The Good Widow(20)
“I’m his,” I offer.
“Yeah.” He gives me a heartbreaking smile. Like one of those smiles that makes the person look so sad you wish there were another word for that facial expression. “And we wore them to run errands. I think we went to Home Depot and got the car washed. Things like that. And we’d laugh to ourselves when people would raise their eyebrows like, ‘Who are those people?’ And I just remember thinking that it doesn’t get better than this. To be with someone who got me. Who would wear those ridiculous T-shirts.”
I smile at him to let him know I understand. I remember that feeling with James. Being so in love that the world felt like it belonged to us and everyone else just happened to be living in it.
“When we were first dating,” I said, “we had an entire weekend with nothing planned. So we decided to spend it in bed. We’d just seen some romantic comedy where the couple did that. I think we lasted twelve hours until we finally had to get up because there were crumbs everywhere and we got sick of binge watching whatever show it was.” I leave out the part about how we had sex three times and decided we were just too tired to go for a fourth. James had asked, “How do people in porn do it?” and shook his head as he pulled on his boxer briefs.
“Isn’t the beginning the best?” Nick asks, and I nod. “And the middle. I just didn’t think we’d get to the end part so soon. I thought we’d grow old together. Like blue-hair-and-plastic-hips old.”
I notice a pair of newlyweds nuzzling in front of me, her diamond ring and wedding band hard to miss as she wraps her hand around the back of his neck, returning his kisses. I’m jealous. They’re celebrating the start of their life together. The same way we did.
James and I also honeymooned in Maui.
This is something I haven’t mentioned to Nick, because saying it out loud will cheapen that experience for me. Like it’s no longer special to me and James because he also took his mistress there. Which, if I’m being completely honest with myself, is true.
I watch the couple toasting each other with their Bloody Marys. The layers of their onion haven’t started to peel back. They aren’t to the part where she has to bite her tongue when he leaves his wet towel wadded on the bathroom floor again, and he hasn’t had to swallow his shitty remarks when she buys yet another pair of two-hundred-dollar shoes they can’t afford. The niceties and threshold for understanding haven’t slowly morphed into insults and raised voices. They’re still in that blessed time before the gloves come off, before they say fuck it, roll up their sleeves, and get in the ring.
“I feel bad for pushing you to get on this plane.”
“Don’t. I made up my own mind—I’m a big girl,” I say, pulling my jean jacket tighter across my chest, the recycled cold air blasting me from the overhead fan above us. I reach up to twist it closed but can’t quite get it.
“Here, let me.” Nick barely raises his long arm and shuts it off. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you decided to come. I don’t think I could have done this alone.” His voice catches, and he looks away quickly.
“Do you believe in karma?” he asks.
“You mean do I think they died because they were being unfaithful?”
“No, I actually meant do you ever wonder if you did something at some point and the universe is saying, ‘Here’s your retribution.’”
Before I can answer, he keeps going. “Sometimes I wonder what I did.” He looks down. “I’ve beaten myself up for the times I snapped at her after I’d been on a tough twenty-four-hour shift or when I lost my temper with a driver who cut me off on the 405 freeway. I wasn’t even close to perfect. Not to others. And certainly not to Dylan.”
“Neither was I,” I say, seeing flashes of our argument the last day I saw James. Dresser drawers slamming as he packed his bag. The accusation he slung at me, his words as heavy as a baseball bat. My hot tears after his ride pulled away.
“The last time you saw her—where did she tell you she was going?” I ask.
“To Arizona to visit her parents. That she’d be back in a few days.” He shakes his head. “She insisted I didn’t need to drop her off at the airport—something I still did, even after almost two years together. Now I know why.” He turns and looks out the window, and I follow his gaze, squinting at the sun.
I think of the first time James dropped me off at LAX. We’d only been dating for six weeks, and Beth and I were taking a girls’ trip to Vegas.
“You don’t have to drive us,” I said as I printed out my boarding pass, excited to be in group A on Southwest.
“I want to drop you off. I’m going to miss you,” he said, circling his arms around my waist as I watched the paper slide out of the printer. “Three days apart!”
“Are you really this romantic? Or is it because we’re still in the honeymoon stage? This is going to wear off, right?” I laughed, leaning my head to the side so he could kiss my neck.
“Never,” he said, turning me around to face him.
“Good,” I said, putting my hands on his stubbly cheeks and kissing him.
And he was right; it didn’t wear off.
It broke off.
As abruptly as a plate that falls to the kitchen floor. Seconds before, you’d held the perfect porcelain circle in your hand. And then, as soon as it hits the tile, it breaks in two jagged parts. Which is exactly how I’d describe the shift in James when he stopped loving me the same way. My romantic, big-hearted husband changed shape—into a fragment of who he’d been.