“Yeah? You could’ve signed them in Brooklyn.”
“I don’t want to sign them.”
She was taken aback, completely. She didn’t even know what to say, she just stood there, staring at him.
“Say something,” he said.
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t understand. What do you mean you don’t want to sign them? You were the one who said that you wanted to separate.”
“But I didn’t realize how I would feel. Actually, getting divorce papers from you. Irreconcilable differences. Us being apart forever. Marlowe, you’ve been in my life for so long, and I think I just… I really fucked up. I think losing my mom, the way that I did, slowly, made me afraid. It made me realize that life was passing me by, and I thought that maybe I needed to try different things.”
“By different things, you mean sex with other people.”
“Yeah, I guess. I kind of did mean that. But I wasn’t thinking of it that way.”
“You cheated on me,” she said.
“And I’m sorry. It’s like I lost myself in a total haze, and Iwasn’t thinking clearly. I made really stupid mistakes, I lied to you, and I…” He looked so genuinely upset, she didn’t know what to do with that.
This whole time, she had imagined him the way that he’d been in their last conversation. Detached, sneering even, blaming. He had been so superior and so awful, and a version of himself that she didn’t recognize, and this, this was the man she knew. A man who actually had a sense of accountability, who actually cared for her. A man who seemed really, really sorry that he had thrown their relationship away.
And there was a version of her that would’ve run straight into his arms. Who would have wanted the safety, the security, back so much that she would’ve done anything to have it.
There was a version of her that would have yearned for that.
But it wasn’t this version of her. She had tasted something different. A different kind of love, a different sort of connection. An intensity, a fire, longing, that she had always been afraid of. She had kept things in her life deliberately smooth and easy, and Cody wasn’t that.
Cody was reaching for the stars, taking a chance. Risking it all.
And now, she would rather be alone than be with a man who didn’t make her feel all that passion. Who didn’t access those deep parts of herself that only Cody had ever reached.
It hit her then that when she was a teenager, she’d thought Aiden was unique. That his caring for her was something rare and sacred. No one else in her life had loved her enough to show it, and so whatever he gave to her felt big. Special. Huge.
She hadn’t realized she was lovable. That to love her wasn’t a superhuman feat.
If only she’d been more patient. She’d have made different choices. Been loved in small ways in other relationships,by other men.
Funny, she should realize this now, looking at Aiden, when Cody had just rejected her. But the reason she’d had to tell Cody she loved him was because it was a different sort of love. A rare sort of love.
She couldn’t even hate Aiden right then. They’d loved each other.
It just hadn’t been forever.
He was resisting now, probably because the unknown scared him. Because of his own issues, which frankly they hadn’t mined all that much. Now they never would. Maybe he would, alone. Maybe he would with someone else.
Just not with her.
“What are you saying, exactly?” she asked, because she had to be sure.
“I want you back. I understand that it isn’t going to be easy, I understand that I’m going to have to earn your trust again, that I’m going to have to start over, but I want you back.”
Because having her back right now would improve his life in every way.
She had been good to him, she had cooked him dinner, she had managed him. His schedule, his life. She had been a good wife.
And he hadn’t been a horrible husband, but he had been a lying husband. Taking him back would require a rebuild. For her, it would require an immense amount of work. Her life would not be better for taking him back. She was better by herself than she was with him.
It was kind of wonderfully clarifying to have him return while Cody had just told her that he didn’t want her. That he didn’t want her love. Because if she hadn’t changed, if she hadn’t healed, she would’ve run right back to security. She would’ve done anything rather than be alone, left adrift, left to her own devices, facing the sorts of fears that had rattledaround inside of her since childhood, a not insignificant one being that she would end up like her dad. By herself with no one to take care of her. No one to love her.
