Page 50 of On Dry Land

“May I help you?” I ask.

“How long were you married?”

“Six years,” I answer, shocking myself. Every inch of me thrums to life, like energy being introduced to a live wire. I don’t want to talk to Spencer about my marriage. I don’t want him to walk away so soon.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

“Me too,” I admit quietly.

I enjoyed being married. Right up until the day it ended, in fact, and my doctor knocked over the first in a long line of dominos that sent everything crashing down. I enjoyed having a ring on my finger and the comfort of being free of dating. I liked knowing what brand of coffee bean was Dylan’s favorite and being able to pick him out in a crowd by the smell of his cologne. I liked having regular sex, even when that sex wasn’t always enjoyable for me, and I really liked the six years of nights I never once slept alone. Dylan often came home late, but there was never a night where he didn’t come home at all.

“What happened?” Spencer asks, and it’s the direct way he asks it that spurs me to answer.

“Turns out one person wasn’t enough for Dylan.”

“Ah. Do you hate him?”

I almost laugh. Sure, I hate him. But it’s nothing close to how much I hate myself. My hatred of Dylan is less about what he did and more about what he revealed. The way he chipped away at my paint, bit by bit, and uncovered things I hadn’t realized were there. You see? he seemed to say. Of course this happened. You were never going to be enough.

And I wasn’t. Dylan wanted grand gestures. He wanted flowers sent to his work and for me to hold his hand in public when we went to a restaurant opening. He wanted to introduce me to thirty of his closest friends and for me to get jealous when he danced with another man at the club. I could never manage it, and when I look back on those years, I’m confronted with the fact that I didn’t really try. I thought I could love him quietly—run my hands through his hair to help him fall asleep, and have his coffee sitting by the machine every morning; kiss that spot on his elbow that was ticklish just to hear him laugh, and never, ever forget a single thing he told me. Dylan wanted a love others could see, and, in the end, I couldn’t even manage to make it visible to him.

“I don’t think you even love me at all,” he’d said once, leaning toward me across the table, our lawyers seated by our sides like bodyguards. I had hated that more than anything—the audience with their ears pressed to the glass, listening as I learned all the ways I had failed.

And there is a part of me, now, that thinks he was right. Heartbreak is supposed to hurt, and mine didn’t. It wasn’t pain and suffering; it was resignation and defeat. It was a world tilted a hundred and eighty degrees on its axis to show the rot that had spread unnoticed underneath. And I, with an echo chamber where a heart is meant to be, couldn’t even find it in me to care. I never felt sad about the divorce. Never cried or drank myself into oblivion. I packed up my things and rented an apartment, went to work, and spent time at the gym. I consulted a lawyer and asked for nothing but the title for the Maiden Seas and my own trust fund. I went to every divorce meeting and stared across the table at Dylan, thinking about all the things I’d interpreted as love and wondering how the hell I could have gotten it so wrong.

“Yes,” I tell Spencer now. People understand hate, and it’s the simplest answer to a difficult question. “But I think Dylan hates me more.”

In fact, I know he does. My ex-husband, with his emotions he could never control, his love of being the victim, and his ability to twist every scenario to fit that narrative. Why does everything have to happen to me, he’d complain, as though hardship were an experience singular to him alone. I can see the loathing simmering in his eyes when we meet these days—two ships passing in a world glittering with riches. A world he chose to stay in and one I left to him without a fight. Even that wasn’t right.

“You seriously don’t even care, do you?” Dylan hissed at me last Christmas, champagne flute clenched in his hand.

“No, I don’t,” I’d replied and walked away. It was time, in my opinion, for him to stop caring so much, in fact.

“A little hard for him to take the high road since he’s the one who cheated,” Spencer notes. I shrug as much as I’m able, lying prone against the pillows.

“It’s over.” And, I add silently, I deserved it. I wasn’t enough. I hadn’t paid close enough attention. I hadn’t changed when I was supposed to.

“Mm.” He watches me, the light from the television illuminating his features in flashes of color. Intermission is ending, and the teams are back on their benches. I look at Spencer, finding more to interest me in the shades of brown in his eyes than anything on the TV.

Instead of pulling his computer back onto his lap and working more, he sets it on the bedside table and scoots closer to me. Close enough for his hip to press against mine and for me to slide into him as he adjusts the pillows to his liking. When he settles, we’re lying nearly flat beside one another, my hands on my stomach and Spencer’s on the bed. He tucks his fingers into the pocket of my sweatpants as the second period starts and Colorado wins the face-off. We watch the game in silence, and I wonder what would happen if I didn’t send him home to sleep in his own bed tonight.

Chapter Seventeen

SPENCER

The tiny black kitten mewls pitifully as Rudy folds back her ears to look inside. Shaking her head when he lets go of her ear, she cries again, the noise reverberating off the stainless steel table. Keeping her in place with a palm cupped over her back, Rudy jots down a few notes on a paper chart.

“Lungs are fine,” he comments. I chuckle, reaching out a finger to the kitten. She sniffs me and cries again, big eyes pleading as they look at me.

“Four weeks old?” I guess, looking at the tiny body curled in the center of the table. Rudy, glancing up at me, smiles and scoops up the kitten, holding her out to me. I take her, cradling her gently against my chest.

“Thereabouts,” he agrees. “Second time already this year I’ve had little ones left in a box at the door.”

The kitten cries again, claws sticking into the fabric of my scrubs as she tries to climb her way up to the warmth of my neck. Obligingly, I lift her there and am rewarded with another loud cry, this one directly into my eardrum. Rudy chuckles.

“What do you do with them?” I ask him. Most vet clinics have a procedure in place for these types of situations. Small as this clinic is, I don’t doubt that Rudy is probably the one who ends up with the strays more often than not.

“Well, I have a pretty good track record of finding them homes. This one’s too small to stay here overnight, so I suppose she’ll have to come home with me.” He sighs, fingers tapping on the table as he watches me stroke careful fingers down the kitten’s back. She’s trembling.