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“I don’t want to do this,” she sighs. “I just want to heal myself, and you coming here is making me worse.” Her head swivels towards me before facing forward again, continuing her vehement pace.
Heal myself.
For some reason, those words grab onto the other burning matter that’s been eating me alive and yank it towards the front of my mind.
She was there trying to heal me after my trauma, but who was there for her through hers? How did she heal herself? The answer is she didn’t. She couldn’t.
“I want to talk about what happened to you,” I spew out with less ceremony than I intended. When I envisioned this earlier, I wasn’t trying to cause a scene while trying to keep up with her power walking through a public place.
Fortunately, it makes her stride falter slightly and she slows down a little, giving me a chance to reach for the envelope from the inside pocket of my jacket.
“What do you mean what happened to me?” she throws back sardonically. I got married, and then my husband came back a wounded martyr and kicked me to the curb…” she trails off and slows down even farther as she sees what I’m holding up. “What is that?” she asks, coming to a complete stop and facing me.
“Medical bills from November, Luna,” I inform her curtly before tucking it away again. “I’m not the only one who went through something while we were apart. I know that much, and now I want you to tell me the rest.”
Luna goes quiet, looking around the park like some random sycamore is going to bail her out of this. “It doesn’t even matter,” she sighs, shaking her head. “We’re not married anymore, so it’s nothing you need to be concerned about. I got through it on my own.”
“Bullshit,” I state and tilt my chin.
“No, it’s not bullshit. It truly doesn’t matter anymore. Hell, it didn’t even matter then. It was–”
“Luna, I swear to God, if you don’t tell me what the fuck happened to you while I was gone, I will find out some other way,” I warn gruffly. “I know I came back some bruised, pathetic version of myself, but I knew you had in some way changed too, and now I want you to tell me! Tell me I’m not fucking crazy, Luna.” I lean in, not trying to scare her, but to convey how badly I want her to let me in on this.
“Carter found me,” she finally blurts as her face pales slightly.
There it is. I already knew this, yet I feel every muscle fiber tighten around the bones in my chest, my shoulders, and my back when she confirms it. My heart is screaming from inside my chest wall as I bring my fist up to my mouth. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me, Luna?” I ask feebly against my hand.
A tender compassion veils her eyes as she answers. “And how was I supposed to?” she implores. “I know you were overseas for eight months seeing things people only catch glimpses of in their nightmares, not to mention you lost your best friend, and almost died, too, but could I get a little sympathy from you because I had my crazy ex smack me around? Come on, K, there was no place for that, and that’s okay.” She waves a hand outward in dismissal. “It’s not a competition, but with what happened to you, it wasn’t the time for my hardships, and there was the very real possibility it would’ve made things worse for you,” she points out.
I stand there, staring at her, taking in everything from the set of her eyes, the way she rubs at the spot between them, to her breathing. I try to imagine what it was like for her then, how she would go about approaching that subject, and I can’t come up with anything that would’ve resulted in anything good or constructive. But despite not having any good reason to fault her, I still do, unfair as they may seem.
“You should’ve told me,” I whisper. “Do you know what taking care of you would’ve done for me? How much it could’ve changed things?”
“Do you not recall how you acted when I told you he’d sent me flowers when we were on that video chat?” she challenges with a head tilt. Shit. Lifting a shoulder and shaking her head, she adds, “Maybe I should’ve. But like I said, I just didn’t know how. I did know at that time that you didn’t have anything to give, so I knew I had to be the one. So I gave, Kaleb, thinking if I just did that for a while, it would help you to come back to yourself. And when that didn’t work, I gave more. And then when that didn’t help, I gave everything. And now… I have nothing left. I can’t give anymore, it’s all gone… I’m gone.”
I’ve just been stabbed in the heart with a hot knife, but despite how damaging it is, I fight it. I rage against it, hurrying after her when she turns and starts walking away again. “No,” I insist, and I don’t recognize the depth of desperation in my voice. “No, that’s not true, Luna. You love me, and I know you can keep fighting for us.”
“I can’t!” She finally whirls around on me and stops our progression on the middle of the path. There’s a wrought iron bench nearby, along with a few dogwoods in full bloom dispersed around a tiny pond, and again, I can’t believe something of this manner is happening in this setting.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” I ask incredulously, holding my hands out. “I made a huge fuckup when I myself was fucked up. Now jump all over me and put me in my damn place!” I urge her, starting to feel my voice waver. There’s no question I’m desperate here, but I’m not afraid to show it. “Please,” I practically whisper. “Take me down a few pegs, take me all the way down. Take me down to my knees and I swear to God, Luna, I will beg you to come back to me, fucked up leg and all,” I proclaim, and try not to feel discouraged when I see those brown eyes sadden even more.
“I have nothing left, Kaleb,” she tells me, her voice laced with defeat and regret. “I used up…” she pauses, swallowing hard while her eyes get glassy. “I used up everything I had, and now I’m empty, Kaleb. You drew up divorce papers–”
“And I’m trying to tell you that was an epic mistake and I don’t want that, Luna!” I huff out, trying like hell not to run out of steam. I should've known not to ever go head-to-head with this one in an argument.
“Yeah, well…” She takes a breath like she’s trying to revive herself while she looks around our surroundings as if to draw resilience against my words. “You still did it. You did it because you didn’t trust what we had to come back around.” She nods firmly, not meeting my eyes as a tear slips out from the corner of one of hers. She quickly wipes it away before squaring her shoulders and finally looking back up at me. “And anyway, I sent them in, so it’s done.” She sucks in a breath and turns to abandon me again, but I take a few long and painful strides to cut her off.
“Yeah, but you didn’t take a very good look at them before you did,” I throw back at her, and when she tips her head, I elaborate. “I didn’t sign them,” I announce as I step in front of her, and she looks up at me as she stops, her eyebrows drawing together.
“What?”
“You filed them, but I never signed them, Luna.”
“So…” she squints her eyes like she’s trying to process this.
“So we’re not divorced, and we’re not getting divorced,” I say firmly. The dismissal is slightly more complicated than that, but she doesn’t need to know that right now. Right now, she just needs to see me fight for her.
Luna grips the strap of her bag harder and shakes her head while pressing her lips together so hard they mottle in an effort to fight off more tears.
