He’s not super tall, my husband, but he’s a good head taller than me. If you ask him, he’d say he’s “about six foot,” but he’s definitely a little south of that. Don’t tell him I said that. I’ve hurt his ego enough tonight.
But he’s tall enough to wrap me in his arms, his dad bod solid and comforting, the most familiar thing in the world to me, despite its changes and differences over the years. My face tucks into his chest like it has countless times before, and I let his arms band around me as I breathe him in for minutes. I feel his head pressed against mine, as close as he can get to me, and the deep breaths he exhales against my scalp tickling my forehead with each puff.
I can also feel his remorse. His love. His shame and horror. It’s just as palpable as his arms, his skin, his breath. And that realization causes me to take a huge, steadying breath, and step back to do my share of listening. Or I’m gonna try. No promises that I won’t cut him off, but let’s see what he’s got to say. I brace my arms, palms on my low back, cautiously willing to be on the receiving end now, but still ready to defend the instant I need to protect myself, my heart.
“I am so,sosorry.” His eyes run up and down my face from his place maybe five feet away from me. He’s chronicling every detail he sees, searching for the damage he’s caused, and I’m trying not to let anything else show.
“I…had no clue you felt that way. I don’t even know what to say other than I’m so fucking sorry, Di. I am just as in love with you now as I was when you walked down that aisle. As I was on our first date, when I got home and told my dad I’d met my future wife.”
My eyebrows raise at that, because that’s notquitehow I remember things going when he got home from our first date, and he smiles sheepishly. “Well, the next day I told him,” he corrects himself.
“But baby, I still love you just as much now as I did then. Actually,” he pauses. “I’m a fucking liar.” My brows raise questioningly. “I love you so much more after all these years together. This life we’ve built together? These kids you’ve given me? Our world iseverythingto me.”
My nostrils flare at the sincerity in his tone, and my chest rises and falls with the deep breaths I force myself to take.
“My head is still spinning from everything you’ve said, so I’m sorry if this isn’t my most impressive work here, but I don’t know how to get you to believe me when I tell you that you’re the love of my life, and I’llnevernot want you. I don’t give a fuck if you go to the gym or not, if your body has changed with pregnancy and motherhood. Shit, I know I’ve gained weight, and I didn’t even carry a baby, much less four! You could pile on the pounds, I’d still wanna pound you, baby.” He throws out a boyish grin at me and his only wink of the night so far, but I’m not ready to return a grin yet.
“Sorry.” He sounds a little sheepish, but tucks that terrible joke away and keeps talking.
“You’ve given me every single best moment I’ve ever had, the life of my dreams. And I’m such a fucking asshole for making you doubt how much I love you, how much I want you. You’ve always been the hottest chick I’ve ever seen, and I still don’t know how I pulled you. But it’s on me that I let you forget that. Yeah, our lives have changed. Our bodies have changed. We’re definitely not kids anymore. Our schedules fucking suck sometimes. There’s so much responsibility, and never enough time for all the fun shit I wish we could do. But I love us, who we are, what we’ve become. I love thenowversion of us so much more than any other version we’ve ever been, baby. And I need to prove that to you. To make the time for us, for you, how you deserve. I promise I’m gonna show you, earn you again, Di.”
I may or may not be sniffling right now, but you tell me you wouldn’t be close to shedding a tear or two in my shoes.
He steps closer, locks gazes with me again as he keeps going. “Providing for you, our kids, protecting you guys, it’s been the joy of my life. My absolute pride. But I’m failing, clearly. You’ve given me all of you, your heart, your soul, and I haven’t taken care of it the way I should.”
My mouth wants to talk, but my brain doesn’t have the words ready, so he keeps going for the both of us.
“And Ihavebeen trying to make time for us, but every time I’ve tried to get some alone time with you lately, it feels like you’ve been pulling away from me—”
And that did it. Suddenly I’m chopping his sentence off before he can finish, and throwing myself back out there, arms going wild yet again. “Becauseyou’vebeen pulling away from me!” I practically jump down his throat, stepping into his chest and glaring him down as I somehow scream in a whisper at him. “Things have been different, just off with us for so fucking long and—”
He doesn’t back away, but comes even closer to me, swiping a hand across my cheek, down behind my head and gripping the back of my neck gently, firmly. He calms me at once.
“I know that now, baby. But Ididn’tknow why.” He leans in to kiss my forehead, and the fiery monster within sputters underneath the silver blanket of calm he lays over us both.
“Give me a second,” he says, tapping one finger to his mouth thoughtfully. “I’ve got something brewing.” He walks the length of the patio and back again, deep in thought, then stops in front of me. Sir Wags chooses this moment to abandon the rubber bone he’s been demolishing in the backyard and he comes to lay at our feet between us, face up, watching us with more interest than you’d think a canine could have in a human conversation that didn’t include the word “treat.”
Chance grabs my tiny hands in his rougher, larger ones. “Okay,” he says with a large exhale. “If you truly don’t know whether you can be happy with me anymore—” I make to cut him off and start talking, tell him I didn’t mean that, of course we can be happy, but he puts a finger to my mouth and shakes his head. And I really did mean most of what I said. Meant some stuff I didn’t say, too.
“I heard everything you said, baby. It’s still processing, and it might be for a while, but my main takeaways are that I haven’t shown you you’re the woman of my dreams, haven’t made you feel like my priority in life. I’ve taken you for granted as a wife, and you aren’t happy with how things are between us, romantically.”
I nod, because if you were to take out my amplifications and hysterics, that’s about it in a nutshell. He keeps going. “I want to show you that youcanstill be happy with me. We’re still us. BeyondMamíand Daddy. You’re still Christina, I’m still Chance. I don’t know how to turn back time and stop all this shit from happening, this…” He drops one of my hands to wave one of his around in front of his face aimlessly. “Whatever I’ve done to make you feel like this. And I don’t know that I’ll ever not piss you off some days. I’m not promising that.”
A reluctant half-smile peeks out on one side of my mouth.
“But I do know that I don’t want to live this life with anyone else. And I am sorry for making you feel taken for granted, or unappreciated, or, fuck,” he lets out a loud noise of disgust, “unwanted.”
He drops his head a little, shaking it in some sort of shameful disbelief. “But I know that words are just…” He pauses and lets out a deep breath, dropping my other hand and scrubbing both of his over his face before continuing, his voice raising passionately. “They’re just fucking words. Will you let meshowyou how good we can be together again? With the kids, with the dog, with the fucking fish, and our jobs, our friends… I know we have a lot going on in life, butwestill matter, baby. I want to prioritizeusagain.”
His words sound so fucking good, but I’m not seeing what he’s seeing yet. My eyes narrow on him. “I don’t know what you mean… What would we even do different? What’s actually going to change?”
He tosses his hands in the air, then tries to illustrate his idea for me. “We need to find a way to keep our romance alive, despite all the shit in life. I dunno, maybe we can do, like, a trial period. Give me like a month or something, let me fit in more time with you. We can get your sister to watch the kids, or Ellie, maybe.”
My eyebrows raise again. A few nights of babysitting is somehow going to fix our shit? I don’t see it. Plus, with how fast our lives go these days, a month is fucking nothing. A month ago feels like goddamn yesterday.
“What’s going to change in a month, Chance?”
“Hopefully I can bring your spark back.”
