You Deserve Each Other(94)

The notification light on my phone is flashing. With shaking fingers, I toss it into the back where I hope it becomes irretrievably lost. I close my eyes but all I see is that smashed box of wedding invitations in my hands. When I lift my gaze to the windshield, my mind conjures up Nicholas standing in front of my car. A down-low heat ignites and ripples its way up, my anger a thundering roar. Hurt me? I’ll hurt you more. Our old standby.

He has his feet braced apart as though he expects me to run him over but stands his ground anyway. I mouth a single word of warning. Move.

I read his lips. No.

We stare each other down. I let the car bump forward a few inches. Nicholas’s eyes fly wide but he doesn’t back off, calling my bluff. Not a wise choice. I honk my horn and he ignores it, planting a hand on my hood like his touch alone can stop me. To my undying frustration, I feel that touch. It’s unforgivable.

I love him, I love him. I don’t have to love every little thing about the man, but I love the man. He never said I love you back. Say you love me? That’s what he said. But why would he say that if he didn’t love me? What about the note he left calling me the most beautiful person he’s ever known? What about the straw wrapper bracelet? He kept it. What a nothing thing that I made. What a nothing thing that he kept.

I refuse to believe we’re still on opposite sides, but I also have a habit of ignoring reality.

The mist has thickened and it’s foggy out as well, so I switch on my headlights as I reverse out of the parking lot. I can’t sit still for too long or I’ll combust. My conjured Nicholas dissipates in the high beams, gone with the flourish of my hand.

My soft, raw heart keeps presenting alternatives to what is happening. Defense mechanisms. Maybe he loves you, but he just doesn’t want to get married anymore. That’s not so bad. It’ll stay the way it is now. It’s finally feeling good again, even when it isn’t always easy.

But then I remember Nicholas down on one knee, the rest of the world blending into oblivion. Peering up at me anxiously, heart in hand. It’s not enough for you to be my girlfriend. I need you to be my wife.

Not anymore, it seems. Maybe he only loves me eighty percent. No. There’s no such thing as loving somebody eighty percent.

Am I okay staying with this man if it turns out he does love me but doesn’t want to wear my ring on his finger? Maybe he’ll change his mind someday. Maybe he didn’t mean to throw out six boxes of wedding invitations. Maybe he meant to put them in storage but got the bags mixed up. It’s all an accident, a misunderstanding, and we’ll laugh about this someday.

Either that or in a few months, Nicholas will have moved on to somebody else. This mystery woman will sleep on the palm-leaf comforter he and I picked out together. She’ll have the purple front door, and the narrow middle bedroom that could one day be a nursery. She’ll have Nicholas’s smiles, his skin on hers, his breath coiling in her hair while she sleeps. She’ll have Nicholas.

I could pretend I never looked inside the trash bag. I could drive home right now and come up with an excuse. I’ll say that after I left his Jeep in the driveway with the keys still in the ignition, food on the passenger seat, I was gripped by a sudden, all-consuming desire to get in my car and drive to the mall. I’ll say my phone died. I won’t acknowledge what I saw in the trash and it’ll be like it never happened. I can’t remember if I shoved the box back into the bag before I left, or if I tied it up. I hope I did. If I just left it sitting there, he’ll know I found out.

His actions last night make no sense today. How could I have misread him so wrongly? Maybe he only made love to me because he’d been driving all night and he was tired. He wasn’t himself. He woke up regretting what we did, possibly feeling taken advantage of. He’s mad at me. He thinks I tricked him.

The hours slip away as I drive and drive and drive. It’s dark when the road inevitably takes me back to Morris, even though I beg it not to. I still have no idea what I’m going to do. I don’t have any cash left after refilling on gas and keeping myself busy all day, which just leaves me with my credit card. The second a hotel charges me for a night’s stay, it’s going to pop up on his phone because we share the account and he gets a notification whenever a charge is made.

I’m hungry and haven’t eaten anything today, so I park in front of Jackie’s and go get two large orders of fries. I sit on the hood of my car and eat, the food warm in my cold fingers. I know what’s coming. I knew it since I handed my card to the cashier, and I’ve accepted it, which is why I don’t move a muscle when a Jeep Grand Cherokee rolls into the parking space next to mine.

I just stare straight ahead and eat another fry. I feel him watching me. Is this what he wanted? Either I know him better than anyone on this earth or I don’t know him at all. There is no in-between.

Nicholas leaves his car. Out of the corner of my eye I see that he’s clutching a dented blue box of invitations, and my throat burns like I’ve swallowed acid. “Naomi,” he says.

I can’t do this. “Please don’t. You win, okay? It’s over. I’ll end it so you don’t have to.”

He sits down next to me, car creaking under his weight. He balances the box carefully on his lap, and just having it this close makes the splinters of my heart prick my chest walls. We’ll never sit down and address them together. Our loved ones will never open them and smile, and say, They’re really getting married, then. They’re really going to do it. We’ll never face each other across a flower-strewn aisle and promise ourselves to each other forever.