Sadie was silent for a long time.
She bit her lip. It was the most difficult thing I had ever done, not to trace my thumb over the imprint left by her teeth.
‘I’m a burden on you,’ she said at last.
What?
‘And you deserve more than this,’ she whispered. ‘You deserve better.’
‘Oh, come the fuck on, Sadie. That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said to me.’
I dropped my hand and took a few steps away. ‘I don’t deserve any of this. I never have. I don’t deserve my job. I don’t deserve this life. I don’t deserve you, certainly not after the privileged douchebag-y way I spent years treating you. And to call yourself a fuckingburden? When I wouldn’t have any of this if it wasn’t for you?!’
‘Jonah—’
‘No,’ I snarled. ‘You can tell me anything else. You can tell me “I’ve decided we’re getting divorced, that’s that, the end, I will not explain my reasoning”. That’s fine. But you don’t get to tell me that you’re a burden and I deserve better. You don’t get to make such a specious argument and expect me to swallow it.’
‘How have you forgotten who I am?!’
Her teeth were bared. Her fingers were clenched. In the cool, still air of the night, Sadie Shaw had caught alight.
‘I am not a complex text,’ she bit out. ‘I am not some onion with layers of subtext and meaning for you to peel back. I am who you’ve always thought I am.’
I folded my arms. ‘And who’s that? Please, inform me exactly what I think of you. I’d love to hear it.’
‘I’mawful.’ Her nostrils flared. ‘I’m still just that bitch from class who won’t shut up or back down and who’ll turn the smallest thing into a war. I’m still so profoundly unlovable that I can count my friends on one hand.’ More tears were welling in her eyes, but she wiped them away so aggressively it must have been painful. ‘Everyone works this out in the end, Jonah. Even Chess did.’
‘I don’t know what the fuck is going on with your sister,’ I said tightly, ‘but that is not true.’
‘I told her she loved me too much!’
Sadie buried her face in her hands, fingers white as she clawed at her hairline. ‘All she’s ever done is look after me – put me first, make me the centre of her world – and I told her that she loved me too much! I told her that being loved by her was exhausting!’
‘So?’
‘What the fuck do you mean,so?’
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’
She was stunned into silence.
‘It can be exhausting sometimes, being loved by people,’ I said. ‘My dad, for all his faults, loves me. That’s exhausting.’
‘Don’t compare Chess to your dad.’ Her voice was low.
‘What about Fiona, then?’ I said. ‘I love her. I’d lie down on railroad tracks for her. Sometimes, though, when she’s turning up to the airport to meet us when we just want to fall into bed, or dragging us out on adventures with her, or asking us for help when we have a mountain of work, I’m a bit exhausted by it.’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘It’s notnotthe same.’
‘Are you telling me,’ Sadie said, ‘that you would ever seriously look Fiona in the eye and tell her she loves you too much?’
‘No. But—’
‘But nothing!’ She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘That is who I am, Jonah. That is who you’re married to. Sure, maybe you’re enjoying this little domestic idyll now, but you won’t always. I am all fists. I am all teeth. One day, you’re going to remember that and it is going to hurt me so much more when you leave me then than if we just… if we just…’ She swallowed, gulping against the wave of sobs. ‘If we just end it now.’
‘Do your worst, Shaw.’
