Her eyes softened as she looked at me, giving me a look I’d never received from anyone else except my mother, like she valued my gesture and didn’t care about the error I’d made in the first place. She accepted me for me, looked past my shortcomings, and interpreted my flaws as quirks instead of failings. “I know it’s late. We can talk some other time.”
“I don’t mind…unless you have somewhere to be.”
Her smile widened, the softness in her gaze increasing.
I moved back to the couch and transferred my papers to the coffee table to give her room beside me.
She sat down, keeping a few feet between us. She crossed her legs, revealing her toned thigh through the slit of her dress. It was a long-sleeved dress that rose all the way to her neckline, covering most of her skin, giving her a classy spring look. The color was nice on her, the perfect complement to her bright eyes. “Well, I got divorced about a year ago. His name is David. We were married for three years before it ended.”
I didn’t ask any questions because I didn’t want to pry. I decided to let her tell me what she wanted me to know. That was why I’d opened up to her in the first place, because she didn’t ask me a million questions like other people did. She really listened, had a conversation with me, didn’t interrogate me.
Her eyes were downcast for a while, like she was reliving it. “With this job, I work long hours, I’m hardly at my apartment, and even when I am, I’m eating dinner and getting ready for the next day. It was always a problem in our relationship, and toward the end…he met someone else.”
I didn’t react to her words, but I pitied her, felt a little angry that her husband would give up so easily when he understood the nature of her work when they got married. He didn’t even have the integrity to leave the relationship first before he moved on. He waited until he slept with someone else and then took off.
“It was my fault. I worked too much. He told me he didn’t like it several times, and I never changed.”
“There’s no excuse to cheat on your wife.”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“He knew what he signed up for when he married you. He understood you were busy with this job. If he couldn’t handle it, he shouldn’t have asked to spend his life with you. He shouldn’t have promised commitment through thick and thin if he couldn’t deliver.” I had been married to a woman I didn’t love, and while offers came across my desk, I always remained faithful to her, even when she wasn’t faithful to me. I understood the parameters of marriage like everyone else, and cheating was unacceptable. I wasn’t a romantic guy. I just believed in honoring my word. “Don’t take the blame on to yourself. There were two people in that relationship—not one.”
She stared at me for a long time, her eyes not blinking, just the way mine weren’t. She held herself unsupported, her back straight and strong, her posture elegant like a queen at tea. “He married her six months after our divorce. So, I think they were seeing each other a lot sooner than what he told me. Every time I asked, he denied it, but I don’t believe him.”
I wasn’t a fan of this guy, and his lack of integrity made me wonder why she’d married him in the first place. She was professional, smart, kind… What did she see in someone like that? “He’ll do the same thing to her…give it time.” Disloyal people were always disloyal. The second a better opportunity opened up, they abandoned their ship and jumped onto the next one.
“I understood why he didn’t want to be with me anymore. I was never around, and we just grew apart. But the secrecy…the lying…that’s what bothers me. Because I’m an honest person, and to be married to someone who lies to you every day…” She shook her head. “That’s what hurts.”
“You have every right to feel that way.” When it was just the two of us alone together, it was easy for me to talk. It was like a train leaving a station, a really slow start, but I picked up speed the longer we went on, when I focused on our conversation with the same intensity that I focused on my work. “In time, you’ll meet someone better…and it’ll feel right.”
She watched me, her eyes trained on my face with the same intensity that I stared at her. “I don’t know. My job is so time-consuming. I can’t see that ever changing…because I love my job.”
“Then be with a man who accepts that.”
Her hands came together on her thigh, her fingers interlocked. “You think you’ll ever get remarried?”