“Didn’t you watch me drink coffee the other morning?”
“Fair enough.”
She set the mug down in front of him and bustled around getting cream and sugar for herself.
Then she sat down across from him.
It was so quiet. Just the two of them.
“I guess I can’t know who I would’ve been if I had been raised in a regular neighborhood with a mom and a dad. And maybe even a dog for good measure.”
“No,” he agreed. “You can’t. I don’t think I would’ve been half as ambitious. Because everything that’s ever motivated me has been related to it. That’s not very healthy, but it’s also the only way I know how to get anything done. Maybe I would’ve been one of those spoiled, entitled pricks that I hate so much. Wandering around spending my mom and dad’s money, doing nothing because I don’t have to. Because they forged a path for me, and now, I don’t have to do any sort of trailblazing. Maybe.”
“Somehow I doubt it,” she said, taking a sip of her tea.
“You can doubt it all you want, but you can’t know it. It’s impossible.”
“Sure. I suppose so.”
“Not saying you can’t be angry. I think you deserve it.Because you know who was from a functional family, your husband. And he’s still treated you the way that he did.”
“I don’t want you to think he was terrible. He wasn’t. He wasn’t terrible all the time. He was genuinely somebody who was worth falling in love with.”
She stared down into her teacup. “I guess that’s the thing I have to figure out how to deal with. I don’t think all the years were lost. I think there were good things in there. But I knew that something was wrong. I could hear it, like static in the background, but I wanted to ignore it. I didn’t want it to be real. Because I wanted my life to be perfect, I felt like I deserved perfect. After all that. I think that he started out wonderful, because I think he was in love with me. But then… something went wrong.”
She looked down in her tea and took a shuddering breath as she continued. “I wasn’t what he wanted anymore. Our life wasn’t what he wanted anymore, and even though I could feel the distance, even though when we were running the bar, we were keeping completely different hours, and we were spending so much less time together, I just wanted it to be a phase. I wanted it to be something that wasn’t going to define us. Or end us. I suggested the move to Oregon because I thought it would let us spend more time together.”
She blinked rapidly. “I don’t think he ever wanted to go. But I think at that point, he was so used to just saying yes to everything that I wanted to keep the peace that he said yes again. Maybe he knew from the moment he said yes that he wasn’t going to go, maybe he wanted to tell me, but I didn’t give him a chance.”
Palms flat on the table, she let out a harsh breath. “I don’t care. Because it doesn’t change anything. He should’ve had a conversation with me. More than one conversation. He owed me more than that. I gave him my whole life up until now, so he owed me more than that. But there were things that Ididn’t want to see, and I can acknowledge that right now. Even though it’s hard.”
Cody let the silence stretch on. Waited for her to speak again. Then she did, her voice small. “I don’t know if I was in love with him anymore. I don’t even know how to separate the idea of love from security. Because that’s what I wanted. I wanted it more than love.” She swallowed hard. “Sex wasn’t really that important to me. Not that we didn’t have… Sorry, do you even want to hear this?”
He leaned in, making eye contact with her, conviction burning in his chest. “I have never wanted to hear anything more.”
And he meant it. He didn’t know how to get to know another person. Not deeply. Not without them hanging around, witnessing the trauma in his life, and getting to know him from that. From growing together, living together, surviving together.
This was a first for him. Wanting to know someone. Wanting them to know him. And maybe it would be the first time of a few. That thought was jarring, strange.
Was he changing? Was it possible that he might be changing for the better?
Was it possible that maybe he wasn’t going to have to keep tight control on himself forever or become his father?
Maybe he had more control over all of that than he had ever believed.
It was easy, talking to her out in the hall, to believe that he was uncovering all these bad things about himself by giving into this desire between them, but that was a choice. She wanted it.
He wasn’t taking advantage of her.
Truth be told, he couldn’t be totally certain whether or not he would’ve done this if she had still been married. And hecould never know that. It didn’t feel like there was a world where he could resist her.
But even that didn’t feel so bad right now.
Maybe someday he could be something more like normal. Because she seemed to be working out her stuff right in front of him at this kitchen table, so maybe he could do it too.
It seemed like a pretty far-fetched dream, but at the same time, so was this resort.
“I’d like to be done dealing with issues,” she said. “Not just right now. I mean, in general.”
