“How was I supposed to know that?” he shouted at her back.
“I don’t know! All I know is that I can’t take this anymore, so you go ahead and do your thing, andI’ll do mine.” She’d already experienced seeing Trey’s body still and unconscious, and she could barely handle it. Catalina wasn’t strong enough to witness him going through something worse. She’d rather avoid the chance of seeing it at all.
Trey huffed out a bitter laugh. “Isn’t that the problem? You want me to listen while at the same time you don’t want to talk to me. So now what? You’re going to go out there, find a tiny divorce lawyer, and then go have a happily ever after with Buddy the chimp?”
Balancing her bag on an arm, she put the hair tie on while rolling her eyes at his imagined scenario. “Why in the hell would I go with Buddy when I can have my happily ever after with the tiny divorce lawyer?” The nice thing about being minuscule in height was the ability to shout at him at the top of her lungs and no one being the wiser. It was strangely cathartic to hold nothing back. Not that she had much of a choice when it came to shouting, due to the constant noise of waves crashing onto the beach.
“Fine. Then maybeI’llgo with Buddy. We can flip people off together.”
She whipped around to bellow at him. “Fine! Do that! I hope you and Buddy are very happy living together in an electrical outlet!”
“And I hope…” He clearly struggled to come up with a snappy comeback as his brow wrinkled. “…You and your tiny lawyer are happy together.”
“Why are you still following me? Stop following me! I don’t want to be around you anymore!” Thefunny thing was, as much as she was done and one hundred percent certain she was over the guy, she was more afraid of what would happen when he did stop following her. Catalina had enough experience with her temper to know she pushed way too hard to win arguments, only to not feel like a winner when all was said and done. Getting exactly what she wanted in the heat of the moment wasn’t always for the best, and most often left her full of regrets.
“Maybe I want to see what a happy ending looks like,” he snapped back while continuing to trail behind her.
She barked a laugh, stomping away as much as she could in bare feet on sand pebbles. “I can tell you what it doesn’t look like. It’s not accusing your wife of cheating.” Even all these months later, the words had the power to bring the sting of tears to her eyes.
“Come on! I never actually believed you cheated on me!”
“Oh, okay, so you asking the question,Are you having an affair?isn’t a reflection of you wondering if I’m having an affair. Silly me for jumping to that conclusion.”
He finally reached her, grabbing her by an elbow and forcing her to turn around to face him. She attempted to jerk out of his grasp, but he held tight.
“You better let go of me if you know what’s good for you, Trey Schuster. I don’t want to talk to you,” she said through gritted teeth.
“No. I’m tired of this. And since we have plenty of time until you find that tiny divorce lawyer, I wantto finally go through with this because it’s been a long time coming.” He was determined, those blue eyes dark, reflecting fire and heat instead of their usual good-naturedness. It wasn’t a side that showed up often and always caught her by surprise, usually when he was standing up for something he felt strongly about. He wasn’t hurting her, but the strength of his grip on her arm gave her an unexpected zing along her spine.
She did her best to ignore the sensation. “I’m telling you to let me go or else.” Catalina didn’t know what she would do, but she set her jaw in place anyways to show she meant business. She could be just as determined as him.
“Go ahead. If that will make you feel better, then fine. You want to hit me, hurt me, because I hurt you? Then okay. Hit me all you want. But after you get that out of your system, we’re going to talk.”
With the invitation on the table, Catalina thought about it. She considered pounding her fists against him until she was completely worn out and her body had no strength remaining. It was then she realized she had been wrong about being over him and feeling nothing. Her chest ached from the hurt and anger and frustration at not being able to move past this, past him. It felt ten times worse than accidentally being shrunk.
“I hate this.” Instead of growing stronger, her stance softened from the exhaustion of lugging around her guilt and this grudge all the time. “And I hate that you’ve made me hate you.”
His hand loosened from her arm, claiming the side of her face. The hold was gentle as if, through everything, she continued to be precious to him. It would be easy to escape him, to keep running until she lost him—to find a way to move beyond hate into real indifference. Instead she cried, hot tears spilling onto her cheeks, unable to pry herself from him, wanting her comfort person back even if it was just for a short period of time.
“I know,” was all he replied, swiping one of her tears away with a thumb. “I don’t think I’ll ever regret something more than making you hate me. That hurts me more than anything you can do to me, even kneeing me in the balls, which I know you really want to do.”
She released a snotty little laugh at this. All the fury she had pent up in the hopes of giving him a good hard kick was slowly seeping from her frame, weariness fully taking its place. “Why did you do this to us, Trey?”
She could have been referring to a lot of things, including this trip and subsequent shrinking, but they both knew the question went deeper.
He sighed. “I don’t know. I was tired and frustrated and sick of feeling alone in my own marriage. Don’t think that what I said that night hasn’t echoed in my brain a million times already. I kept trying to talk to you, and I wasn’t getting anywhere, and you stopped wanting me to go to your functions. I just wanted you to talk to me—to want me around as much as I wanted to be around you.
“And I never meant it. That’s the worst thing about all of this. I never believed you were having an affair. Just in some weird, twisted, jealous way I thought, well, at least if you’re having an affair, then someone out there was finding a way to make you happy, and it wasn’t me. But I thought maybe I was giving you an out if that's what you wanted, and at least then you’d be talking to me.”
“You absolute jackass.” The words should have been harsh, but there was no heat behind them. Instead of an exclamation mark, the phrase was as emotional as a series of ellipses.
“I’m not going to argue with you. I’ve been a jackass. And I’m sorry. Trust me when I say I’ve never been so sorry in my life. Being separated from you, like this, has been agony.” He paused, studying her. “Did you hate me before?”
“No, of course not.” At this point, Catalina wasn’t sure she’d ever hated him. Her emotions and thoughts were beginning to muddle in her head. She had been annoyed much of the time, not because of things he did specifically, but it was more of a case of feeling so exhausted and burned-out and feeling bad about herself. Taking these frustrations out at work wasn’t an option. It was easier to push them onto Trey, who kept asking for more of her than she had to give. Being self-reliant was easier when it was only herself that could be disappointed. Looking back at it, he had never asked for much. But even a small amount was more than she could handle at the time.
She had given so much of herself at work that,by the time she was home, her phone still buzzing with incoming messages and emails, she wanted to shut herself off. It was more appealing to tuck herself into a book or aimlessly scroll through social media. When she couldn’t take it out on him, she had her breakdown at work, snapping at the office’s receptionist and then crying in the bathroom because she couldn’t keep doing everything she had on her plate and was worried about losing Trey as well. She’d apologized to Jenny, the receptionist, but the damage had been done. Like Trey had expressed earlier, she’d never been more sorry in her life, and this didn’t seem to be enough.
Now she was stuck here, in Cancun, at a height too small to notice, probably about to be eaten by a sand flea, and all she could think was,thank God I don’t have to be awkward around Jenny anymore. Thank God all the stuff left at the office is going to be on someone else’s shoulders. Her priorities may have been screwed up because being lost on a beach in constant danger shouldn’t bring such a feeling of relief.
