And the man I rely on to give me a “yes, and”… isn’t doing it.
“I heard everything, by the way. After your presentation, you looked like you left it all on the field. I thought maybe you might need me, so I followed you out, and… yeah.”
“I’m so sorry, Tobe. I never meant to hurt you. If I could take it back, I would. I didn’t know how else to get Craig to seeme. I can’t only be your wife. I need to be myself, too.”
“Okay,” he says, leaning harder against the closed door, not sounding like he agrees with me at all.
“We should… we should talk about what happens next. What we’re going to do about the whole pitch thing.”
He shakes his head slowly, every turn a hammer on my heart. “Wedon’t do anything, Liz.” It’s not even a little bit mean. It’s only final, like a referendum. Yes or no.
“We have to! It’s not fair for Craig to promote me to developyour pitch.” I’m purposely not picking up what he’s putting down. I have to turn this scenario. It can’t go where it’s going.
“I didn’t mean I’m not planning to challenge Craig. I meant I’m not planning to challenge himwith you.” He lets that linger in the air, settle on my skin like soot. “Lyle and I pitched this project on the condition that we own the idea. It’s not Craig’s to run as he sees fit. We’re free to leave and find people who want to work with us.”
A thin streak of bitterness colors his words, and I know he isn’t talking about Craig.
“I said I’m sorry, Tobin! Please believe this wasn’t about you at all. You saw what happened—Craig literally used me to get to you! The pitch competition was supposed to be about me becoming someone in my own right. I never intended to steal your proposal or your promotion! Please don’t be mad at me for that.”
“Liz—” He presses his lips together. The rest of what he was going to say comes out in a sharp, almost inaudible growl. I’ve never seen him look like this, face drawn, chin tipped skyward. He must’ve been outside today; he smells like a summer storm, ozone and ice wind sweeping down the mountainside, surrounded with unstable charge.
“I didn’t want the fucking promotion.Iwanted to start my own business. Lyle wanted to have a venture ready to go when his book came out, so he could capitalize on his big moment to build his name. I’m not angry with you because Craig’s being an asshat. I’m not angry at all!”
He squeezes his eyes closed, letting his head fall back against the door with a deliberate thud.
“Why did you marry me, Liz? Tell me why you said yes. I need to know.”
I have to nail this. Everything McHuge ever told me aboutbringing myself to a scene, letting people know me, taking risks—I need it all.
“I married you because I loved you. And because I thought, um.”
Even in my head, this sounds small. Petty. Unworthy.
“The summer we met, I was… so miserable. Physically, I could do the job you did. I wasn’t the best, but I was better than some. But there was something about me that made the company put me where nobody could see me. I wasn’t the kind of guide they wanted.”
Autistic,I think. I can’t say for certain that’s what happened, but I’ve read the research. And I’ve seen it with Eleanor—kids simply decide they don’t like her. It’s nothing she says or does; she’s never unkind and she tries hard to fit in. But kids can tell she’s different. And so can adults. Amber has a hit list a mile long of people who parentsplained to her that their kids shouldn’t be “forced” to have Eleanor in their playgroups.
“It was like I didn’t exist. Making breakfast before anyone woke up, packing up tents and food on my own, racing down the river to set up camp and have snacks ready and drinks chilled. Clients liked not seeing me, because if they had to acknowledge how much work went into their luxury, they’d feel bad. The guides mostly stopped talking to me, too.
“And then one night, I was washing up alone. You came down to the river, picked up a pot, and started scrubbing. You didn’t even ask if I needed help. You saw how lonely I was when nobody else did. You sawme,a person, not just an invisible chore monkey. You had better, cooler things to do, with better, cooler people. And there you were, with me.
“I didn’t think I could hold on to someone like you. But I loved you too much to say no.”
He nods, fingers pressed across his lips, not looking at me. It’s perilously close to too late, and we both know it.
His voice, when he speaks, is all wrong. The opposite of big and confident and joyful and loud.
“Part of why I fell in love with you was because you were soreal. You never tried to sell anyone a version of yourself that wasn’t true. You weren’t afraid to go your own way.”
A pang of guilt slices me. He thinks I did all that because I chose to, maybe, but the truth is I didn’t know how to be like everyone else. The first time I intentionally drove a stake into the ground with a flag that said “This Is Me” was this morning—and look how that turned out.
“That’s not why I asked you to marry me, though. I did that because I saw you keep trying when you failed. You had this map of your life in your head, and when your route was blocked, you kept searching for other paths. You never gave up when the road got hard. And I wanted that for us. I wanted us to stick with each other. I wanted us to be ateam,Liz. Win or lose. Together.”
A Tobin montage plays in my head, from the way he looked up through his gilded eyelashes as he scrubbed that pot, to the blank look of shock five seconds after I screamed,I’m not his anything. And I can’t bear what’s coming. I can’t bear it, so I don’t think it, and I don’t feel it, and I don’t know it.
“But somewhere on the map, both of us thought we saw a better way and decided to take it without telling each other. We don’t support each other or tackle problems as a team. And I keep thinking about what you said on your birthday. When you left me. We’re not together, are we? We’re just… near each other. And that’s not enough.”
I’ve been so stupid. Only now do I realize everything that’s at stake.
