And I said: “You should have called me. I’m glad you did. I’m still your person.”
And I raced to the vet, and we agreed that Monster deserved better than waiting around for his heart to explode, so we sat with him, each of us cradling his face, each of us spilling an unending waterfall of tears, until he went to sleep.
Back home, in our old (new) home, she curls herself into a ball on the white sectional her designer picked out, despite its impracticality for a home with an enormous dog who jumps on all the furniture, and a nearly nine-year-old boy with a fondness for spilling anything that can be spilled.
“Thank you for coming,” she says for the hundredth time. Like I wouldn’t have. Does she think that I wouldn’t have? That we’re so far removed from who we used to be that I wouldn’t have shown up to help with Monster? She wipes her nose with her sweater, tries to slow her tears.
“Tate, I would never not have come.” I shift closer, rest my hand on her leg. She startles but then places her own hand atop of mine.
“I know, I know.” She inhales sharply. “It’s just ... I know you’re withhernow, I know you’re over all this drama with me.”
I slide my hand back to my own lap. I haven’t said a word about Amanda to her, partially because I have no idea what I’m doing, partially because it’sAmanda, and she is not a badge of honor I wear proudly. Also, partially, because I know if Tatum had her pick, she’d be OK with just about any other woman besides the one I’m sleeping with.
“I ... I didn’t realize ... how’d you know?”
“I saw you guys.” She floats her snot-covered sweatered arm aloft, then flops it down. “On the beach. On Leo’s birthday.”
“What?”
“On the beach last month, OK? I saw you guys, and I mean, I get why you didn’t say anything, but—”
“You were there?” My heart accelerates. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she was there. Why would it? I waited, and Amanda showed, and that was the end of that and the start of something else.
“I wish it weren’t her, Ben. I know I have no control over whom you date, but I wish it weren’t her.”
My brain freezes, and my tongue does too. I was waiting for Tatum on the beach. I was waiting for her and promised myself that if she showed up, I’d tell her how much I missed her, how wrong I’d gotten so many things. And shehad. She had shown up, but like a million other moments that I’d missed in these past few years, I’d overlooked this too. Jesus, I’d been so chickenshit. Waiting for her.Why didn’t you just do it, go to her and say,Please, I love you, can we try again? I wanted everything to be different, yet I hadn’t changed as much as I’d told myself.
The script, though. That is putting it all out there. That will be the point of no return, when I prove how far I’ve come, or perhaps how much I’m like the old self I used to be. When I made promises I still kept; when I didn’t have to wait for her to sayI love you.I said it first so long ago when her mom died, as I watched her pack to go bury her.
But words have run their course. We’ve avowed ourselves, and we’ve told each other everything, and still, we landed on this dead-end route.
Now, the only way to really say it is through what I do.
I say, “Tate, I’ll always take your call, pick up the phone if you need me.”
This makes her cry harder.
“Monster is the one consistent thing I’ve had for a decade.”
I start to reply,You’ve had me,but this isn’t true in so many ways. Not just when we separated, but years before then too.
“How about if I stay here with you until Joey gets home? We’ll order in a pizza, watch a bad movie.”
She sniffles and nods.
“I hear Lily’s new one is terrible, a real shitbomb,” I say.
She laughs at this, so hard that mucus projects from her nose.
“Sorry,” she says. “God, I’m gross.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I should probably stop crapping on Lily. We’re friends now,” she manages.
“With friends like those ...,” I start.
“I don’t have all that many,” she says. “Daisy is in New York half the time. Mariana is filming in Asia.” She picks at her thumbnail. “I take them where I can find them.”
