“I’m a human being, Sam. I’m a husband, even though I don’t have a wife anymore. I’m a father. I have responsibilities.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and looked up at the sky like the stars might have answers. “I’m not just around when you’re there.”
That made her feel incredibly guilty. It made her wonder if she had…if she had used him. Because she thought of all the times that she had taken comfort from him…
But then she thought of when she had offered it back. She didn’t think that she used him. Not all the way.
“I know that,” she said. “I know that you’re human being. You’re not just a taciturn, difficult man that I cannot seem to find my footing with.”
“You can’t find your footing with me because you’ve got a blindfold on. It’s hard to see the trail.”
That hurt. Mainly because it wasn’t completely untrue. She hated him for that a little bit. But she also couldn’t deny it.
“Okay. So here I am. My eyes are open.” It was such a dangerous thing to say. There in that neon glow. The devastating nature of his features too much right now. That bad boy date impression not fading away at all.
Except this was real life. And he was Logan.
She had nearly kissed him three years ago, and she had never addressed that. Not really. Certainly not out loud. Certainly not with him.
Maybe she had to.
“Okay. I almost kissed you. I almost let you kiss me. However you want to look at that. I felt very, very alone. You made me feel less alone. I felt like you understood me. Back even further than that, watching you with Becca… I just knew that… I could trust you. That anyone could. I knew that you were a good man. I was drawn to that. Because who wouldn’t be. You…you had to handle your life after all of that. I think when I was unraveling on that vacation, it was because I was still carrying all the things.”
Why did it make her feel guilty? To give voice to this. To the ways in which she’d felt like Will failed her then. She’d tried to lock it away. She’d tried to blame her sensitivity on her grief. But it was there, apparently, because she could call it all up now far too easily.
Not dealt with. Unexamined. Like so many other things.
She took a sharp breath. “Will is so great at his job. That’s all he does. He doesn’t manage the household. Or the finances. The food, the vacations, the packing. All of that is on me, and he didn’t mean to, but he doesn’t know how to handle things when I’m not a hundred percent, and some of that is my fault.”
That was truer than she’d realized. She was often her own unsupportive partner. The one demanding she push through.
“It is,” she repeated. “It is. I trained him to be that way. I taught him that I would handle all of that stuff. I’ve packed his lunches every day like he was going off to school. He never learned to do that for himself. The day that I didn’t pack his lunch after I had my surgery…he wasn’t mad at me. Don’t… Please don’t get the idea that he’s awful. He’s not. But he wants everything to be okay. He wants it so badly that sometimes I don’t feel like he can sit with the brokenness of it all. I was very broken. You were the only person who offered to try and hold me together. I will always be grateful for that.”
He let out a long breath. “It wasn’t a hardship to be there for you. Just so you know.”
“It wasn’t a hardship to be there for you either. Not that I did much.”
“You watched Chloe. Three days a week. Do you have any idea how long the list is of people I would have let have my daughter for that length of time in the aftermath of her mother’s death? A short list. It’s you and Will. What you did for her was no small thing.”
There was a hoarseness to his voice, and more emotion behind his words than she could dig into. Like there was a wall up in him too, but she didn’t have the strength to contend with what might come out if his crumbled. She was still dealing with the aftermath of her own wall failing.
She just didn’t have it in her.
She just didn’t. So she let it go. She didn’t press. Didn’t ask. Didn’t even come close.
“Thank you,” she said again. “For being there for me now. Because I do appreciate this. I know… I know we’re complicated.”
We.
We’re complicated.
Those words felt wrong, and illicit somehow, and she wanted to deny them and push them away, but that was part of the problem. Part of the issue with what she’d been doing.
She didn’t like things that were sharp or jagged either.
How could she be disdainful of Will’s inability to sit in brokenness when all she wanted to do was round off the edges? Make them easy. Make them palatable. It was what she did in their life. In their marriage. It was why she hadn’t been able to tell him she wasn’t okay. It was why she’d had to fold herself into Logan’s arms and rest there.
Because they made their marriage such a safe space that it couldn’t support anything difficult.
It couldn’t support her not fulfilling her role. Couldn’t support despair, or doubt or too much change.
