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I’m distracted and pissed off all weekend. It’s no one’s fault but mine, but my mind is stuck on that interview and what it might mean, not on the victory that closed out my week. The only other thoughts that intrude are about Izzy’s surgery, and they’re dark ones. What if you lose her? What if it’s all been for nothing, and it would be better if she didn’t get the surgery? What if something happens to her and it’s your fault for suggesting this whole thing?
I get her floor pillows and enough ice pops to stuff the freezer.
“You’ve been a real dick, you know,” Ruthie says to me on Sunday night. It’s late, and we’re standing in the bedroom after arguing for five minutes about nothing. I’ve gotten this far without telling her about the interview, and I know it’s time to make the decision I’ve been dancing around since Friday.
“I’m sorry,” I say, running a hand through my hair and looking off. I feel my jaw working.
She raises her eyebrows. “How about you finally get around to telling me what’s wrong with you?”
Leave it to her to put it so succinctly.
“You’ve always said I’m a dick. Is it really news that I’ve been acting like one?”
She puts a hand on my chest, whether to caress me or push me, I couldn’t say. “Shane. What’s going on?”
Sighing, I sit on the bed and put my head in my hands. And I tell her.
“You’re going, aren’t you?” she asks when I finish. She’s still standing, looking down at me as if she’s my confessor and I fucked up bad. There’s a hard edge to her now, as if the Ruthie of the past few weeks just pulled on armor.
“Yes. This is what I’ve wanted. This is what I need.”
Even as I say the words, they don’t feel quite right, because I can sense the distance they’re putting between us. But this is the opportunity I’ve been hoping for, and it would be foolish to turn it away as if it doesn’t matter.
She gives me a tight nod. “Will you be back in time for the surgery?”
I swear under my breath and reach for her. She lets me pull her onto the bed next to me, but I feel that distance between us even with her thigh pressing against mine. Flower, who’s been resting on the floor at our feet, looks up with an accusatory glance that makes me feel even more like a screwup. “Is that what you think of me?” I ask, holding Ruthie closer, like I can keep her from slipping away. “I promised Izzy. I promised you. Of course I’ll be back.”
“Okay,” she says, her voice coming out shaky. “And the job….what’ll it be like?”
“It’ll be busier. More like it was at Myles & Lee.”
“You’ll always be at the office.” She doesn’t look at me as she says it. “You’ll forget you have clothes other than suits.”
“Hey, you like my suits,” I joke, trying to lighten the mood, even though I feel my own gut tightening. Telling me she’s right.
She turns her head, and her eyes look almost shiny, as if…
She lifts a hand to my throat, caresses where my tie would be if I’d had one on. “I don’t want you to become a stuffed one.”
“It’ll never happen. Unless you’re the one who stuffs me, and then you’d only have yourself to blame.”
Staring into my eyes, she says, “We’ve been giving this a try, and it’s been good, hasn’t it? Really good.” Her voice shakes on those last words.
I lift my hand to her cheek, tracing it with the pads of my fingers, needing to feel that she’s here. That she’s with me. “It’s been the best part of my life.”
“We’ve been wearing the rings,” she adds, “but we haven’t talked about what it means. If you’ve changed your mind…”
“I haven’t changed my mind. I want you here.”
I need you…
“You said this arrangement would only last until Izzy got surgery and you got a new job. There’s no real reason for Izzy and me to keep living here. The locks were changed at the apartment, and we caught the people who did it. We’d be safe there.”
No. No. No.
“Things have changed,” I insist, staring into her eyes, my hand still on her cheek. Because I need her to see I mean it. That if she leaves me, I’ll be a hollow man, left only with my ambition, which cares so little about me it might incinerate me from the inside out. “Everything has changed. You’re my wife.” I kiss her softly. Then I kiss her again, harder, wanting to show her what I can’t say in words. Wanting to erase the doubt I see in her eyes. The worry that she was right in the first place, and it’s only in the last month that she’s gotten it wrong.
I love her, I love her so fucking much, but I can’t bring myself to say it.
