“Why?”
“Let’s just say no more rum for me.”
“Noted. Although your boxing moves were pretty good.”
She chokes out a laugh. “Okay. I do enjoy punching a bag. It takes out my frustrations.”
“What frustrations?”
“Oh, you know. The usual.”
“Your family?”
“Yeah. Selling the house. Moving. Grief. Anger. Fear.”
Those all sound terrible. But… “What are you afraid of?”
“Lots of things. I’m afraid I’ll forget Kane. I’m afraid of being alone forever. Of losing people I love. Being a failure.”
“A failure? What the hell?”
“Iama failure.” She’s still turned away from me so I can’t see her face. “I have no direction for my life. Am I going to work at Uncle Ernie’s forever while I look after aging relatives?”
I don’t know what to say to that. I do know that I fucking hate she feels like that. And it’s my fucking fault. I let her down. I couldn’t fix her, or us. “You are not a failure. You are kind and compassionate and generous. Smart. And beautiful. You can do whatever you want in life. You have to know that.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “I guess I have to figure out what I want from my life.” She sighs. “I’m not like you. I never had big ambitions that I spent my whole life working on. Or loads of talent. I just kind of wandered through life. I thought I wanted to be a teacher, but then I had to drop out of school to look after Nonna. I wanted to be a mother and have a family of my own.”
That hits me in the chest like the butt end of a stick. I knew that about her, of course I did, but it feels like a punch to hear her say that her dreams were all shattered in the blink of an eye.
“You could go back to school.”
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that.”
“That’s good.”
“But first, I’ll go to Paris.”
I huff a laugh. “Yeah. You should definitely do that.”
Now she extracts herself from my arms and sits up. “We better get going. Everyone starts arriving today.”
“Yeah.”
She disappears into the bathroom and I roll to my back and blow out a long exhalation. How did our lives get so fucked up?She’snot the failure.I’mthe failure. I’m supposed to take care of my family. After my dad died, I was the man of the family. Mymom needed help. My sisters needed guidance. Someone telling them the guy they had a crush on was a douchebag, or defending them when they were being bullied for being gay.
When I became a father, I took that responsibility seriously. But… that didn’t help save our family.
I don’t want to think about shit like this. I thought about it enough. It just made me angry and sad. So I stopped thinking about it. I couldn’t fix our marriage. So I moved on with my life. That’s what you have to do, right?
And right now, I’m going to play a little five on one in the shower and deal with this persistent hard-on. I roll out of bed as Ayla emerges from the bathroom and take my turn in there.
* * *
After coffee and breakfast, I help Ayla set up a few more things in the pavilion. The resort provides an easel and she sets up the big schedule she made that says,WELCOME!And family start arriving.
Some of these folks I’ve only met once: at our wedding. They’re spread across the country and don’t all get together that often. Others I know better: Ayla’s parents, Uncle Ernie, of course, and his wife Angie, and Rachel.
“Your parents know the truth about us,” I remind Ayla in a low voice at one point.
