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Before, when he’d found her, she’d been weeping, but now she was furious, like a dam had broken on words she’d been stuffing down for years, and there were no tears at all.
“I’m not ‘your wife.’ I’m Hannah Naomi Rosenstein, my entire own human being. You have become the main character in the story of my life, Blue, and I hate it. I want to be the main character in my own damned life.”
His heart broke, again. More, somehow, which seemed impossible. This righteous fury that crackled from her like an ancient goddess, he’d caused this.
He was home, having finally made something of himself, found himself. He wasn’t the old Blue, a wrecking ball in the lives of the people who loved him while he worked out his misery. He was ready to fix everything between them. Maybe it was too late, and she was ready to walk away. But he couldn’t let her, at least not without a fight.
“You’re the center of the story of my life, Hannah. That’s who we are. We’re fucking tattooed on each other’s souls.”
“So what?” she asked him, her hands on her hips. “So we’re tattooed on each other’s souls. Who fucking cares? You think no one’s ever gotten a tattoo they regret? It doesn’t make us less of a destructive garbage fire, Blue. You have to have a better reason for us to try again.”
He scrubbed his hands down his beard, then stood up so they were facing each other. “You asked me to leave and I left, but that made you more angry. What do you want? Me to leave your life forever? I can’t. My parents are here. I’m not exiling myself again.”
“I want you to call Elijah.” Elijah Green was their lawyer, friend, and the best Scrabble player in the state. A tall, thin Black man with an impressive collection of argyle sweater vests, a stunningly beautiful husband, and very cute twins, Elijah was one of the people Levi found least objectionable in all of Advent. But right now, the sound of his name filled Levi with dread. “Ask him to transfer your shares to me, Miriam, and Noelle.”
She stepped up so they were toe to toe and looked him right in the eyes. “And tell him to draw up divorce papers.”
Her eyes flashed in the dark, like she was daring him to argue with her. Never let it be said that Blue Matthews backed down from a dare from his wife.
“Hell no,” he growled.
“What are you talking about?” She gestured, waving her dress, her voice unbelieving. “We haven’t spoken in four years. We may be legally married, but we’re not married in any way that counts. No one knows we’re married because for some reason it seemed like agreatidea to keep it a secret from our family and friends. Just sign the papers and let us all move on with our lives.”
“New York is a single-party divorce state, Nan,” he pointed out. “You could have filed any time you wanted, without my signature, but you didn’t. I don’t want a divorce, and neither do you. And you could have told everyone you know. Don’t blame me for that bad decision.”
She wasn’t giving him a chance to show her that he was finally someone who deserved her, and it pissed him off. They’d been figuring their lives out, but their road was always going to lead back to each other. The thought of getting a divorce made him want to vomit. He couldn’t do it.
“I don’t give a fuck what Cass wanted, and I wouldn’t care if Carrigan’s burned to the ground, but I’m keeping my shares until you agree to figure this out. Give me a chance to prove I’ve changed.”
“You’re proving to me right now that you haven’t,” she told him.
“I’m not giving you a divorce. Our story isn’t over.” He spat this out and watched her eyes narrow.
“Fuck you, Levi Blue,” she said, shoving her arms back into her ballgown and slamming out the door.
Even for him, legendary screwup, that had gone poorly.
The next day, Miriam told him that his mother would love his help. He assumed this was Miri’s attempt at getting him out of the way, since his mom would greatly prefer he stayed out of her kitchen while she was cooking because he was, she said, nitpicky and dictatorial and didn’t know what he was talking about.
But he found himself wanting her company, the comfort of prepping mise en place, to be somewhere that didn’t rub his skin raw and make him want to snarl at innocent passersby, or his in-laws. The kitchen at Carrigan’s was the first place he’d ever felt at home in his skin, and he needed that grounding. It was ironic, because he’d always been so angry that Cass relegated his mom to the kitchen, made her the help instead of a partner, but given a choice of being anywhere in the inn, that’s where he would always choose to be first. Even more, he needed his mom.
“Hey, Mom,” he said. “Can I hide in here? I can chop or wash dishes. I promise I won’t try to take over your duck.”
His mom looked at him for a long minute, her silver hair swooping over her forehead in a way that looked exactly like his own. He could feel her assessing him and hoped he wasn’t coming up too wanting.
“You have a matzo ball soup recipe you’ve been working on, right? Kind of Spanish-inspired flavors? You emailed me about it last year. You can make it, as long as you don’t make your matzo balls too dense.”
He was too stunned to argue with her that fluffy matzo balls were an abomination.
“You would let me make the matzo ball soup?” he whispered, floored.
“Well, you’re here, aren’t you? How often do we get a TV chef here to cook for our seder?”
She could brush it off, but this wasn’t a small deal. Even when she had been planning to turn over her position to him, when he and Hannah were together, she’d never let him cook something as foundational as this. She always said he was too focused on making an already perfect thing fancy, and he never knew how to let well enough be.
She wasn’t wrong.
He unwound his scarf and pulled a headband out of his back pocket to tame his bangs, while his mom handed him an apron. She held out a hand for his bangle bracelets, and he piled them, clinking, into her palm.
