4. Willow
— ? —
Willow
Two Weeks Since We Buried John
Glenn delivered the eulogy to a single row of chairs in a chapel built for two hundred, forbidden by his own secret from saying the word husband even once, while I sat there wanting to scream loud enough to shake the walls down.
But that was two weeks ago. Tonight I’m standing in my kitchen, stirring a pot of beef bourguignon that’s been simmering for three hours, thinking about everything Glenn has said to me over these grief dinners we’ve been sharing.
About not wasting time. About appreciating what you have before it slips away.
About how you never know which moment is going to be your last.
He was right. He’s been right this whole time, and I’ve spent years waiting for my marriage to fix itself instead of fighting for it with everything I have.
The table is set. Candles lit, the good ones from the shop on Fifth, and this time I bought twice as many because I refuse to watch them burn down to nothing again.
Wine breathing on the counter. Music playing softly from the speaker in the corner, acoustic and warm, the playlist we made for our wedding reception.
I’ve been trying for two weeks now. Cooking dinner every night, waiting up no matter how late he works, reaching for his hand when we watch TV on the rare occasions we’re both awake at the same time.
Most nights he doesn’t make it home in time to eat what I’ve made, but I keep trying anyway.
I wrap his portion in foil, leave it in the fridge with a note, hope that maybe tomorrow will be different.
Tonight feels different, though. Tonight I asked him directly. Come home for dinner. Please. It’s important.
He texted back: I’ll try.
I’m choosing to believe that means yes.
The front door opens at 6:47 p.m. Earlier than I expected, earlier than he’s been home in months.
I hear his keys in the bowl, that familiar clatter that still makes my heart lift even after all these years.
His footsteps in the hall, slower than usual, hesitant.
And then he’s standing in the kitchen doorway looking like a man bracing for terrible news.
“What’s all this?” he asks.
“Dinner.”
“I can see that.” His eyes move across the room, cataloging details the way he does when he’s analyzing a problem at work. The candles. The wine. The dress I bought three months ago and never wore because there was never anywhere to wear it, never an occasion special enough. “What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion. I just wanted to cook for you. For us.”
He doesn’t move from the doorway. He’s scanning the room like he’s looking for the trap, the catch, the hidden agenda that’s going to bite him the moment he lets his guard down.
I hate that he looks at kindness like it’s a threat, and I hate even more that I understand why he does it, that I know exactly whose voice he’s hearing in his head telling him that nothing good comes without strings attached.
“Corey.” I cross to him, take his hand, feel the familiar cold of his fingers against mine. “Sit down. Eat with me. That’s all I want. That’s the whole agenda.”
He lets me lead him to his chair. He sits. He’s still watching me like I might explode, but he’s here. He actually came home when I asked, and the food is still hot, and for the first time in weeks he’s going to eat something I made before it turns cold and congeals in the refrigerator.
I serve the bourguignon, careful to give him the best pieces of meat, the ones that have been simmering the longest and fall apart at the touch of a fork.
I pour the wine for him, that expensive bottle I’ve been saving for a special occasion.
I sit down across from him and watch him take his first bite.
“This is incredible,” he says, and he sounds genuinely surprised. “When did you learn to make this?”
“I’ve always known how to make it. You’ve just never been home to eat it.”
The words come out sharper than I intended. I watch him flinch, watch the guilt flash across his face, and I reach across the table to touch his hand before the moment can curdle.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yes you did.” He sets down his fork, meets my eyes. “And you’re right. I haven’t been here. I know I haven’t been here.”
“I don’t want to fight. I really don’t. I just…
” I squeeze his fingers, trying to find the words that will make him understand without making him retreat into that defensive shell he wears like armor.
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately. About us.
About what we have and what we’re wasting.
Life is short, Corey. So much shorter than we think.
And I don’t want to spend whatever time we have being angry or distant or whatever we’ve become. ”
He’s quiet. Those green eyes are fixed on my face, reading me the way he used to when we were kids, when he’d notice things about me that nobody else saw.
The tiny scar above my eyebrow from when I fell off my bike at twelve.
The way I twist my ring when I’m nervous.
The exact shade of my eyes in different lighting.
“What happened?” he asks. “Something’s different. You’ve been different for the past couple of weeks.”
I think about Glenn at the funeral, surrounded by people who didn’t know why his grief was so total, about all the secrets that aren’t mine to tell, about my best friend drowning while I’m the only one who knows why.
“I just realized some things,” I say carefully. “About what matters. About what I want my life to look like when I’m old and looking back on it.”
“And what do you want?”
“You.” The word comes out simple and true, unadorned by qualifications or conditions.
“I want you, Corey. I want us. I want to stop being two people who happen to live in the same house and start being the people we used to be. The ones who actually talked to each other. Who actually saw each other. Who fell asleep tangled together and woke up the same way.”
His hand turns under mine, fingers interlacing, grip almost desperate.
“I want that too,” he says. “I’ve always wanted that. I just don’t know how to get back there. I don’t know how to be that person anymore.”
“We start by showing up. Both of us. You came home tonight when I asked. That’s a start. That’s more than a start.”
“That’s a low bar.”
“Maybe. But it’s more than I’ve gotten in a long time. And I’ll take it. I’ll take whatever you can give me and build from there.”
He winces at that, a tiny flinch he can’t quite hide, and I almost apologize. But I don’t. It’s true. He needs to hear true things, even when they sting. Especially when they sting.
We finish dinner. We actually talk, really talk, about nothing important and everything at once.
He tells me about a problem at work that’s been keeping him up at night, full of technical terms I don’t fully understand.
But I listen anyway, because it matters to him, and when he talks about it I can see the passion that used to light him up back when the company was just a dream we shared over instant noodles.
I tell him about a situation at the nonprofit, a donor who keeps making inappropriate comments to Glenn, lingering too long and standing too close at every event.
Corey actually laughs at my impression of the guy, this big belly laugh I haven’t heard in months, and for a moment it feels like no time has passed at all.
Like we’re still those kids eating ramen on the floor, dreaming about a future we couldn’t imagine.
By the time we move to the living room, the wine bottle is empty, most of it his, and I’m feeling warm and loose anyway, more hopeful than I’ve felt in months. Maybe years.
“I love you,” I tell him, curling into his side on the couch the way I used to before the distance crept in. “I know I say it all the time lately, but I mean it. I love you so much it scares me sometimes.”
“You do say it a lot lately.” His arm tightens around me, pulling me closer. “Not that I’m complaining. I just noticed.”
“Then say it back.”
He turns to look at me, and his face is open in a way it almost never is anymore, unguarded and young, like the boy from the cafeteria is still in there somewhere, waiting for permission to come out.
“I love you,” he says. “I loved you when we had nothing. I loved you when we ate ramen on the floor and I couldn’t afford to buy you a birthday present so I wrote you that terrible poem instead.
I loved you when you chose me over your family, even though I never deserved that, even though I still don’t understand why you did it.
And I love you now, even though I’m terrible at showing it.
You’re the only thing in my life that’s ever felt real.
Everything else I could lose tomorrow and sleep fine. ”
I kiss him.
I don’t plan to. It just happens, my mouth finding his, my body remembering what my brain keeps trying to forget. He makes a sound against my lips, surprise and relief tangled together, and then his hands are in my hair and he’s kissing me back with an intensity that makes my head spin.
“Bedroom,” I manage between kisses. “Now. Right now.”
We barely make it up the stairs.
Corey gets one hand around my waist before I reach the bedroom. He pulls me back against him, and his mouth comes down on the side of my neck.
“Corey,” I gasp, gripping the doorframe.
“What?”
“You know what.”
His teeth scrape my skin before his tongue runs over the same spot. “You told me bedroom. We’re in the bedroom.”
“Barely.”
“We can close the door later.”
He pushes it open with his foot and walks me inside without letting go. His erection presses against my ass through his pants, hard enough that I can feel every inch of him.
I turn in his arms and grab his loosened tie. “Take this off.”
“You take it off.”
“Bossy.”
“You started it.”
I pull the tie over his head and drop it. Then I fist the front of his shirt and drag him down until his mouth meets mine.