“No, I’m fine.”
“Do you want me to take you to the house? My mom will probably ask a million questions.”
“No, can we go to the apartment? I have some clothes there.”
“Of course. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
When we get to the apartment, we go in separate directions. I take a shower, put on sweats, and head back into the livingroom, where Alex is sipping red wine and sitting in the leather chair. The record player is spinning a Miles Davis album. “Wine?” I ask, surprised that he’s drinking this late.
“I’m tired, but wired,” he says.
“Me too.”
He stands. “I’ll get you some.”
I sit on the couch. He comes back and hands me a glass, then sits in the chair directly across from me. “Was Kate mad that you had to leave?”
He squints. “I broke up with Kate weeks ago, Dani. I thought the boys would have told you.”
I’m not surprised, but I do wonder why he didn’t tell me himself. “How did she take it?”
He shakes his head. “It was…sort of mutual. Ended up being…unemotional. We both agreed that our time together was nice, but we were looking for different things.”
“What were you looking for, exactly?”
“You.” He blinks. I really can’t read him right now. “Or maybe the opposite of you.”
We’re staring at each other. There is a subtle nuance about marriage that he’s touching on right now. It’s like the things that annoy you the most about your partner are also the things that make up what you love about them. He loved that I was spontaneous, creative, passionate, and intense, but he also hated it. And for me, it was Alex’s loyalty, his steadfastness, and passiveness that drew me to him. But sometimes that passivity looked too much like indifference and I hated that about him.
“I get what you’re saying. It was too soon for a serious relationship,” I say.
“Something like that. Why didn’t you tell me you were a poet?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let’s do something. For one hour, let’s answer each other’s questions with total honesty and agree we can never bring up the topic again if we don’t like the answer?”
This is not typical Alex. Typical Alex does not like talking about his feelings. “Okay,” I say.
“I snooped on your desk and was reading one of your yellow legal pads. I saw a poem on it. Was it about me?”
I deliver the same canned response when anyone close to me asks if a fictional character is based on them. “Everything I write comes from the people I know. The characters are amalgamations of many people.”
“Was that poem about me, Dani?”
He knows it was different, not a characterization. It was more a question and a plea to him that I thought he would never read. It didn’t matter to me if he read it because it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of us getting divorced. I take a deep breath. “Yes, it was about you, Alex. Sometimes I write poems…just scribble them down on the yellow notepad, and they all eventually end up in the trash.” God, that felt good.
“Why would you throw them away?”
“Because they’re just for me…no one else.”
“I’m sorry I snooped. But if you’re still wondering, the answer is yes, I still love you.” The room is quiet with the exception of the softly playing jazz. I don’t know how to respond. “Your turn,” he says.
I know Alex still loves me. That was never in question. It was more, does helikeme? “Why did it take you twenty-something years and a divorce to be curious about me?”
He looks thoughtful for a moment before answering. “That’s fair. I regret that I didn’t ask questions about your writing…and about your feelings. As far as the snooping, in all honesty, Ithought I was respecting your space. You said yourself the stuff you scribble on the notepads is just for you.”
“It would have been nice to know you cared enough to snoop once in a while. It feels good to know a person is thinking about you when you’re not there, even if they’re being a little intrusive. I had nothing to hide. You would have known that if you looked harder.”
