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“No,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.”
She watched him put a lid down on all his emotions. She knew now that this was what he did. If stuff came up, and it was hard or heavy, he found a way to dampen it. Mute it. But he never felt it. Not all the way. Maybe that was why he had wanted a marriage like theirs. Friendship. Because it was a lot like love, but dampened.
He’d said that he loved her, but it wasn’t...
It wasn’t the same as the way she loved him. Because she didn’t know how to dampen it. She didn’t know how to soften it. She didn’t know how to do anything but feel it. And it was such a whole mess, she just had no idea what she was supposed to do with it.
She loved him. She’d known him half of her life.
She didn’t know him.
She’d made a mistake because she needed to get to know these parts of him better.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. Don’t be sorry.” He leaned in and blew the candles out. “Happy birthday to me. When I tell the story later I’ll have one for my thirty-third.”
“Yeah.”
She set the cake down on the counter. They both sat down at the table, and she realized she hadn’t gotten the food. She got back up and grabbed plates and the roast pan and everything. She was blinking back tears. She felt just...so silly.
“Hey,” he said, grabbing her wrist and looking at her. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Except she had. She had done something wrong, or maybe it was just not enough. She didn’t know how to fix what they were. She was starting to love him in a way that felt uncontainable. It didn’t feel like friendship with sex layered over the top of it. She wanted all these things that he kept hidden away. And she didn’t know how to ask for them. She was just...scared of it.
Scared to dig deeper. Scared to be denied.
How could you ask for something you didn’t have words for?
Scared of being lonely for the rest of her life while living with her best friend. What was that all about? What was this?
They ate dinner in relative silence.
“I’d love a slice of cake,” he said when he was finished.
But his face was grim almost the whole time he ate, and he forced a smile. “Great. Thank you.”
“I got you some presents.”
He made a show of opening them, but she could see that he never quite got his facade back into place. She wondered how often that carefree persona was just that. A facade. She had no real way of knowing. Because she hadn’t been so conscious of it before they had gotten married.
She hadn’t been aware of it at all.
“Thanks, Doc,” he said, gesturing to all the stuff. “I can honestly tell you it was the best damn birthday I’ve ever had.”
She didn’t know how to take that heaviness out of his eyes. How to ease up the corner of his mouth. She knew how to make love to him, though. So she took his hand and drew him up out of the chair. Kissed him. Then led him back to the bedroom.
Because in the absence of everything else, they had this. That, at least, she understood.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding choked. “I’m sorry that I did that. The birthday party. I didn’t know. I thought you just hadn’t gotten birthdays. I didn’t realize...”
“It’s not your fault,” he said, the words scraping his throat raw. “It isn’t. None of this bullshit is your fault, Charity. But... You have to... There are lines that you can’t cross, okay?”
Even in the dim light of the room, he could see how sad that made her.
“What if I don’t want lines?”
“I don’t know any other way to be. Anyway. You’ve got your own. We all do. It’s fine.”
