There’s a resolve in his expression that freezes me straight through. This isn’t a joke or a game. This is real.
“You want a... divorce?”
5
Ollie winces at the worddivorce. He gets to his feet and steps around me to pull the door to our cabin shut before sitting on the bottom bunk. I stand up and pace the room, staring at him as he rubs his hands over his face. How long has he been planning this ambush? Showing up for charter season unannounced, giving me this ridiculous ultimatum, and nowthis, bringing up the secret we’ve kept for nearly a decade.
He drops his hands into his lap. “I don’twanta divorce,” he says. “But I’m done pretending. We make this real now or never.”
“We don’t talk about this,” I say, though apparently that’s no longer true. The worddivorcefalling from his lips shouldn’t sting, but it does. I shouldn’t care if we’re legally married or not. We’ve pretended this doesn’t exist for years. I’ve told him to move on more times than I can count. I should nod, congratulate him on finally coming to his senses. And yet... staring at the paper in my hands is somehow worse than all our pseudo breakups, and seeing him with other women, and the months we dropped out of each other’s lives combined, because I always knew, deep down, that we had this. We’d never really be donewith each other as long as we were still legally married. We couldn’tbetogether, not really. Not in the way Ollie wanted. But I was under the impression we’d made a silent agreementnotto get divorced. Wasn’t that why neither of us ever mentioned it?
