I was still sitting there stewing when my phone rang. It was Adam.
"Hey," he said when I picked up. "Just got back from Puerto Rico yesterday. Did I miss anything?"
For a second I thought about doing the normal thing, and keep things surface level. Instead the words came out of my mouth before I could think twice about them.
"Ruby asked me for a separation."
The line went quiet.
"Oh shit."
"Last week. At dinner. Out of nowhere."
"You okay?"
"I don't know," I said. "No, you know what? I’m not okay. She wanted me to leave my own house. The home I built. I managedto stay in the guest room. Can you believe that? Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry, man. You can stay here if you want to.”
“No, it’s not even about that. Just forget about it. Tell me about your trip.”
“It was good. We went to Old San Juan which is always beautiful, then we drove around the island and stayed a night in different places. It’s a small island but has the beach, rainforests, mountains, it’s an amazing place.”
“Does Olivia still have family there?”
“An uncle and some cousins, but we wanted this to just be about us so we didn’t see them. We needed to get away and just have time alone together.”
“I hear you. I took some days off and Ruby and I spent some quality time together. Everything was great and I thought…” I let the thought trail off. I needed to just get past this. Sharing this, even with my best friend, wasn’t going to help.
“You thought everything was fine. Back to normal.”
“Yes,” I grunted.
“I know how you feel.” Adam paused before he started speaking again. “I never said anything, but a few years back Olivia and I almost got divorced. She said I wasn’t seeing her anymore. She said I made her feel invisible.”
“Well, she’s nuts. The two of you are great together.”
“We are now, but for a while there we weren’t.”
I set my feelings aside and listened to him. Olivia felt invisible. Ruby felt like I wasn’t hearing her. It was similar.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I started paying attention. Like really paying attention. I realized I was taking her for granted. I wasn’t treating her like I did when we first got together, or even when we first got married. I was treating her like a buddy of mine. So I changed that.”
“How?”
“Kind of like you’re already doing. I started dating my wife again. I approached things thinking about how she would feel, not about what I wanted. And I made sure I didn’t stop doing that.”
I grunted.
“What?”
“She thinks I’m going to stop. But not just that, she thinks I talk down to her and as she says, I diminish her in front of other people.” There was silence on the other end. I checked my phone to make sure I didn’t lose him. “You there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Listen, Oscar, she’s right.”
It stopped me. "What?"
