23
Igot back late that night, just before midnight. The me who’d existed in college might not have considered this late, but the me who had to get up to work early the next day sure as hell did.
I had been out to a club, nothing fancy, just somewhere I could grab a couple of drinks and switch off my brain in the aggressive noise of somewhere loud and cheap. The music and the conversation had been enough for me to get my mind off the worst of the bad thoughts running around my brain, but a few girls had come up to me and tried to buy me drinks. I had found myself wishing they were Amaya. I knew it was crazy, but I knew if I had her by my side, that night wouldn’t have been half as bad as it had turned out to be. We could have danced, got drunk, flirted a little. Maybe she would have dragged me home sooner rather than later so we could continue our dancing somewhere a little more private.
I didn’t expect her to be up. If she was sick as she’d said, then she would want to get an early night and catch some sleep to try and feel better. Only thing was, I was pretty sure she was making that up. Maybe I was hoping to catch her out, or maybe I was just hoping to actually talk to her for a change. The two of us had been dancing around the point for weeks now, and one of us needed to come out and say what we were actually feeling after all this time.
As soon as I clicked the door shut behind me, I could hear the water running. I assumed she would be getting herself a glass of water and was about to offer to do it for her, but then I remembered the way she’d spoken to me before. No. I needed to stand my ground. This woman had come into my house, my life, and I wasn’t going to bend over backward making sure every little thing was perfect for her.
I went to the kitchen and found a couple of cartons of ice cream half-eaten on the counter. Guess her stomach wasn’t feeling that sore. She was cleaning a bowl at the sink. She must have heard me come in, but she was playing like she hadn’t. She didn’t turn around as I got closer, but I could see her jaw tensing slightly as I approached.
“Hey,” I finally greeted her. “You’re feeling better.”
“Yup.” She turned to me, crossing her arms across her chest. She was wearing an old T-shirt of mine, one she’d borrowed a while ago. So, she couldn’t have been that mad at me.
“Where were you?” she asked. “You smell like booze.”
“I was out at a bar,” I replied calmly. “That all right with you?”
She tightened her grip on her arms but nodded.
“Of course, it is,” she replied. “I can’t tell you what to do.”
She turned back to the sink and continued cleaning up, and I knew I should have gone to bed and dealt with this in the morning. There was nothing for us to say to each other, and we were only going to end up in another argument. But I couldn’t go to bed with things like this between us. I had to know why, what I had done, why I deserved to be treated this way when I felt as though I had done nothing wrong to her.
“You want to tell me why you’re acting like this?” I demanded finally, voice tenser than I had intended it to be. She turned to me, and I was stunned to see tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes. She quickly brushed them away with the back of her hand and looked me dead in the eye.
“You really want to know?” she challenged me, as though she was giving me a chance to back out. I nodded.
“I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t sure,” I promised her. “Tell me. I need to know. I’m your husband, Amaya.”
She lowered her gaze as those words came out of my mouth like they were the last things she wanted to be reminded of. Apparently, I couldn’t do anything right this evening. I waited for her to speak, and she inhaled and exhaled a few times, getting herself in hand. A few more tears leaked out of the corner of her eyes. I didn’t like it when she cried. I wanted to stop her, but I couldn’t do that as long as I had no idea what it was that had upset her in the first place.
“Please, just tell me what the fuck is going on,” I pleaded with her. A million possibilities were floating through my mind. Was she sick? Backing out of this? Was there someone else in the picture? Was she pregnant?
“I’m in love with you,” she finally blurted out, and the entire world came to a halt around me.
“What?” I demanded, but the words hadn’t had time to sink in before I spoke. They spun in the air in front of us, and she looked as though she wanted to scrabble them back, to make it so she had never spoken them in the first place. I knew how she felt. That had changed everything, and now that they were out, it was way worse than it had been before. I wanted to rewind, to go to bed instead of coming in here and talking to her. It was late, she could have been drinking, maybe she didn’t—
“I mean it.” She stared at me, clear-eyed and certain. “I’m sorry, Kristo, but I’m sure.”
I planted my hands on the table and stared down at a spot right in front of me. If I could just stare at the spot on the marble, I would be fine. I could pretend none of this was actually happening and leave it all behind. Because there was no way in hell she could have meant what she said. No way in fucking hell.
“Kristo, I’m so sorry,” she blurted out, trying to fill the silence between us. I could barely hear my own thoughts. They were all crowding in on top of each other and making a mess of the thoughts and memories that my mind was trying to make sense of in that moment.
I started to pace. She might as well have slapped me on the face for the kind of shock this had sent me reeling into. How could she have thought it was a good idea to tell me this? I wasn’t the love type. I wasn’t the kind of guy women fell in love with, at least not for more than a night. If we hadn’t been dumb enough to get married, that was all I would have been to her, a memory, a one-night-stand, a regret. But as it was, I was her husband, and she was standing here in front of me telling me that she loved me, and I had to find a way to handle that.
I stayed quiet for a long time as I tried to think of something to say, and I could feel her watching me the entire time. Finally, I looked up at her once more, figuring that if she had been honest, the least I could manage was to give her the same courtesy.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” I finally admitted. She nodded, looked down, and the tears began to splash on to the marble below her. I wanted to take it back at once, to pull her into my arms and say whatever I needed to in order to make this right, but I couldn’t. I felt like my head had been frozen solid, no thoughts breaking through the ice. I wanted to thaw, but I couldn’t. She left the room, and I wasn’t sure if I should follow her, but a moment or two later, she emerged again with a handful of papers in her hand. It took me a moment to figure out what they were, but then I recognized them, the contracts.
“I never signed these,” she told me quietly, placing the contracts down on the counter in front of me. I didn’t know what to say.
“I was going to, but then I just thought—I guess I wanted to pretend like I actually had some control in this situation,” she admitted. One of the pages began to stain with the spreading moisture of her tears, where she had put it down on the counter.
“I’m sorry to let you down like this,” she continued, and I realized that this was a preplanned speech, one meant to soften me up for a breakup, for her to leave. No. No.
“I’ll pay you back for all the money you gave to the care home,” she promised. “I won’t take anything from you. And for the car as well, if you want.”