I sucked in a breath.
Don’t look away, Dylan. If you look away, it’s all over. I really wish I hadn’t given in as many times as I did.
As if he could hear my thoughts, Dylan leaned ever so slightly closer to his father.
Mitch looked away.
I leaned back in my chair in relief.
Dylan came over and kissed my cheek. “I’m heading out.”
“Be careful! Text me when you get there!” I said at the same time Mitch said, “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Back to school.”
“But I’m not done talking to you.”
Dylan turned around. “Dad, I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
Mitch reached for the wallet in his back pocket. “At least let me give you a little spending money.”
“No, thank you,” Dylan said.
The storm door opened and closed. Out on the driveway, Dylan started up his Altima and left Mitch and me with our empty nest.
“This is your fault,” Mitch said under his breath.
My blood ran cold, but I forced myself to carefully wrap up the other half of my sandwich and place it in the fridge. Three breaths in, three breaths out. “You keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.”
We kept our distance the rest of the afternoon, but my adrenaline kept spiking. I couldn’t live like this, and I couldn’t understand whyMitch would want to. Of course, he didn’t change his habits. Just sat in the living room drinking beer and watching football.
I finally went to bed early because I didn’t have anything else to do since I didn’t want to be in the same room with him. I also wanted to claim the bed for Vivianlandia.
Naturally, I couldn’t sleep.
I tossed and turned, irritated by the sound of whistles and cheers from the living room.
But there was something else.
Oh, the sheets smelled like Mitch.
For half a second I wanted to sink into them and pretend that none of this had ever happened, that he was just finishing the late game. Then he’d come into the bedroom and slip into the covers beside me, a comforting presence.
“Come on! That wasn’t pass interference!” he yelled, the sound traveling from the living room through the bedroom walls.
Advantage number two of this impending divorce: I wouldn’t have to listen to his bullshit bad sportsmanship anymore. It was just a game, for crying out loud.
Up I got, ripping the sheets from the bed. Once I’d finally gathered them into a ball, I took them to the laundry room, accidentally slamming the bedroom door behind me.
“What the hell, Vivian?”
I didn’t answer. I could see Mitch’s memoir now:I Blame My Wife for All of My Crappy Decisions.There’d be an entire chapter called “What the Hell, Vivian?”
I would not be buying his memoir, seeing as I’d already lived a good chunk of it, not that my devotion mattered in the least to him. Instead, I focused on getting clean sheets from the linen closet. I closed and locked the bedroom door behind me, carefully and methodically putting the new sheets on, even though changing out sheets was easier with two people.
Of course, lots of things were easier with two people, but I was going to have to navigate them as a singleton. A memory of my mother’s mantra—one she probably should’ve listened to herself—came to me unbidden:Better to be alone than to be with the wrong person.
Once I’d put on fresh sheets, I lay down on my side of the bed, then scooted to the middle to take up as much room as humanly possible. Just as I was falling into a fitful sleep, someone knocked on the door.
