“What else?” My voice is not 100 percent steady.
“Most people want to contribute to the family. I—they want to do their share. And that’s hard because some of them don’t have great jobs that’ll last forever. Their job might break them down, physically. And if they’re working on something new, they might not want to get anyone’s hopes up before it’s a sure thing.”
“They’re keeping secrets, is what you’re saying.” I’m a hypocrite—I haven’t exactly told him about the pitch competition. But he’s the one who closed off first. Who dug out my old business books, then deflected questions about what he was doing.
Just like Amber said he would, in the hotel bathroom on my wedding day. As her marriage had filled with secrets and silence, so would mine, losing a little closeness and tenderness every day until it was all gone.
“I’m not keeping secrets.”
“God, Tobin, yes you are! Whatisn’ta secret between us? Name a hope or dream youdotalk to me about.”
“We tell each other—” His automatic denial buckles under the weight of truth.
“Yeah, we—holy crap!” I swerve hard to avoid a pair of shadowy gray-brown goats loitering in the road.
“I’m okay,” I say, before he can ask. “Goats. I’m pulling over for a bit.”
The sign for the local mountain biking area looms ahead. I can park here for a few minutes, save battery, not sacrifice any innocent animals with my car.
“I’m parked. Where were we?”
“I never meant to keep secrets from you,” he says. The radio fiction is broken; his voice is a bruise. “You could ask me anything you want to know.”
I didn’t expect that. He set the roles in advance; I didn’t prepare any questions.
“Liz? Are you there?”
“I’m here,” I say slowly. Another hugethunkof tumblers slides into place. But unlike last time, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to try to crack him open.
I might like what I find.
This conversation feels so dangerous. I need something to put distance between us, for safety, like the first scenario said. Something he’d never admit to.
My mind flashes back to the night I left, when the last good thing about us crumbled. “Okay. What do you wish I would have done differently in bed?”
I’m being a jerk. It’s not a comfortable sensation, especially when he’s being sincere, but then again, none of the things I’ve done lately have been comfortable. I have to ignore my instincts, which have gotten me nowhere in life.
He makes a startled noise. “Um, I don’t know. What we did—what we do—is good for me. I wouldn’t, uh, change anything. Necessarily.”
It’s déjà vu all over again. Tobin won’t tell me what I’m doing wrong, just like Craig wouldn’t explain or clarify “people think you don’t like them,” just like all my interviewers wouldn’t reply to my follow-up emails asking for feedback. I shiver, probably because the heater’s even weaker when the car isn’t moving.
“I hurt you last time. It sucks, knowing I’ve done that. And not knowing what to do better, because you won’t talk to me.” This would be easier if I were angry, but instead, someone’s hooked a hundred-pound weight onto my heart, sinking it to the bottom of Lake Sad.
He sighs long and slow, a trail of silver bubbles rising through troubled waters. “I wish we’d never gotten married.”
There’s a lag on the line, a poor connection that’s been cutting off the beginning of his sentences. So maybe he didn’t pick up the painful way I gasped.
“Not like that,” he says hastily, confirming he caught my little “oh!” of hurt and surprise.
“Everything changed after our wedding. When you laughed, it didn’t sound right anymore. You used to look at me with, uh.” The connection perfectly delivers the dry sound of his swallow. “It sounds stupid, but you used to look at me with stars in your eyes. And then sometimes they weren’t there anymore. And now I haven’t seen them in so long. I felt you… pulling back. Maybe I, uh. Maybe I drove you away.”
I’m flooded with memories of our wedding day. Tobin, conspicuously absent from the head table until I recruited a groomsman to go get him before every toast. Amber sending me a bitter, knowing look in the bathroom mirror.Spare me the pity, Liz—I might be getting divorced, but you always follow in my footsteps. I mean, you’re marrying a guy with family issues, you’re plowing through a field of red flags to do it, and your reception is even at the same damn venue! In a few years, you’ll be where I am now. So what if Mark doesn’t love me anymore? It’s not likeyou’reso easy to love.
Obviously, I knew how few friends I had, and how I didn’t seem to fit in anywhere but the remote backcountry places most other people didn’t go to. But I hadn’t thought it was because I was hard to love. To hear it like that, from the person who’d known me longer than anyone…
“Tobin. That’s not what happened.”
“Butsomethinghappened. And you didn’t tell me what, so how was I supposed to react? You fell in love with me when things were easy and fun. I wanted you to fall in love with me again, so I tried to give you more of that.”
