42. Chapter 42
It’s been four days since I walked out of the apartment, and three days since I called a lawyer and asked to have papers drawn up. I paid extra to have them completed overnight, and I’ve been staring at them on my dad’s kitchen table ever since.
I texted Lizzie and asked her to come over here. I just couldn’t do it at the apartment. And I wanted her to be somewhere she’s loved. But now I’m not so sure this was a good idea. This is where I proposed to her—twice. Where we found each other again during the darkest nights of my life.
Before I can think any more about it, gravel crunches under tires and I know she’s pulling into the driveway. I try to swallow but can’t seem to get this giant lump to go down my throat. I cross my arms over my chest as I look out the window. It’s not that cold today, but I’m chilled to the fucking bone, even in a thermal shirt.
I watch Lizzie get out of the car and wrap her arms around herself, as well. She’s got a coat on, instead of a hoodie, telling me she’s just as cold as I am. She keeps her head down as she makes her way up the front walk.
I open the door as she comes up the steps. She stops at the top and pauses a moment before looking up at me. When she does, I’m relieved that she looks much better than the last time I saw her.
“There she is,” I say.
And then I’m destroyed by the half-smile she gives me, because she knows. I know she knows.
I clear my throat. “I’m sorry I just left the other night. I—”
“No,” she interrupts me. “It’s OK. Dee was there when I got up. She told me you called her from the truck and waited for her to get there so you could let her in. It was for the best, actually. I kinda … projectile vomited. Like, everywhere.” She splays her hands wide in front of her with the last two words, to emphasize them.
“Well, I mean, it wouldn’t have been the first time I saw you puke, right?” I say it to get a chuckle, but neither of us laughs. I step to the side quickly so she can squeeze past me.
I can tell she tries not to touch me as she passes, like on our first date, and that lump gets bigger in my throat. I quietly close the door, and suddenly the room feels so small. She slowly circles the living room, glancing around, and I cross my arms across my chest again as I shuffle my feet and look down at them.
Shit, I can’t do this.
I look up and Lizzie is closer to me, looking at me with sad eyes. I run my tongue over my lips to moisten them. With feet that feel like they have weights strapped to them, I take one uneasy step toward the dining table, then another. I pause as I get there, then with a shaky hand, lean over and place my palm on top of the documents. Slowly, I drag them toward me.
Lizzie comes to stand beside me, and as much as I don’t want to look at her, I have to. I trail my eyes up to her face, then raise my head to look at her straight on, and I see her eyes locked in on my hand and the paperwork beneath it. Tears leak from the corners of her eyes immediately, and she doesn’t even try to bat them away.
“Liz—” I start to speak, but I have to stop because I feel like I might actually puke. My hand is still on the table when I take a breath through my nose, and start again. “Lizzie, I don’t want it to hurt anymore. If it were just me, I could tolerate it. But I can’t do it to you. That, I can’t bear.”
She’s nodding, and crying. The tears are falling off her trembling lips in big, fat drips. “I know,” she says, and it’s barely audible. “I know.”
I pick my hand up from the table and turn it over, gesturing down to the documents. “I, uh …” There’s that fucking lump again. “It’s a standard divorce agreement.” Shit, the words feel unnatural on my tongue. “You should have a lawyer look at it, but you can have everything. Everything we have in savings. Kennedy. The property …”
I can’t even finish the sentence. I can’t stand the thought. This whole thing feels tragic. I put a fist up to my chest and rub my knuckles on my sternum, trying to soothe the ache.
Lizzie shakily pulls out a chair and starts to sit, and I walk into the kitchen, grab a glass, then fill it with water from the dispenser at the fridge. While I am behind her, I turn my back and use my shoulder to rub away a tear. When I turn back around and start to come up behind her, I see her swipe her cheek into her shoulder the same as I did.
I come around and place the glass of water in front of Lizzie, which she takes with a soft “thanks” then quickly takes a few gulps, before putting the glass back on the table with a trembling hand.
I slide into a chair next to her at the round table.
We sit in silence for minutes. I can hear the gear of the clock on the wall ticking. The hum of the refrigerator. The washing machine turning over downstairs. And Lizzie trying not to let me hear her gasping for air.
“I’m so sorry,” I finally croak out, and the words are a garbled mess as the dam finally breaks and my tears fall freely. I turn in my chair to face her. “I’m so sorry for everything. I never, ever saw us here, baby. I never saw us like this.” Just as I start to sob, Lizzie reaches her hands out and places them over mine, which are covering my face.
“Shhhh,” she soothes through her own tears, then pulls my hands away from my face. “Knox, I need you to understand something, OK? I need you to hear me.” I get ready for her words to slaughter me. She waits for me to look at her.
“I don’t hate you,” she says. “I love you too much to hate you.”
I choke out a sob as I pull in a strangled breath.
We stare at each other for a moment, a lifetime passing between us, and then she drags her eyes to the side and spots the pen I left on the table. Slowly, she reaches over and takes it, then taps the back of it on the table to push the inked tip out. I spread my hand back over the contract, as if I’m going to push it away, then I pull my hand back.
Lizzie’s fingers are shaking as she fidgets with the pen in both her hands. She bites her bottom lip and looks up at me. Her lips, also shaking, part as she pulls in a shallow breath. “Who are we if we’re not Knox and Lizzie?” she asks before breaking into sobs.
That does it. My chest cracks right in half. Right down the center. And I nearly fold in on myself. Seeing Lizzie do the same, I reach over and grab the back of her neck with one hand and cup her cheek with the other, as we sit, knee-to-knee, forehead-to-forehead, and cry.
“We will always be Knox and Lizzie, you hear me, baby? Because a hole will open up in the universe and swallow the entire goddamn world up if that’s ever not the case. We just …” I pull my hand away and use my shirt sleeve to pinch snot off the end of my nose, then bring my hand back to her face, “… we just have to find a way to be happy again. Because we can’t live like this.”
She’s nodding her head against mine, through her tears, and I tip her head up just enough that my lips dance across hers as I speak. “I never loved before you. I will never love after you. I will love you until the day I die.” Then I kiss her.
I kiss her through her sobs, like I’m trying to siphon them from her. I take her face in both my hands and try to memorize the way it feels. The weight of her skull in my palms, the tickle of her hair on my fingers, the angle of her lips on mine.
Then I pull away and stand, grab the pen out of her hands, sign the top paper, flip it up and sign the one underneath, and then flip that one and sign the last page. Then I drop the pen and lean down and kiss her on the top of the head. “Goodbye, Lizzie.”
I turn and walk away, the sound of my boots on the hardwood hardly standing up to the sound of her shrieking. I burst through the door and bound toward the truck, turning toward the house as I open the truck door to see my dad passing by a window as he goes to her.
I told him what was going to happen and asked him to be there for her when I left.
I jump in the truck, slam the door and start the engine, needing to get out of there as fast as I can. I back out of the driveway and onto the road, then drive. I drive for a mile or so until I can no longer see past my tears, so I pull over. I turn off the truck and cross my arms over the steering wheel and slump my head against it as I cry.
I cry sad tears. I cry angry tears. I cry tears for emotions I can’t even name and didn’t even know I had. Then I pull my head back and slam my fists into the steering wheel and the dashboard. My knuckles ache, but it’s not enough to soothe the pain in my chest.
I lean my head back and scream, then I slump back against the steering wheel. I can’t catch my breath. My lungs don’t work. My chest, it hurts so bad. I’m not going to survive this. How do people survive a broken heart?
Unthinking, I turn the engine on and start driving again. A while later, I’m turning down familiar suburban streets, practically blowing through stop signs as the sun sets. As I get to the property, I haphazardly part the truck half on the grass, half on the road and jump out. I storm up to the framed structure and I fucking hate it. I hate everything it could have been. Everything it was supposed to be. Everything it will never be.
And I can’t stand the thought of anyone else having it.
Climbing up the temporary back steps I jog inside and run my hand along the two-by-fours we nailed in place just last week to frame the kitchen. I spin around and look out the hole where a small window would go, over a farmhouse sink. The whole house looks like a life-size model made out of popsicle sticks—just rows of two-by-fours with gaps big enough to walk through.
I weave in and out of the boards as the pain inside me continues to grow and my anger bubbles over. Lashing out, I rear back and kick at a board framing the half-wall between the would-be kitchen and dining area. It doesn’t budge, so I kick it again, and again, and it finally gives. I give it a few more until the top dis-lodges, then I grab it with both hands and tug it side to side, my hand getting cut on a nail.
I finally fall back with the board in my hands. I stand straight, drag the short piece over my head and bring it down on the rest of the half-wall. I do this a second, then third time but the board breaks in my hands, sending split wood into my flesh and I throw it to the side like a baseball bat after hitting a home run.
“Fuck this,” I spit out as I turn and head toward the back yard.
We still have tools back there from when we had to excavate to lay the foundation. I spin around, spotting the chop saw, the tool bench … then I find what I’m looking for. I grab the handle of the sledgehammer and sling it over my shoulder.
I vaguely register headlights getting larger as a vehicle pulls up to mine, but I don’t wait to see who it is. I hop up the steps as I grip the handle with two hands and start to squeeze and twist.
I hear my name as Bram comes running toward the house. “Knox! What the hell are you doing, man?” But before he gets to the house I bring the hammer down on the half-wall, right in the center, and it buckles—boards splitting and spinning out in every direction. I take another swing, this time knocking out a door frame.
“Go home, Bram,” I say, and I’m surprised and happy at how winded I am. My heart is beating out of my chest and my blood is pumping hard, but at least it’s by choice.
“Knox, I know things are screwed up right now, but look at what you’re doing!”
I spare a glance at Bram, and the look of pity he is giving me pisses me off even more. “What am I doing, brother?” I ask as I circle the would-be living room. “I’m ruining the house? Guess what? I already fucked it up!” and I strike out at another set of vertical two-by-fours in one of the interior walls, and they dislodge. Bram hollers at me to stop, but I walk to another area of the boxed-out living room.
“It’s not over,” he says, his hands out toward me like he’s approaching a wild animal. “Dad said Lizzie hadn’t signed the papers when he called me. You guys just need some more time.”
I spit out some of the excess saliva that’s pooling in my mouth as I suck in air. “You ever been away from Em for a period of time? Cuz I’ve been away from Lizzie before, and let me tell you, it nearly killed me.”
“Knox—”
“Maybe it should,” I say as I bring the sledgehammer to rest on my shoulder again.
“Come again?” Bram says as he draws his head back, aghast. “What did you just say?”
“I said,” and I rear the hammer up over my head, “maybe it should kill me.” And with a heave I swing out at a row of boards separating the dining area from the living room. But they don’t budge, so I pull my arms back again, and behind the blood pumping through my ears I hear Bram’s voice again.
“Knox, that’s a load-bearing wall!” but I’m already swinging, and the hammer slices through the first and second boards, sending them askew, like a bowling ball knocking out pins, and then I see a joist come swinging down right at my—