Do I Know You?(40)

His speech startles me. I never knew he even had this worry. I struggle to quiet the part of my mind looking for fault—mine for not asking? His for not saying something? It doesn’t matter. The last couple days have dislodged the truth.

“Well, I think—I know that if you’re fulfilled in what you’re doing, everyone in your life will feel it,” I say. “It will make them happy, too.”

Instead of waiting for him to reply, I hammer out my next punch. While the chains ring, I notice Graham’s expression has softened slightly.

“It’s easy to talk to you,” he says, and I’m caught off guard by the undercurrent of gratitude running within his casual words. “I like that. I haven’t felt that in . . .” He pauses. “A while.”

I place one glove on the bag, steadying its swing while I face him. Now I hear not only honesty in his voice. There’s admission, too. It’s achingly gratifying to hear, because it means he understands. He knows this, this levity, this comfort, this fun, is how things should be. I hold my husband’s hesitant gaze, steady, unsure, hopeful.

“Jumping jacks!” the instructor shouts out.

I roll my eyes grandly. Graham closes his in suffering silence. We separate and remove our gloves, officially unable to keep talking during this portion of the workout. Flinging my hands up into the exercise, I’m sad the moment was interrupted, but much, much gladder it happened.

The room echoes with the soles of shoes tapping and thumping on the rubber floor for what feels like eternity. I lose count of my jumping jacks. I hear myself wheezing, hear Graham doing so next to me. When the instructor calls for us to return to the bags, my eyes lock with Graham’s as he holds ours in place for me.

We fall into a rhythm, punching, alternating, sometimes speaking, sometimes not. Finally, after what feels like forever, the workout ends. Graham and I aren’t the only ones who collapse on the floor, too tired even to rub the fire from our arms. My chest heaving with Graham laid out flat next to me, it drops onto me how incongruous this moment is, how unexpected—how freeing.

I can’t help laughing. The truths we shared weren’t necessarily happy ones, but I feel lighter regardless. I’m glad they’re out in the open. Over genuinely respectable intermediate boxing, Graham and I managed to flirt and be honest with each other, have fun and admit complicated truths. It’s proof I didn’t know I was looking for—not only that it’s possible, but how good it feels.

Beside me, Graham catches my eyes. He isn’t laughing, but when he smiles, somehow I know it’s him. The real him. I smile back, a stolen, shared moment. Like performers meeting backstage in the theater of our own lives.

“Oh, it wasn’t that bad, was it?” I hear David’s voice and look up to find him standing over us, impossibly chipper. “Who’s up for brunch?”





22


    Graham


BRUNCH IS MUCH needed following the intensity of the workout. We head for the buffet, where I go for one of everything. I have a hard time fitting onto my plate the quantity of sweets and savories my boxing-worn body is demanding.

Eliza seems to be doing the same. What this results in, I’m delighted to find, is us repeatedly bumping into each other. First when I’m going for the French toast tongs while she’s craning to examine the potatoes past me and our shoulders connect. Once more when I step back from the omelet bar and there she is, waiting for hers. Finally, over the parfaits, when our hands cross reaching for the yogurt cups. Each innocuous collision is its own exhilarating jolt.

There’s only one strawberry left in the whole tray of parfaits. I go for the yogurt next to it, leaving the berry for my wife. They’re her favorite.

She notices. The misty gray color of her eyes warms, like the sun behind clouds. When she shoots me a smile, I forget for a second we’re playing a part. It feels like we’re just here celebrating our anniversary as we planned.

But I’m grateful for the role-playing. Boxing was surprising. When Eliza pitched the whole idea of stranger-selves, I was willing to try it, but I wasn’t sure it would work. But there’s no denying we’re getting closer. Some of what she said hurt, not like insults, just painful confessions. Knife wounds I don’t want to forget. I hadn’t known she didn’t feel seen—it’s sometimes how I felt at home, too. Like we kept expecting each other to be who we’d always been, and whenever something didn’t fit those preconceptions, it created distance.

Here, I’m seeing her. I have to, with how attuned I’ve become to her, parsing what’s real and what’s pretend. She’s seeing me, too. Her reassurance about my professional insecurity, veiled though it was, felt good.

Now we just have to figure out how to bring this back home with us.

We settle into our seats with our plates heaping. Today we’re inside, swapping the sunlight for the restaurant’s modern wood interior. Eliza and I, ravenous, don’t speak for stuffing our faces. David doesn’t seem to mind, happily keeping up a steady stream of local marine-life facts.

“Did you know”—he holds up his pancake-laden fork with professorial emphasis—“the Sur Ridge is an underwater mountain range, home to over two hundred and sixty different species of animals?”

Eliza and I shake our heads. I hold in laughter. His question presupposes there was a chance we did know the Sur Ridge is an underwater mountain range, home to over two hundred and sixty different species of animals. No, David, I’m sorry to say they passed this subject over in first-year Civil Procedure.