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Tears flood my eyes, and I will them back. “Since she died. Hell, since my parents’ divorce, it’s only been about winning. I controlled tennis, work, and my writing. I succeed and manipulate the outcome. I was relentless.”
“Competitive.”
I correct him, “Successful. I also shut out of the world. I forgot to make friends. I forgot brunch is fun. TV on a Wednesday night on a couch is great. Love is good. Laughing over stupid things is good—private jokes and moments. I gave away all of those things for years of succeeding. I wrote as often as possible to keep anxiety or fear at bay. I shut down a lot of myself over the last decade to control my success.”
“And you are successful.” He doesn’t get it, and a tear runs down my face.
I say, “Then you awakened everything. And we had omelets, firepits, laughing. I have Mikey, Ari, Nanette, Carlos, and amazingly, Vanessa, at my side and back. But it took my fucking knee for me to realize you changed all of me, not just certain parts.”
Alex pours himself another bourbon and guides me to the couch.
He says, “But that’s why we’re a good couple. You get why I can’t sacrifice or compromise and the importance of what I’m trying to accomplish in changing politics. I understand your obsessive need to put words on a page at an alarming rate to prove yourself, to make your own way.”
I sniffle. “But I’m different now. All of me is ready for you, and you’re not ready for all of me. I was alone in that bed, and it’s only apparent now.”
“That’s not fair. You weren’t alone in the hospital.”
“True. I had people for the first time in a long time. But I wanted someone who chooses me above all else.”
“I do that.”
“No, you don’t. And neither did I. That’s not who we were. But it’s who I am now. It’s not fair, but it’s what happened. Can’t go back now that Pandora is out of the box.”
He grasps at what was. “I can’t compromise who I am to be with you. I won’t compromise work. That’s what we have between us.”
And I have to say the hardest thing in the world. He’s not going to be on the other side of this sentence with me, and it’s shredding me.
“Alex, my love, evolve with me, or I have to go, and this is done.”
The tears stream down my face as I see his eyes fixed and steady. These tears were born long ago when I couldn’t cure cancer. And now I can’t fix Alex. I know there’s more to all of this, but he won’t let me in. I have to fail. I hate fucking losing.
“This is a fight. This is a bad fight.”
“I think we’re past fighting, but I feel you need to say something.”
“Dammit, I don’t know how to fucking tell you what you want to hear. But this is shit to talk about. You seem to be speaking of systemic problems, not symptoms.”
“I’ll be clear. I want to be somebody’s emergency contact.”
“What?”
“If I call Extended Media’s HR department, who’s listed? If you go down in a plane, who are they calling?”
“They’d call my mom or Mikey.”
I shake my head smugly. “Exactly. If something happened to Mikey, they wouldn’t call you. I don’t want to be thirty-four in a so-called committed relationship, and Alan’s my emergency contact. I need to be at the top of somebody’s phone tree. I put you on my insurance. It’s why they let you into my room.”
“I’ll change it.”
“Point. Missing it.” I start sobbing.
“I’m sorry. How do I fix it, beautiful?”
“Don’t call me that. You’ll never know how sorry I am that I changed. I didn’t want to, and I tried to ignore it. I can’t take a back seat to your work anymore. Trust me, I’m fucking baffled how I got here. I’m flummoxed on how I got to a place that puts us ahead of my work, and I don’t resent it.” I crumple to the floor, and he joins me and holds me. We stay there for what seems an eternity. He stands. And I have my answer.
He pulls me to stand with him. I say, “All the pieces I closed off and ignored when she died because it hurt too much to care were neatly tied up in a bow of a bestselling writer’s career. And then you, oh, my love.” My voice cracks as I begin to cry.
“What did I do?”
