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I found him on the back deck after work one day. He was drinking a beer and staring sullenly at the woods. I moved to him, draped myself over his lap and died a little inside that he wouldn’t embrace me.
I put my palms to his face. “I don’t need children, Van. I only need you.”
I was shocked to see the look of horror on his face and he pushed up out of the chair, nearly dumping me to the ground. I scrambled from his lap and he stormed into the house. I followed, incredibly pissed.
“What the fuck, Van?” I yelled at him.
He rounded on me, pointing an accusing finger. “You’re not doing that to me or yourself.”
I threw my hands out in exasperation. “Doing what?”
“Denying yourself something you want or making me feel guilty about it.”
“I want you!” I yelled at him. “Despite the fact you’re being a fucking idiot, I want you. I’ll give up kids for you. We’ll be fine.”
“You don’t fucking get it, Simone,” he bellowed, stomping over to the kitchen table. He picked up a copy of the hardback biography. I foolishly bought the damn thing so I could read it and let him know it wasn’t that bad. He held it up, shook it and snarled. “This changes everything.”
“It doesn’t,” I yelled back. “Nothing in that book touches you, Van.”
The pain in his face shredded me, but then I was terrified as he roared at me. “It doesn’t just touch me, Simone. It suffocates. It kills. It annihilates.”
Then he whipped the book across the living room, into the kitchen, where it crashed into a shelf of collectible mugs. They exploded, shards of pottery spraying everywhere. It was the only time Van had exhibited a violent tendency in my presence and it scared me. I took a few wary steps back.
He noticed it, too, and pounced on the meaning behind it. “See?” he growled low. “You think you know me, but maybe I’m just like Arco. Maybe I like hurting things.”
It took me about half a nanosecond to understand what he was doing. He was trying to force me to abandon him and I wasn’t going to do it. He tried once before and it didn’t work. “You’re being ridiculous,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “Break all the damn pottery, for all I care. I’m not giving up on you. On us. We don’t have to have kids.”
Van sighed, raking his hand through his hair. He’d let it grow a little longer since leaving the league and I loved it. “You might not be giving up on us, but I am.”
“The hell you are,” I screeched. “You don’t get to quit me. You know I’m a stubborn bitch, Van, and I’m never giving up on you.”
Something changed in him… that very second, I saw it. I’m not sure if it was the sputtering of the flames in his eyes or the way his shoulders sagged slightly, but it scared me. “The past three years have been a farce, Simone. I’m still the same asshole you met on my front porch three years ago. I was blinded to the truth because you dazzled me so much.” Van stepped into me, his expression so serious, my stomach flipped end over end. His gaze roamed my face and when it came back to lock with mine, he shook his head sadly. “You’ve lost your shine and I can see that very clearly now.”
The tears came immediately, blurring Van’s body. There were no words he could’ve said that would’ve hurt me more. It was a slap to a beautiful part of our history together.
After the first time we had sex, he tried to rebuff me and I knew it was because he was scared to develop a connection. He was such a dick and tried to scare me off by showing me just how mean he could be. “Now that you’re wearing my sweat on your skin, you’ve sort of lost your shine. Time to move on.”
That didn’t hurt me then and the memory of it doesn’t hurt me now.
But what tore my soul from my body when he said those words just now was because we had made a joke of it.
Me being shiny to him.
I often asked, “Am I still shiny?” and he’d always tell me I was the shiniest.
He’d often tell me that would never change. It was a promise of forever.
I cried freely, for once not hiding my sadness from my husband. Through the layer of tears, I watched as Van walked away.
Right out the front door and I heard his truck rumble out of the driveway.
He never came back.
Well… at least not when I was home. I went to work the next day, hardly able to concentrate on my projects. I pretty much spent the entire time in my head, figuring out how to make my husband see reason. By the time I left, I had resolved that this was going to be a long-haul battle and I would dig in deep. Van was not getting away from me.
Except when I got home, he shattered all of that. His drawers and closet were empty and there was a note on the kitchen table, short and to the point.
Simone,
