Every Wrong Reason(73)

“Mr. Bunch.”

I nearly smiled, but caught myself. “He’s going to come talk to you again I think.”

“Mr. Bunch?”

I threw a chip at her. “No, Jay. I’m convincing him to go to college.”

Her eyebrows drew down and her shoulders sagged. “Do you think he’s serious?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

“Me too.” She sat down on the edge of my desk and opened her soda with a long, pink fingernail. “How’s the divorce?”

My stomach sank. I had just been contemplating texting him about Jay and Andre. Old habits die hard apparently. They die really hard.

“Uh, we’re still at a standstill. Neither one of us will budge.”

“When’s your next mediation?”

“Not until March. I guess I never realized how long this stuff took.” I stared down at my desk, cluttered with papers to grade, papers to hand back, pencils, whiteboard markers and other odds and ends. “Do you think I’m making a mistake?” I asked the mess.

Kara was quiet for a long time and when she finally spoke her voice was gentle and reserved. “Do you think you’re making a mistake?”

I looked up at her and tried to decide. “It’s normal to question something like this, right? At least I would think so. Except that I can’t stop questioning it. I can’t stop going over my marriage and the night we decided to get a divorce. I can’t stop thinking that there was more we could have done.” I took a deep breath and tried to figure out what I was really trying to say. “I just got finished telling a student that the best things in life are hard work and that he shouldn’t stop trying just because they force him to try harder. He should try harder and harder and harder until he gets what he wants. Isn’t the same true for me? For Nick and me?”

Kara frowned at me. “This is why I took so long to tell you about my divorce. I needed to leave Marcus. He was an awful person. But you… your circumstances are completely different. Neither one of you are bad people, you just… I don’t know, you fell out of love. That happens too. There are all kinds of reasons people get divorced. No reason is right or wrong, just different.”

But mine felt wrong. All of my reasons felt wrong.

I kept a running tally of them in my head. I always had. Everything he did wrong, everything I did wrong, everything that we did wrong together I tallied it up in my mind like the worst kind of scoreboard. And then I’d used that ledger to wage war on him and our divorce. I’d used it to attack him, to show him that we needed to separate and I’d held it over his head ever since.

Did that mean we shouldn’t get a divorce, though?

Maybe he wasn’t as toxic as I’d made him out to be, but there were still facts. We didn’t get along. We couldn’t stand each other. We were better off apart.

Right?

I met Kara’s concerned gaze and told her, “I’m sorry you went through this. I’m sorry that you were hurt so badly.”

She waved it off, “It was a long time ago.”

“It still cuts deep.”

Her gray eyes flashed with proof that divorce cut deep, so deep and jagged it was like death. The death of something sacred… something holy and set apart. Marriage, no matter how short or long, was bound in vows and promises made from our very souls. Severing that tie was like murdering a part of your body.

I felt that daily. I felt it in a way that I knew would never go away.

Kara could talk cavalierly about how she had to go, but she still went through this. She still grieved. She still let those vows wither and die.

“Thank you,” she whispered, blinking brightened eyes. “You’re a good friend.”

“You’re a good friend too.”

“And thank god we have each other. We can become spinsters together.”

“Can we get a cat?”

“Babe, we’ll get cats. Dozens of them. So many that our clothes will be covered in cat hair and we’ll have to pick it off our food before we can eat.”

“That’s disgusting.” But I smiled because I really did like that picture. I liked the idea that I would never be completely alone. I could always become a crazy cat lady with Kara and carpool with her to work daily.

My future wasn’t as bleak as I once thought it would be.

She sighed. “Okay, I have to get back to work. I think I was supposed to be in a meeting five minutes ago.”

“With who?”

“Kellar and that kid that flooded the boy’s locker room.”

I snorted a laugh. “Good luck with that.”

“I don’t need luck,” she mumbled on her way out the door. “I need someone else to flood a locker room so I don’t have to go.”

I watched her leave and waited another minute before I pulled my phone from my purse. I opened my text messages with every intention to text Nick. I had to tell him…

Something.

I didn’t know what, I just… what? I needed to hear from him?

But why?

My fingers hovered over the screen. I didn’t have anything to say to him. I was supposed to be furious with him for causing so much trouble during mediation. I should have wanted nothing to do with him.

And yet I couldn’t stop myself. It was like my body was possessed by the ghost of Christmas past.