“Daddy, why is Addie crying?” Ollie asks, taking my face in his little hand and turning it to look at him.
“She’s sad, buddy.” I put him down, guiding him out of the room. “Come on, let’s go upstairs and play cars while Addie talks to mom.”
“Okay!” He takes off up the stairs, while I follow behind at a much slower pace, leaving the girls to talk in the kitchen.
And for the first time, playing with Ollie in his bedroom, I can almost relax. With Jess home, I think everything might be okay.
That thought lasts until bedtime.
Ollie needed two stories from me and three from Mom, and Addie and Jess stayed up late talking on the couch before she finally went to bed, giving me an extra-long hug before she went upstairs.
Now it’s just us, and the silence between us settling in.
I go to the closet full of household extras, pulling out a spare blanket and a pillow and carrying them to the couch where mywife is sitting. She looks up at me with a crease between her brows. “What are you doing?”
“Getting set up for the night. You take the bed. I’ll sleep down here.”
“Nolan. You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”
“It’s fine. You had a long flight and—”
“We’re still married,” she says, stopping me from spreading out the blanket with a hand on my arm. “We can both sleep in the bed.”
“Jess,” I say with a sigh, thinking about the last time I slept in that bed with someone. I can’t do it. I set the half-folded blanket on the couch and turn to her, pulling my arm away from her touch. “I can’t act like everything is the way it was before.”
She scoffs, crossing her arms. “I’m not sure how much worse it could get.” She pauses, working up to something from the look on her face. “But I think we should try. Give this another shot, for the kids’ sake.”
“I’m not, I—I don’t think we should make any decisions about us right now. Maybe when we get things sorted with Addie, we could talk, but…” I trail off, leaving behind something that feels wrong. An assumption about us, where we’re going, that isn’t true.
Our relationship was over the second I kissed Will in the park. I can’t walk that back, and I don’t want to.
But Addie smiled tonight, and Ollie was so excited to see his mom, and Jess is actuallyhere. I can’t mess that up right now. “I’ll take the couch,” I say. “For now.”
With everyone upstairs and in bed, I lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling fan, falling asleep to the memory of teal eyes filled with betrayal.
I wake up to the smell of something good. Eggs, vegetables, sausage. Jess making something in the kitchen. The kids arealready at the table when I pull myself up and hobble over to the table, stiff from restless sleep on the couch.
She slides a plate in front of me when I sit down, and it doesn’t look nearly as good as what the kids have. “Extra veggies for you. Don’t think I forgot you’re supposed to be watching your blood pressure.”
I look down at my plate and force away the image of a man who doesn’t care about my blood pressure, standing in my kitchen in his boxers. Who called himself my boyfriend for the first time. Who cooked breakfast for me without a single bad intention until I came down here and broke his heart.
Ollie looks at my plate with a scrunched nose he must have gotten from Will. “What’s that?”
“Spinach,” Jess says, digging into her plate that looks similar to mine.
“I don’t like spinach.”
“Spinach is good for you,” I tell him, forcing myself to take a bite.
“I missed your cooking,” Addie says, digging in.
“I missed cooking for you.”
“Where were you, Mommy?” Ollie asks with his mouth full.
She looks at me briefly before responding. “I was working, baby. Going to different hospitals and helping people.”
“Was it fun?”
