Page 71 of The Write Choice

“Sorry.” He smirks. “I was teasing. Peas are great. Peas are especially fun when you can launch them at each other across the table.” He winks at Mason, who tries—unsuccessfully—to hide a laugh.

“Launch them wherever you want, as long as some land in your mouth, and you clean up whatever doesn’t.” I help myself to a serving of everything, then hand full plates to each of the children. It’s absolutely a mistake to let Christine carry her own plate to the table, but if we don’t, she’ll throw a fit, so I follow her closely, my arm out to catch the plate should it fall out of her tiny hands.

They do shoot peas into each other’s mouths, and enough of them make it into the kids’ bellies that I’m happy with the result. Between that and the kids telling Brandon every painstaking detail about their days at school, dinner takes a lot longer than usual.

Normally, I’m counting down the minutes until dinner is over. It’s always a cacophony of noise, mess, and touching. Mason poking at Christine, both of them throwing food at each other, Christine begging to sit in my lap, each of them vying for my attention at the same time, various sauces or yogurts landing on my clothes and arms. The whole thing is almost always capped off with one or the other out of their seat and running laps around the table.

But something about Brandon’s presence always calms them. Or, maybe a better way to put it is that he focuses their attention. He takes their boundless energy and channels it into something productive. Tonight is no different. They’re not polite, well-behaved children, but they’re funny and engaged. They eat enough food with some nutrition in it that I won’t mind if they raid the pantry for snacks in an hour. Which they will do.

The whole scene tears me in two. One part of me is warmed to my very center at the way the three of them interact. One part is angry. The kids love him and me in very different ways. I’m the one who always has to do the day-to-day drudgery. I’m the one who has to make them sit to eat when they’re wild or do homework and count screen time minutes when they’d rather zone out in front of the television. Brandon gets to witness the more settled moments. They don’t get riled up around him as much because they don’t have as many chances. It’s novel when he’s here, whereas I’m the norm. It makes me feel so completely outside the relationship they have with Brandon that it almost physically hurts. And, not for the first time, I have the fleeting thought that a glass of wine would take this edge off.

I do what Nora tells me to do when I feel like an outsider looking in. I widen my perspective, like I would with a painting. I step back and see myself in the scene, because I am there, whether I feel like it or not. It helps take the edge off enough that I make it through the rest of dinner feeling less twitchy.

When we’re finally done eating, Mason grabs the broom and sweeps up the peas without being asked. Brandon takes over baths and bedtime. I load the dishwasher, wipe off the surfaces, then fall onto the couch.

By the time Brandon has both kids in bed, I’m already half asleep, my arm hanging limply off the side of the couch and my eyes focused on an invisible spot on the ceiling. Brandon sits on the coffee table and rests his elbows on his thighs, steepling his fingers in front of his lips.

I roll my head to look at him. “It’s a huge couch. You don’t have to sit there.”

“I know.” He studies me, his hazel eyes intent. His expression darkens, and a little thrill passes through me. I shiver, quickly sitting up so our knees touch. I press my palms into the couch cushion.

I’m not sure how to interpret his body language, which is new for us. Usually, he’s so open I can read him like a book. But right now, I’m not sure if he’s going to have his way with me right here on the couch or tell me he’s moving out.

Little pinpricks of anxiety rush through my chest, and my eyes widen. “Is everything okay?”

He takes a deep, shaky breath and runs a hand over his rusty hair. “Yeah.” He blows out through pursed lips, his breath tickling my bangs. He grabs my hands and squeezes them. “That’s a lie. It’s not okay.” He lets go of my hands and pinches his temples, squeezing his eyes shut.

He’s silent for a long moment, and my right leg starts bouncing up and down completely without my permission. He eyes it, and I force it to stop.

“I’m sorry, Katie.” His gaze finds mine, his eyes shining as if he’s going to cry. He grasps my hands again, and it feels desperate. “I made promises to you, and I broke them. It didn’t even take me very long. I’d love to tell you it’s not my fault, but I can’t. I should have seen this coming. This job is…” He trails off, his eyes going skyward. He laughs humorlessly. “It fucking sucks.”

His shoulders sag as if the sheer weight of carrying those words has fallen off them as soon as they are out of his mouth.

I should comfort him, but instead, I let out an involuntary sob. It’s loud and unexpectedly wet. In a heartbeat, he’s off the table and next to me on the couch, pulling me close.

“Shit, Brandon.” I smack his shoulder. “I thought you were leaving me or something.”

He holds me at arm’s length, a deep crease between his eyebrows. “What?” he barks. He pulls me close again, squeezing me harder. “Fuck. I’m not very good at this. I was trying to open up to you.”

I laugh harshly. “Oh my god. You’re terrible at this. You stared at me like what you were about to say was the hardest thing, and I thought—”

He cups my cheeks between his palms, wiping a stray tear with his thumb. He leans forward so our faces are less than an inch apart, our eyes locked on each other. “Why would I ever leave you? What would make you think that?”

I raise an eyebrow, sniffling. “You really don’t get it, do you? You’re never here. And even when you are, you’re distant. Like your mind is somewhere else.”

He pulls back, dropping his hands. “Right. Well, I can see how you would come to that conclusion. I haven’t been very good to you or the kids, Cat.” He fiddles with a loose thread on the couch cushion. “This job is not what I expected. Or what I was promised.”

I lay my hand over his. “Tell me about it, then.”

He spends the next hour filling me in on everything that has been going on. He starts with his useless junior architects that he’s pretty sure he’s going to have to fire. After that, he describes his unimaginative senior architect who seems so much like a crotchety old man that I’m surprised when he tells me Jasper is probably only in his early forties. He’s frustrated with his parents for being almost completely hands-off. Even though he wants to take over the firm, he feels stalled because they’re technically still there. He seems to find a lot of promise in one of his junior architects, but she’s a new mom and he doesn’t want to overload her.

When he talks about her, I’m unexpectedly jealous. I know she must be busting her ass with a new baby and a job, and I should feel fortunate that I never had to do that. But I can’t help but wonder if I’d feel differently if I had some kind of purpose outside of motherhood these past seven years. My mind goes to the panels starting to line up in my studio, but now’s not the time to talk about that. Not when Brandon is in crisis.

I blink rapidly and rejoin what Brandon is saying about having to do all the personnel stuff on top of more design work than he expected to make up for the lost productivity of his team. He doesn’t seem to notice I checked out for my own little pity party, which is good. This isn’t about me.

With each sentence, he relaxes. Some of the color comes back to his face, and a little of the wide-eyed optimism I fell in love with comes back, too.

Eventually, he trails off into silence. I take his hands and rub my thumbs over his knuckles.