Come Alive (The Cityscape 2)

“My scar!” I screamed. “How could you have never asked about my scar?”

He sat in silence, watching me with wary eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was low and uneven. “I knew it had to do with the divorce, and you never want to discuss the divorce.”

“You never wanted to know where it came from? Your own wife? It never occurred to you that it was a source of pain and sadness and regret? You never wanted to know what it represented? To make me tell you, no matter how much it hurt me?”

“Of course I wanted to know, but whenever I bring up the divorce you turn frigid on me.”

“It scares me to think,” I said quietly, “that you might’ve taken her side anyway.”

“She didn’t mean to hurt you.”

My eyes crept up to his. “You knew?”

“Your mom told me once. She and your father had an argument, you jumped in the middle and she stabbed you by accident. And that’s what prompted the divorce. You can’t blame her for assuming that you’d already told me.”

“I don’t even know what to say.”

“And I don’t get how this relates to sleeping with another man. Are you trying to tell me that – ” he glanced down at my side, staring daggers at the scar just underneath my t-shirt. “That he asked? And you told him?”

“He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He knew it was painful, but he wanted to take some of that pain away.”

“Well, this just keeps getting better. Are you – this guy, David, do you have . . . ?”

My breath caught as I waited for his question. I didn’t know how I would tell him the truth, but if he asked, I would do it. I would find the strength to tell him that what David and I had had wasn’t just physical.

But instead he shook his head and looked away. “Never mind.”

“Never mind?” I asked.

“It hurts that you would share something like that with him, but you didn’t with me.”

“I know. And I am so, so sorry.”

“You say there were problems between us, but I didn’t see them. I thought, like a fool, that we were happy.”

“We are happy. But it doesn’t change the fact that everything is moving too fast for me, and I want to slow down.”

“Well, this is certainly one way to slow things down.”

I tried to hide the relief in my sigh. “So can we? At least until we sort all of this out?”

He was quiet for a long time. “It’s like you’ve put this . . . void in my chest. As if something’s gone missing, something that’s supposed to go right here.” His hand clapped over his heart. My breath caught audibly, and he turned his head to me. “Emptiness. Blackness. That’s how this feels.”

Tears burned in my eyes, but I blinked them back. “I understand,” I whispered.

“How could you understand?” he asked simply.

Because I, too, had lost something. And sometimes I thought my hollow chest might collapse from the weight of my grief.

He looked away again. “None of this is fair. I don’t know what I did wrong, that you’re saying and doing these things to me.”

~

Our conversations continued that way throughout the weekend. I thought I might suffocate from the apartment’s stale air, but consistent rain kept us indoors. Hours passed as I stared out the grey window, waiting for the next stream of questions. We were in his courtroom now, and I was on the stand.

He wanted to know how David and I had ended up in a hotel room the second time. And whether or not I had spent the night afterward. Reliving the details cheapened the experience. It made everything seem so dirty, when it had actually been its own kind of beautiful.

He continued to remind me that it wasn’t fair, that he didn’t deserve it, that he hadn’t done anything wrong. All things I accepted with an apology. He threatened to go see David.

It was easy for us to forget during working hours; we had no choice. But as soon as he picked me up, our masks came off. After the first couple nights, I didn’t think things could get worse, but as his shock wore off, he became more upset. I did my best to make things right by answering his every question and playing the role of honest and transparent wife.

He invited me back to bed on Tuesday. It was what I had wanted until he said the words aloud. I wasn’t ready, so I told him so. ‘How are you not ready?’ he had asked.

As weeks went by, his questions became more creative, more intrusive. But I felt that I owed him the truth, no matter how hard it was for both of us. I wasn’t sure what I feared more: that he might ask about my feelings for David, or that he might not. The question never came. I didn’t know if it was because it never occurred to him – or because he was afraid of the answer.

CHAPTER 23

ONE SOGGY, WINTRY MORNING in November, Bill came to the couch not long after sunrise. Deep sleep had eluded me lately, so I woke easily when the cushion dipped under his weight. He looked as puffy and tired as I felt, but his eyes narrowed on me. He stuck his hand between my legs.

I flinched and began to protest. His gaze was unnervingly fastened on me as he tugged gently on my underwear. “If you can do it with him,” he said quietly, “you can do it with me.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that. I thought about his words as I searched his face. It wasn’t until he stripped and climbed on top of me that I realized what he was after.

I swallowed. “He didn’t.”

He exhaled with closed eyes. He was positioned over me, but somehow not touching me. “I need this. I think. I’m revolted, but I also want you. Bad.” He dropped his head into my shoulder. “I want you,” he repeated, kissing my neck.

“We’re not in the right place.”

He dropped his weight on me, and I thought I felt his shoulders heave. “I want to come inside you,” he said in a watery voice.

“Not this way,” I said. “What if I was to get pregnant?”

He drew back and looked at me with red eyes. “And that would be so bad,” he whispered.

“I don’t want to bring a child into the world like this. I know you don’t either.”

“Please,” he said, kissing my cheek and putting his hand back between my legs.

I grabbed it. “I’m not ready.”

I could see him thinking, fighting his need. He sat back on his calves, still hard, and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Am I crazy to want you? I fantasize about it, but I don’t want to want you.”

“It’s normal to feel confused.”

“You told me you screwed him without a condom.”

“I did, but . . . he pulled out.”

“It took me years to get you to do that with me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry that you did it or sorry that you told me?”

I looked away, seeing no way that answering the question would help anything.

“It’s lucky you didn’t catch something,” he continued, “knowing that filthy piece of shit.”

I nodded, remembering the embarrassing ordeal of Bill marching me to the gynecologist to get tested. But deep down I knew that David wouldn’t put himself or me in that position. It had never occurred to me that he might, because I trusted him.

“Is this because of him?” Bill was asking. “Is that why you won’t have sex with me?”

“No,” I said, taken aback.

“But you’re still there. What do you need to get over him?”

“Nothing,” I said emphatically. “It’s over.”

“I just don’t think I believe that.”

My nostrils flared. “I’ve been completely open with you. I let you read my e-mails, my text messages. I tell you where I am all the time. This will never work if you don’t even try to trust me.”

“It’s going to be a long time before we get back there.” He went to the bedroom and shut the door. I knew he wasn’t coming back, so I turned on my side and closed my eyes until it was time to get up for work.

~

The

re was ringing. I blinked. How long had my desk phone been ringing? Bill was the only person Jenny would patch through without notification. I wasn’t surprised; he called frequently these days. Still, I braced myself. He had only dropped me at work an hour earlier.

“It’s me,” he said before I even spoke. The two somber words were enough to remind me that I was the source of his constant pain. “They’re sending me to take depositions in St. Louis for the rest of the week.”

“No,” I objected. “I don’t want you to go.”

“Well, you don’t really get a say in what I do right now.”

“I’m serious. I’m putting my foot down. You can tell the Specters that I won’t let you. We need to spend this time together.”

“It’s been over a month, and you won’t even sleep next to me.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. We can’t be apart right now.”

“What, are you worried I’ll revenge fuck someone else?”

The receiver slipped from my hand, but I caught it before it hit the ground. My mouth, however, hung open through the silence that followed.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a minute. “I didn’t mean that. I would never . . .”

“I just think you should stay,” I said gently. “You have to stay.”

“Honestly, I could use some time alone.”

“Then I’ll go to Gretchen’s for a few nights. You can have the place to yourself.”

“I can’t say no, you know that. I leave tonight.” There was a hesitation on the line. “Look, I meant what I said before. I don’t think we can move forward if you’re still talking to him.”