Addicted After All(75)

I never asked why he refused to marry again or to even date. But now that he’s chosen to do it with a girl practically Ryke’s age—it only makes me sick.

I try to breathe, and my ribs ache. I need air.

Without a word, I just head through the sliding glass doors, the moon illuminating the deck. I bypass the hot tub on the way to the railing.

I just…

I look up at the sky, full of stars, a glowing moon. And I inhale the sticky air, pain shooting through my lungs as they expand. I wince and rest my forearms on the railing, bent over like a force bears on my shoulders. Gravity is tugging me towards the ocean. Bringing me down.

I hear the glass door open and shut, but I don’t turn to see which sorry person has decided to spend extra time with me.

“Do you remember the Cayman Islands trip?” Lily asks, staring at the water in reverence.

My heart pounds, an added beat, happy it’s her. Here. With me. “When we were seven?” I think hard, trying to wash away the blurry haze of our childhood.

She nods. “Our dads had a business trip for the week, and they brought us on this yacht.”

It starts coming back. We were carted around to most of their meetings instead of being kept in daycare. Just us two and a ton of older cigar-smoking men. “We built a fort in the bow with couch cushions,” I recall. I smile at the image of her thin build and big eyes. She was quiet and shy and when the stewards came around to ask us if we’d like any drinks, she’d whisper her order in my ear.

I also can’t remember a night where we didn’t sleep in the same bed. Innocent sleepovers. At first they all were, and somewhere along the way, we changed. I fell in love with her.

She smiles at a memory. “You used to tell me that if I didn’t hold onto the railing, I’d fall right off the boat. Like an automatic spring would pop up underneath my feet and catapult me overboard.”

I nod a couple times. “I didn’t want you to get too close.” I was scared of my best friend drowning. I feared that possibility over my own death as a kid. And then a bigger memory triggers. “You realize we were husband and wife back then.”

She squints at me, trying to picture this.

I gape, teasingly. “You can’t remember our first wedding, love?” I touch my heart. “I’m wounded.” It was right before the Cayman Islands trip. We were just playing pretend, but after we went through the “ceremony” in our backyard, I called Lily my wife on the boat. My dad even fed into it, telling me to “go get my wife for dinner” when Lily was taking too long in the shower.

In our twenties, I never thought we’d be here again. With these feelings more intense than the first ones. With love more powerful. A bad day can overturn into a better one. And all we have to do is be with each other.

Unable to hide her own smile, she says, “We were husband and wife.”

“We were.” I wrap my arm around her waist, bringing her closer. And I kiss her nose.

She’s glowing.

And the pressure on my chest—I realize that it’s gone. Just like that.

I felt my son move tonight. It’s a thought that puts every irritation aside. For the longest time, I thought maybe he hadn’t really been alive. Maybe he was going to be swept from us.

I recognize now what’s important to me. Him. Her. All three of us. “Lil…” I stare down at her green eyes that glimmer in the moonlight. “I’m remarrying you.”

Her lips part. “What?” We haven’t brought marriage up since before I first relapsed, over a year ago.

I turn to her and cup her cheeks in my hands. “Someday we’re going to have another wedding, and it’s going to blow our seven-year-old one out of the f*cking water.”

Her smile rises, but it’s filled with heartache, and one of her tears falls on my hand. “Lo,” she whispers, “it’s okay if it never happens, as long as we’re together…it’s enough.”

I screwed it up for us when I relapsed. She believed in something and then I crushed it. “Seven-year-old Lily loved being married to me,” I tell her with a weak smile. “I gave you a million piggyback rides.”

“You said that’s what married couples do,” she notes, her eyes right on mine.

My hands fall to her hips. “Someday I’m going to make it right again,” I say softly. “Promises from me don’t mean much.” I know this. “So I’m going to give you something better.” I shift her behind me, and then I easily lift her onto my back.