“Going on fourteen years now. His kidneys barely function, he has cataracts in both eyes, and he’s missing a lot of teeth, but he’s still super frisky. I wouldn’t be surprised if he lived another three years.”
Lex keeps step beside me. “That’s sweet you kept your family dog.”
“He’s not my family dog. I adopted him two years ago.”
Her brows shoot up. “Seriously?”
We pause to cross the street, waiting for the light to change. “Yup. He’s my third senior rescue. I always go for the old ones nobody else wants so they can have a great end to their life.”
Lex shakes her head. “I can’t believe someone just dropped him off at a shelter. He has so much life left in him.”
I shrug. “People surrender animals all the time. You never know what’s going on. Maybe they were having a hard enough time putting food on the table and couldn’t afford his medication.”
She regards me a long moment. “It’s really amazing of you to do that.”
I’m not sure what’s worse, Lex’s usual piercing gaze assessing the deepest crevices of my soul, or this new admiring one like she’s expecting rainbows to start shooting out my ass. I can’tchange the subject fast enough. “Is this your week without your kid?”
Thankfully, Lex lets me shift the focus. “Yes. We’re trying fifty-fifty custody right now, and it’s killing me. I’ve never had this much time to myself.”
“That sounds rough. At least you have your brother to keep you company.”
“He has shift work, usually evenings and weekends when I’m off.”
“You mentioned something about your friends siding with your ex.” I remember from our conversation at the pub.
“Yep.” Lex nods. “I was the bad guy who broke up our seemingly perfect marriage, and he was painted as the victim.”
“So, what really happened?” I ask, hoping I’m not being too invasive.
“From the outside looking in, my marriage seemed perfect,” she explains. “My husband was a nice enough guy. Had a good job. Took out the trash most of the time without being asked. He’s a good dad. But people didn’t see what was going on behind closed doors.”
She goes quiet and I give her space to think, waiting patiently for her to continue, the plodding of our footsteps on the pavement meditative and comforting.
“I just couldn’t be myself around him,” she says eventually, keeping her gaze forward. “He always had something nitpicky to say about me. I cut my hair too short one time and he didn’t talk to me for a week. If I didn’t put on enough makeup when we were going out he’d send me back inside to do it again. Whenever we were out together I felt on edge, like I was performing.”
“That’s awful.”
Lex fidgets with her jacket sleeves. “I started feeling anxious all the time, waking up and being nauseous, not looking forwardto the day, glancing at the clock and my gut sinking with every minute that ticked closer to him coming home from work.”
“I’m sorry.” I wish I had something better to say.
Lex shrugs. “It is what it is. I’d grown up feeling that way in school. I just didn’t expect to have to keep up such ruses as an adult.”
“Were you an anxious kid?”
“I was bullied a lot in school—not in the big ways like you see on TV, like getting shoved into lockers or anything like that. It was the small things that happened every day, the ways the other kids made sure I knew I was weird and didn’t fit in. The snubs to my character, the backhanded compliments. I felt like I was never good enough, that I could never do anything right. I didn’t have any true friends who accepted me exactly as I was. Everything was conditional.”
“I’m sorry you went through that.” Hearing her recount her experience reminds me my own past, which sours my stomach. I glance at Lex, whose gaze is fixed firmly ahead and add, “School can be awful.”
Lex shrugs. “A lot of people had it worse than me.”
“Doesn’t mean what you went through didn’t matter.”
Lex looks up and gives me the tiniest smile.
I piece Lex’s story together. “So, you felt like you were being bullied by your husband?”
“Bulliedmight be too harsh a word.” Lex grimaces. “It wasn’t that bad. He’s a good guy. I think most people in my situation would have stayed, but I couldn’t do it. I’d rather be lonely and on my own than in a relationship with the wrong person who was slowly sucking the life out of me. That is a much worse form of loneliness.”
