Hate You Not

“If you’d like to wait a moment, I can put you through?”

“No thank you.”

I text again, thinking maybe he dropped his phone in the toilet or something funky.

How’s your Monday, cowboy?

Nothing. By Monday afternoon, I’m worried.

Did I do something to upset you, B?

Hours pass…and then it’s days. I wake up every morning feeling like I just got kicked in the chest. Am I crazy? How classic is it that I’m wondering what I did wrong? And how classic that the man I chose—the one I’m shocked to find that I desire with every fiber of my being, the one that makes my eyes go starry—would be yet another one who doesn’t want me back. Or if he does, he won’t…or can’t engage. Totally willing to take what I have to offer and give nothing in return.

About ten days after he leaves, he FaceTimes the kids during my shower, telling them he’s in Nepal. I listen from behind my bedroom door and feel like I might hurl at the sound of his voice.

The next week, I cave and send a few more texts.

One day: Hi there. Doing okay?

The next: I miss you. Hope you’re having a nice Tuesday.

Later that day: Any way you can let me know what happened?

He doesn’t answer until after that one. Hours later, he sends three words that hit me like bricks falling off a chimney. June. I’m sorry.

I rage around for a few days, and then I cry. How can I move forward when I don’t understand what went wrong? I break down and spill the beans to Leah, and she takes me out to Albany to go dancing one night. I get sick off one beer like a lightweight and come home with blisters on both of my heels.

Six days after that, the kids and I get a package from Nepal: a tin filled with sweet and slightly gooey stuff called Pustakari.

For the rest of June, we see and hear nothing of him. One night when it’s boiling hot and I’ve spent all day floating in the pool, conjuring up memories, I stay up late and try to read about him and his family online—looking for…just anything, I guess. I find a charity bearing his mama’s name, but it’s headquartered in Washington, D.C., so I don’t think it relates to her. Instead, my searching leads me to the write-ups about Sutton and Asher.

History, I tell myself as I lie in Margot’s bed late that night after she’s just had a nightmare. History is all you have with him. Well, history and chemistry.

I kiss Margot’s head and snuggle up beside her, inhaling her sweaty kid smell.

I promise myself that I’ll stop thinking about him. It’s really no surprise, the way he did me. Men are men, aren’t they?

Shawn and Mary Helen come over for dinner on the Fourth of July, along with my dad, Leah’s mom, and Leah herself, and somehow the topic of Burke comes up at the dinner table. The kids wolfed down their food and are out back with the pigs and goats. I’m in the kitchen, but as soon as I step back into the dining room with the rolls, silence falls.

“That’s what I thought,” I say sharply.

Leah fakes a coughing spell, then asks my Dad when he’s going back to Mexico, which, given what we know about that, distracts everyone.

I think about Burke every time I water my mom’s ferns or drop by the water cooler to pump gasoline or even walk past my screened porch swing. I wish I didn’t.

I think of that guarded look he got after I said that bit about the happily ever after, of how hard he hugged me on the swing before he left, and I wish I knew what happened to him. I could tell myself he’s just a ghosting dickbag, but…I don’t think so. For just a second, I saw him—the real him—and I really liked that person. But I guess ghosting dickbags can have nice personalities and still be awful people.

One morning after I take the kids to school in August, I drive myself to Mama’s grave and sit down in the fluffy green grass.

“Tell me why I miss him so much, Mama. I’m so dumb and stupid. And I’m really tired of feeling lonely.”

Tears are coming—I can feel the prickle and the tightness in my throat. Right at that moment, a black and orange butterfly perches right atop the letters of her name, right where his hand was that day. It just hangs out there and flaps its wings for a while. Then it flits to me and sits on my hand for the longest time; I think it has to be almost five minutes.

Tears fall down my cheeks and drip from my chin. When the butterfly goes, I do my best to wipe them.