So do I.
Kayla and I are brushing our teeth in tandem—one of those quiet rituals that usually feels intimate, but not tonight.
Not when we’re both still thinking about Aldridge. About Meryl. About how Kayla held those kids like she was being reunited with her own limbs.
I rinse and spit. She rinses and spits. We don’t look at each other.
I don’t know how to say “that sucked for me” without sounding like today didn’t suck for her.
And I don’t know whatshewants to say. What she’s holding back.
She was happy with Meryl. Aldridge wasn’t the snake I thought he’d be. There were enough shared memories that I felt like I was the outsider half the time.
And Meryl’s comment about why Kayla married me?—
It made me feel sick. Like I was some fireman on a calendar. Nice to ogle, good for a giggle with your friends, but not someone a girl like Kayla would share her life with.
Kayla leaves the bathroom and I get changed. I don’t care what Wes will think about it, if he notices at all. The fact is, after today, we’re not there. All our progress has halted. The timing couldn’t be worse.
By the time I get to the bedroom, I feel like a raw nerve in human form.
The end table light is on, and Kayla’s sitting on the edge of the bed, one long leg tucked under her butt, chewing on the inside of her cheek.
The second I round the bed and get in, she turns off the light and slides in beside me.
Like last night, I give her too much space when all I want is the opposite. I don’t want a single square inch of my head, my heart, or my life where Kayla doesn’t take up full residence.
So why does this feel so hard?
I want to say it, want to shout, “I love you, I want you, today sucked, probably for both of us, but I’m still in. I never want out.”
But it sits in my throat like a bite too big to swallow.
So I take the coward’s way out.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“How I wish Meryl hadn’t shown up.”
“Don’t say that. You were so happy to reconnect with her and her kids.”
“Yeah, I was. But that’s the thing: no breakup is perfectly clean. You miss Dakota every day, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do. Not as bad as I used to, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop caring.”
“Exactly. It’s not a moral failing to be sad about some elements of a breakup. It’s a … virtue. A feature, not a bug. We both wanted out with our exes, and we’re out. But that doesn’t make it easy. And I don’t think it’s supposed to be. Because it shows that our hearts were in the right place even when we had the wrong thing.”
My throat tightens. My heart pumps louder, harder, faster as I work up just enough courage to ask, “Does that mean we have the right thing now?”
Her voice cracks. “Do you really have to ask?”
“No.” I roll over, closing the distance between us. Putting my hand on the side of her face and staring into her impossibly beautiful eyes. “I don’t have to ask. I’m just being an idiot. A self-conscious, scared idiot.”
A tear rolls down her face. I can see the reflection of the light that steals through the blinds. I wipe a tear with my finger, and then another. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“What are we doing?” she asks, her voice too small for her body. For this cramped room.
“We’re newlyweds,” I say. “Haven’t you ever heard that the first year of marriage is the hardest?”
