Anywhere With You

Prologue My Husband Left Me for the Rowing Machine

Prologue

My Husband Left Me for the Rowing Machine

Fourteen Months Ago

Years from now, when I think back to the moment my husband left me for my rowing machine, I hope I forget I was holding the penis straw.

If I’d known where the conversation was headed, I might’ve set it down. He was just being so casual about the whole thing, explaining that he was ending our marriage the way one might mention a particularly filling soup they’d had for lunch.

When he’d first said the words “I’m leaving,” I hadn’t believed him.

“Is this a prank?” I’d asked. Or maybe I’d only thought it, which is absurd because Rich doesn’t “believe” in pranks the way other people don’t “believe” in social media or fabric softener.

But what other explanation could there be?

This wasn’t supposed to go this way. Rich isn’t this kind of man.

We aren’t supposed to be this kind of couple.

But this is real. He’s leaving me for a rowing machine, or—rather—the new lease on life it represents. And I’m left holding the phallic party straw.

“Life is a current, Charley,” he’s telling me as he scrambles around our (former) marital bedroom. “We can’t fight it. If we drag our oars in the water, too scared of where we might go, we won’t stand still, but drift off course from our destiny.”

“Off course from our destiny,” I repeat as though he’ll hear how ridiculous he sounds if I manually rewind the tape.

But how else should I respond to the motivational gobbledygook he’s parroting back from this morning’s Sunrise EDM Bootcamp?

How should I react when the man I chose to build a life with decides to dismantle it brick by brick because a fitness influencer named Evian reminded him of the mere possibility of more ?

The idea of someone, anyone , better than me.

I pinch the straw penis between my forefinger and thumb. “We were supposed to finish Oppenheimer tonight.” I’m blatantly bargaining at this point.

He does his stiff-shouldered inhale thing. As a confrontation-averse Midwesterner, it’s the closest he gets to an eye roll.

The vibration of the phone in my pants pocket interrupts Rich’s performative exhale and cuts into the gesture’s overall effectiveness.

The tiny buzz wears out his last shred of patience and empathy for me as the woman he’s actively abandoning based on his tenuous interpretation of scripted exercise affirmations.

“Get it. It might be work,” he dares me. Is that what this apparent midlife crisis is really about?

I take the bait and check my phone—it very well could be work—but I send the call to voicemail when I see it’s my sister, Laurel.

“What’s so wrong with caring about my job?”

“You hate your job, Charley.”

“Everyone hates their job.”

“And still, you love it more than me.” He lays the statement down like a pair of twos he thinks will win him the game.

A little dark brown curl falls onto his forehead.

His Clark Kent curl. I liked that curl. Now I hate it.

“We’ve only been married less than a year, and we’re already glorified roommates.

How long are we supposed to go through the motions? ” he asks.

The motions. The words sear into my skin. The way he says it, it’s almost as though we’re partners—active participants in a ruse to fool our friends, our families, and the state of Minnesota. Only I didn’t know we were going through the motions. I thought we were in love.

Sure, we aren’t a passionate couple, but we’re something better: Stable.

Compatible. We want similar lives and like the same shows.

Some of the same shows. Not all the same shows.

I can’t invest in every Walking Dead spin-off AMC feels compelled to produce, but it’s important to have separate interests.

Passion is unpredictable. Volatile. Passionate people are driven by impulses and whims. Rich has never done anything on a whim.

At dinner, he refuses to let Rock, Paper, Scissors determine whose AmEx should get the rewards points, because it’s an “unsophisticated game of chance.” Suddenly he’s craving enthusiasm and spontaneity?

A man whose preferred hobby is meal prep?

“Can you honestly tell me you loved me? Even in the beginning?” he asks me.

I shake my head, tamping down the hot frustration burning beneath my ears.

“That’s not how love works.” I know what it feels like to be collateral damage to someone’s doomed love story.

I’ve never wanted that. I want what Rich and I have.

The love of a nice, steady man that starts as a tiny seed and grows on you like vines.

Though I suppose vines have a way of rotting the wood they wrap around—an insignificant piece of plant trivia that is now exceedingly relevant.

“It should be,” he says, almost kind. Optimistic. Delusional. “Don’t you want that too? Don’t you want someone you can’t live without? Someone you have to text to tell them you love them, even if they’re only in the other room?”

“You’re leaving me because I don’t text you when you’re in the other room? I can text you more!”

“But we never want to.” Rich stands up straighter, emboldened by whatever he’s about to say next. “It’s time for me to go off on my own adventures. Like your friend Nathan—though I doubt I’ll be so performative about it.”

“Who’s Nathan?” I ask, genuinely confused.

He shrugs. “Your shoeless friend. The one who lives in his car.”

It takes me a second to connect the dots.

“Do you mean Ethan?” I cross my arms, defensive.

What makes him think now is the appropriate time to bring up the best friend I lost because my husband couldn’t get along with him?

“Ethan lives in a van ,” I bite out as the kindling of rage catches fire under my skin.

Looks like I’m entering the anger phase of mourning this relationship with every loud, open-mouthed breath from Rich’s punchable, congested face.

Now that he’s leaving me, I can finally take issue with the way he refuses to use his allergy medication and then complains about every symptom as though he’s being personally victimized by the planet without recourse.

He only stares back at me, slack-jawed, because he doesn’t care where my friend lives or whether I’ll text him more. His mind is already made up. He’s already gone.

“I’m sick of being lonely in my own marriage, Charley. I need adventure and passion and the spontaneity of the tides.”

Again with the boats!

“I deserve to have someone fall for me, and I don’t know if you could ever let yourself do that. Or if you’re even capable of it. You’re too…” I watch him weigh his words before settling on: “guarded.”

“Guarded,” I say back, processing.

In my mind, I eviscerate him. I call him every name.

I tell him that I’ve been lying about his second toe and it does look like a witch’s knuckle.

I insult his appearance with jabs so specific, they’d stealthily attack his psyche like self-esteem termites until he collapsed into nothing but an insecure husk of his confident former self.

I scream that I never loved him, not because I’m incapable of it, but because loving him was an impossible task.

But I don’t say any of this, partly because it’s not true. Except for his toe. That toe is unnerving. But mostly because doing so would cede control of this moment to him.

He won’t get that satisfaction. He’ll get nothing but the “guarded” demeanor he used to love but has grown to resent.

Rich blinks first. He was never good in an emotional standoff. A checkered oxford shirt I bought him lies between us on the bed next to his splayed-open duffel. He folds it completely wrong, and I resist the urge to grab it from his hands and save him from himself one last time.

“I have to check in to a hotel. I figured you wouldn’t want me to stay here while I search for a new place.

” When he looks up from his phone, his eyes are soft.

Patient. Sad. He looks familiar to me again.

That’s the face of his I know best. “We had something good. It’s hard to leave it behind for the possibility of something great.

But I can’t make you happy, and trying to is making me miserable. ”

I pinch the straw to remind myself it’s there, the tangible proof of the life I had before Richard Warren.

“I care about you, Charley. I don’t want this to get ugly.” I nod, numb. “And Marlene never lets us forget that her son wants the place, so that part’ll be easy.”

He laughs— laughs —while bile fills my mouth.

Because Rich isn’t just leaving . He’s toppling everything—my home, my finances—like he’s the bottom row of the Jenga tower that’s propping up my life.

He’s handing it over to Marlene , our next-door neighbor who kisses her adult son on the mouth and raises a suspicious number of dachshunds.

Anger pumps through my veins, and I lose control. For a split second, I’m the Incredible Hulk, and without thought or warning, I grab the shirt between us and rip it in two, a walloping grunt leaping through my throat like a battle cry as the fabric surrenders in my hands.

Rich’s eyes are saucers as he takes in my strength, my passion. I watch a flicker behind his eyes, an electric current in something long burned out. I’m giving him exactly what he says he wants, letting my guard down and sharing a glimpse of the raw, unpolished Charley I hardly let him see.

But then he swallows and his face goes blank, and I know it’s not enough. Our relationship might as well live in the drawer of mystery electronics between my iPod Touch and a five-year-old Fitbit that couldn’t turn on if you boosted it with a car battery. Our marriage is dead and buried.

So when my husband of less than a year walks out the door with my extra-long iPhone cable, the four worst words in the English language glow behind my eyes like a neon sign: Ethan Powell Was Right.