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I was wrong.
And by the time I realized he had arrived home early, the only thing I could manage to do was hide my face in the refrigerator. I had hoped he’d go off to another room in the house and that I’d have enough time to get up to the guest bedroom, but I got far more than I bargained for that day.
The way he spoke to me, shouting at me for not doing a good enough job of pretending to love him, was enough for me to know that I was never going to get my wish. Johnny and I were never going to be that couple who realized they were better off just being friends. We’d never have an amicable relationship ever again.
It was such a profound moment for me, a pivotal one. It was the moment I needed to make me accept the reality of my life.
But it seemed that it was also a pivotal moment in Johnny’s life, too. Because things had changed with him after that day. He went from being angry and bitter to something else. He was much more reserved and cautious.
Granted, he and I had been distant from one another for a while as it was, and the divorce discussion didn’t make things better. But there was something different about the way he’d been since that day he screamed at me in the kitchen and then saw me with red, puffy eyes and tear stains on my cheeks.
I didn’t know if he believed I’d been crying because of how he reacted, or if he knew that something else was going on. It didn’t matter. As it stood, he hadn’t attempted to figure it out beyond asking me in that moment. He didn’t walk into the guest bedroom to talk it out, and he certainly didn’t say anything to me about it the next day. He just didn’t care anymore.
But what I had noticed was that something was different about him. He was around more. We weren’t exactly on speaking terms, but I could feel it. Instead of him being gone first thing in the morning before I even had a chance to wake up, he was home. Every morning since that day, Johnny was still home when I walked into the kitchen. And I found him coming home from work earlier than usual.
He didn’t talk to me.
I didn’t say anything to him.
And while there was undoubtedly some tension lingering between us, I didn’t feel any of the anger radiating off of him.
Was that his way of apologizing?
If so, it was kind of lousy. But I also appreciated the fact that he could recognize he had done something wrong that day.
You’re failing miserably at pretending to be in love with me.
The words he’d said to me rang over and over in my mind every day since the day he’d said them.
Of course, I was failing at pretending to be in love with him.
I didn’t know how to pretend, because the truth was that I never stopped loving him.
Despite the fact that I’d asked him for a divorce, I was still in love with Johnny. I didn’t like the man who yelled at me that day, and I certainly didn’t fancy the guy who seemed interested in only one thing with me in recent years, but I couldn’t seem to let go of the guy who rescued me from a rogue beach umbrella eight years ago.
That’s who I missed.
That’s who I was in love with.
Six months had passed in a flash, and I still wasn’t ready to let him go.
Now, all I had was one week left. One week, and then we’d go our separate ways.
Maybe that had been my problem from the start. Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to pretend to be in love with him, because I hadn’t given myself the space I needed to officially lose him and grieve that loss.
How was I supposed to move on when I still saw him every day? Seeing him and not speaking to him was almost like adding more salt to an open wound.
But now, it was here.
It was time.
Despite the silence and tension between us over the last six months, Johnny and I were going to have to get in the car with each other this morning, head to the beach resort as a happily married couple, and celebrate the love between our best friends while our marriage was on the brink of extinction.
I could only hope he was feeling as nervous about it as I was.
Realizing I’d sat on the bed in the guest bedroom for far too long, I had to get up. The last thing I needed was to delay us this morning and give Johnny a reason to be angry with me. We didn’t need to start this week off on the wrong foot.
With that, I took in one final deep breath, stood, and wheeled my suitcase out of the room. I made it to the stairs, pushed the handle in, and curled my fingers around the leather handle. I lifted it up and made it down two stairs before I felt his fingers curl around mine.
