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And it isn’t something that would typically matter except I’m only wearing a white tank top and it’s thin as hell.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I grind out before realizing that a bunch of kids and their parents are within earshot.
“It’s okay. I don’t think anyone’s seen you,” he assures me as he takes my hand in his and leads me back to the car. “You head home. We’ll see you there.”
I want to cry.
As grounded as this man is, as much as he calms me, this may be one of the last times he comforts me. One of the last times he polices me and offers me a way out.
One of the last times I’ll feel like we’re on the same team.
I sniff, an errant tear tracking down my face before I can catch it.
“Hey, you’re okay,” he tells me as I get in the car and buckle my seatbelt. I place my hands on the steering wheel for a moment as he stands there, unsure of what comes next.
“I know. It’s not that, it’s just…” I trail off when I see the girls heading toward us.
“What is it?” he asks as he leans farther into the car, not having seen them for himself.
I shake my head as I watch Jilly’s eyes light up, seeing the both of us here. Penny’s face is slack, nonchalance oozing off her as her sister lets go of her hand to race the rest of the way to us.
“We’ll talk later.”
“Did you forget it’s dad’s day?” Jilly asks, pushing her dirty blonde hair from her face. I swear I sent her to school with her hair braided but the wild child rarely comes home in the same state as she was sent.
“Of course she did,” Penny answers, nudging her younger sister. “They’re getting a divorce.” She mutters the last part like an accusation and doesn’t bother looking at me, turning away from the car so all I see is her dark brown hair, still in its neat braid down her back.
I’m ruining my kids. I’m fucking them up.
I inhale a shaky breath, staring at Peter for some sort of guidance.
Help me fuck them up a little less.
“Ladies, let’s get some ice cream while mom orders dinner,” he suggests, already rallying them toward his car further up the line.
“She forgot a bra too,” I hear Penny say and I groan at the precocious nearly six-year-old.
Peter tells her something I can’t hear, and she cracks a rare smile.
I envy their relationship. Lately, he’s been her favorite. And while I’m happy she has that in him, I worry that in the end, she won’t want to be with me the way she thinks I don’t want to be with Peter.
In her eyes, he’s the best. And he is.
It’s almost enough to make me stay and tell the voice growing louder in my head to shut the fuck up. That I can endure this for them.
But then I remember that he only offers me his full attention when I’ve asked for it too many times, or when something’s wrong. He doesn’t tell me he loves me first anymore, doesn’t hug me from behind the way he used to, nuzzling my neck with affection.
If honesty is the best policy, damn it, I’m doing the best I can. I’ve stayed this long for the kids. But are they benefitting from an unhappy mother?
The guilt of staying with Peter because he stayed with me is eating me alive.
And no matter what anyone else thinks, it stings to be the person who leaves. To be the one who’s tearing their world apart.
I can’t give myself a life of lukewarm love that doesn’t yank me from my soul anymore. And as much as I tried in the six, almost seven years we’ve been married, I can’t stay. Not when I’ve experienced something so potent it still pulls me by my fucking teeth.
The weight of having seen Abraham followed me around all day, and I find myself closing my eyes to experience it again.
Or maybe to hide from it.
But the giddy warmth of existing in the same space as him is impossible to deny. And the romantic in me, the one I’d held a funeral for, jolts to life.
I fall back into a time where I was allowed to be imperfect.
