Something She Can Feel

“Don’t talk to me. I just want an answer.”

“No,” I said and I actually saw a weight fall from his body.

“Did he touch you? Kiss you?”

I paused and closed my eyes.

“No,” I lied.

Evan sat there and shook his head as if he was weighing this thing.

“I need you to decide what you’re going to do,” he said. “I’m your husband and I’ll always be your husband and I want you to be with me. But you have to decide if you want to be with me. You have to decide if you want this to work ... and move past this.” I didn’t look at Evan, but I could tell by his voice he was crying. “Because I’m willing to let it go. To start back where we were if you want to. To start our family. I can do that.” He slid his hand behind my back and after we sat there for a while, I leaned into him. I rested my head on his shoulder and j

ust stayed there. Neither of us went to work.

Chapter Twenty-two

“I’m so sorry, Journey,” Billie said. We were sitting in her car outside the yoga studio. After Evan and I lay in bed for a few hours, I said I wanted to go to yoga. He looked at me like I was crazy, like I’d shot myself in the foot, but I said I needed some air. Just to go somewhere to relax. “Okay,” he said, reaching for my car keys. “I’ll drive you.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I said to Billie. We’d already done the class and were waiting in her car for Evan to come get me.

“No, I feel like I did this somehow ... with my bad advice. I didn’t know how serious you were about the thing with Dame. I didn’t think it would go this far.”

“It was bad advice,” I said, laughing, “but really, if I didn’t want to go, there was no way any advice could’ve gotten me there. It was up to me in the end. I was just looking for someone to give me permission to do what I already wanted to do. Maybe it didn’t even matter what you said.”

“How did Evan catch you? How did he know you were going to be at the Throat?”

“He said he saw that I left my gym bag and he ran out of the house with it right when I pulled out of the driveway,” I explained. “He didn’t want me to get all the way to the gym and realize I didn’t have it, so he jumped in his car—my caring husband. He was able to follow me for most of the way, but then he lost me... . Only, I was going in a completely different direction than the gym. He said he sat in the car, just driving around for a little while, thinking which direction I might’ve gone in ... and then he ended up at the Throat.”

“Coincidence is a bitch sometimes,” Billie said.

“I’m not silly enough to believe in coincidences,” I said, hearing Dame in my head. “If you want to find one face in a crowd of a million, eventually you’ll find it.”

Billie nodded.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to try to make it work with Evan... . Both of you were right. I don’t know anything about Dame. It was a childish thing in the first place. Maybe just some country, desperate wife drama. I got bored.”

“Bored in Tuscaloosa? I couldn’t imagine,” Billie joked.

“As exciting as my life is here,” I said, laughing, “what I did wasn’t fair to Evan or Dame, so I’m moving on. I’m growing up and I’m going to accept my life the way it is. I’m lucky. What other husband in the world would put up with all this?”

“One you met on the Internet!”

“Exactly,” I said, watching Evan pull into the parking lot behind us.

“Now, don’t think this is crazy, but as your best friend, I have to ask,” Billie said.

“What?”

“I had your back when you got married. I had your back a little while ago when you announced that you wanted to have a baby ...”

“I know ... I know.”

“And even though I wasn’t sure if you really wanted to do either thing, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to be all up in your business.”

“What is it?”