I recoiled, my heart thudding in my ears. “They don’t. You know that’s ridiculous. You two mean everything to me. How can you even say that?”
“If that were the case, you would’ve skipped a meeting or dinner, or managed to make it home on time once over the past seven months when I needed to talk to you about what was going on. With us…with Rory. Instead, I’ve had to deal with it all on my own. I just can’t live like this anymore, Wes. If you want me to stay here, Rory to stay here, then you need to get your own place so we can start the next steps of this process. I’m not trying to take Rory away from you. She loves you, and I know how much you care about her. I want her to be able to visit you—that’s not what this is about. I just want some semblance of normalcy, and visiting her father at some shoddy, run-down motel downtown isn’t normal.”
“But us being apart is? Or you moving her into your mom’s cramped condo? Look, I get it, okay? I hear you. I hear what you’re saying. I messed up, and I want to fix it, but…Addy,” I lifted my hand and brushed a piece of hair from her face. She remained still, not stopping me. “I love you. I love you and Rory more than anything in this world. If you want to move back to LaVergne, we can. If you want to sell this house and buy something smaller, if you want to go back to your old school—whatever you want, we’ll do it. I just need you to talk to me.”
“I’ve tried—”
“I know you’ve tried. I get it. I’m sorry I haven’t been here more. I’m sorry, okay? I’ve—” I cocked my head to the side, studying her and hoping to see a softness in her eyes or less tension in her neck, but she remained steady. “Addy, I’ve loved you longer than I ever lived without loving you. You’re a part of me, and I’m a part of you. We can’t just let that go because we hit a rough patch, can we? I’ve loved you from the time I was sixteen years old. I don’t know how to exist without you.”
“But that’s just it, Wes. You have been. We’ve shared a bed, passed each other in the hallway, traded off laundry duty, but that’s been it for more than a year now. We aren’t existing together anymore. You’ve been gone for a long time, and I’m really hurt by it. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, I just need time to figure out where my head is.”
“So, your solution to us being too distant is to have me move out?” I asked with a scoff.
She shook her head, barely looking at me as she popped a piece of pineapple in her mouth before dumping the spinach in a bowl and heading for the sink. “You don’t get it.”
“No, I really don’t. There’s one thing we can agree on. I never realized we were having problems at all, let alone ones bad enough to cause us to separate or, God forbid, get a divorce.” I whispered the word as if it were a profanity. “Rory needs both of us. I don’t want to do this to her. We have to find a way to work this out.” I moved toward her, placing my hand on the small of her back. She’d told me once it made her feel safe to have my hand there. As my skin rested on the fabric of her tank top, she looked up at me, and I caught a glimpse of sadness there for the first time. “Just let me come home. Please. Please don’t do this. I’ll do whatever you want… I’ll take Rory to therapy. I’ll stay in the guest bedroom indefinitely. I’ll be home before dinner every night. Hell, I’ll make dinner every night. We can talk as much as you want. I can take a week off, and we can reconnect. What will it take?” My eyes danced between hers, begging her to tell me something tangible I could do to make this all okay.
“You don’t get it.” She shook her head, breaking eye contact and turning back to the spinach as she ran it under the faucet, bouncing it under the water in our metal strainer. “I hear what you’re saying, and I know you’re trying. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, because I do. It’s just that…I know you think it’s what I want to hear, and maybe it is, but you can’t just…do that. I’m not a client or a deal, where you can just negotiate terms until I give in. For months, Wes, for months I asked you to meet me for dinner or to spend a weekend at home so we could reconnect. I asked you to spend more time with Rory. I asked you to take a week off so we could all get away. I told you how badly we were struggling, how much we needed to discuss everything, and you chose to ignore it. Or worse, you’d hear me and still refuse to act. Or you’d promise things would get better and then make no effort to see it through—”
“I hear you now,” I told her, reaching for her hair again, but this time, she jerked backward, shut off the faucet, and carried the spinach back to the island.
“You aren’t hearing me, though, Wes. That’s the point. I’m telling you that I need space. I need time to figure everything out, and you’re refusing to listen, even now. Even knowing that you not listening
