“You are my wife,” he grinds out painfully. His eyes are ringed in red and the vein in his neck is pronounced and pulsing.
I want to sit him down and lay his head in my lap. I want to comfort him. But I need him to see reason first. “You don’t have to let this be a bad thing. We can do this the right way. Hell, Bennett, we can date and be a normal college couple if you want. And we can do all that without me wondering what will happen if one day next semester you decide that this isn’t what you want.”
“Youare what I want. I don’t want a divorce. I don’t want to date a normal college girl. I want to date my wife. I don’t care how or why we got here, but we are here and it is everything I have ever wanted, and now you’re trying to take it away from me. My mother might not have said that her financial support was contingent on our divorce, but I know that woman. She is in my DNA. She doesn’t want this for us.”
My lungs feel like they’re filling with fluid, like I’m drowning from the inside out. “I don’t think I want this either,” I whisper,because for as long as this marriage continues, I will fall asleep every night knowing that I bullied him into this.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed now and I go to stand in front of him. “Bennett, if you love me—if we are meant to be—then one day we can do this all over again. We can get married in a church or on the beach or in that same damn courthouse. Our moms can be there. And it won’t be happening because I needsomethingfrom you. It will be because all I need isyou.”
He shakes his head. “You have me. Wholly and completely. You have me, Clover, and you’re cutting me loose. All I need is you and you’re asking me to let you go because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do.” He stands, his chest so close that I have to tilt my head far back to see him. “Fuck. That.”
Without another word, he shoves a few more things into his bag and hikes it over his shoulder before slamming the door so hard the windows shudder in their frames.
The room is empty.
Our bed is empty.
I am empty.
CHAPTER 31
Bennett
Tex and Julian go easy on me at first. When I arrive on their doorstep—well, technically it’s mine, too—there are no demands to explain or assumptions that I am a fuckup.
I mean… I am. Why else would Clover not want to see this through? Why else would my mom want us to get a divorce?
But they just crack open a bottle of Macallan that one of Tex’s uncles gave him for his graduation. I tell them everything slowly over the course of a few days. I tell them there is a universe in which she loves me, but it can’t be this one, because how can she love me and want this to end?
I miss classes for a week, and that’s when Tex and Julian attempt to stage an intervention.
“We’re not going to let you throw your whole semester away,” Tex says as he takes the Xbox controller out of my hands just as I’m about to walk me and my horse off a cliff inRed Dead Redemption. You know, for fun. Yesterday wasGrand Theft Auto. I went into public lobbies and wreaked havoc on prepubescent boys until they blew me up.
“The least you could do is leave the horse out of this,” Julian tells me as he hits the power button on my remote. “Besides, this isn’t how you win her back, you dumb fuck.”
They listen to me bitch and moan and eventually they push me into the shower.
It’s the second-to-last week before fall break and I’ve been back to all my classes for the last two days. I have no idea what the fuck the professors say, but I’m there and Tex assures me that is worth something. In the evenings, he forces us all to study together despite Julian’s protests. Something about mirror neurons. We make dinner together—which mostly consists of dino nuggets and pizza rolls. I usually clean up, and every time I go to throw something away, Tex reminds me of the elaborate recycling and composting system that he has miraculously trained Julian to memorize.
I spend most of my class time scrolling back and forth between two photos.
Both are from the courthouse. One is posed with our judge in the background, likely talking to his court reporter. Neither of us is smiling in the photo. We look like a couple of Victorians who are perfectly still and somber because the old-timey camera’s exposure is too long to hold a smile.
In the second photo, though, Clover is looking away like someone is calling her name and my attention is on her with the ghost of a smile.
I zoom in to see her ring on her left hand, and suddenly the most vital thing to my survival is getting it back.
CHAPTER 32
Clover
At first, I’m convinced Bennett will come back. It takes me forty-eight hours to realize that he won’t and that waiting around for him won’t change that.
I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to feel lonely in a two-hundred-square-foot room, but when Bennett leaves, everything about our space feels cavernous and drafty.
The threat of bombing the semester and losing my academic scholarship is the only thing that gets me to classes, and the reality that I will have to figure out my own housing next semester is enough for me to show up to work. Even if I am a husk of a person.
Pottery is the only class I am managing to enjoy, and I think I’m going to miss it next semester. I’m probably not even qualified to move on to Pottery 2, but I guess it couldn’t hurt to find out. It would be something to look forward to, at least.
