Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
SHELBY
Early October, 2013
A week after the Night of Family Revelations, Brody came home for dinner. His roommate and her boyfriend were having a “crossroads conversation” and he wanted to give them some space. I made Pizza Margherita, and we shared a bottle of wine.
“Can I stay tonight? I’m getting a little tired and I don’t think I want to drive. Plus, I don’t want to walk in on them if it’s still awkward. Or if they’ve made up.” He laughed as he laid his head on my shoulder. We were snuggled up on the couch in the living room, and I was debating putting on a movie to bask in a little eighties’ nostalgia.
“You don’t ever have to ask. This is your home, too. Hey, do you want to watch ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’? It’s been a long time, and your impression is getting a little rusty.”
He hunched his shoulders and squinted his eyes, poised and ready to channel Zack Mayo before dissolving into chuckles. “Aw, I don’t think I’m up for a movie. Another time, okay?”
He scooted forward on the couch getting ready to get up.
“Hey, can I ask you something really quick?” I asked.
“Sure.” He sat back and readjusted his long legs to be able to face me.
“How would you feel if I changed my last name?”
He looked down, not sure quite how to react. “Wow. Hmm. Like, would you go back to Baker?”
“No, I don’t really connect with that name either.” Changing my name was something I’d been mulling over quite a bit lately, even though it seemed so drastic to me. “I…I just think I need to start over. Forge my own path.”
I’d been preparing myself for a potentially difficult conversation with Brody. He would never know everything, but maybe it was time he knew more.
“You want to make sure I’m okay with you having a different last name than me.”
“Yes. I assume you would keep Ristow, especially since you and Grandpa Riz are so close. And you’ll be taking over the company from him someday,” I winked. “If he ever retires, that is.”
“I’d be taking over the company from Andrea someday, but yes.” He smiled. “I would keep Ristow.”
“Brody, I…I just want to make sure you are okay with being on this path. That you haven’t felt pressured to go into finance, into the family business. Pressured by your dad, or by Grandpa,” I said.
“I mean, it’s been a thing for a long time. They brought up to me even before I hit high school. But I was always cool with it. Wow. It’s so weird that you bring that up. Grandpa asked me the same thing last week.”
“He did?” I was sure the shock on my face was less than subtle.
“Yeah, he wanted me to really think about the trajectory I was on and to make sure it was what I wanted, not something I was doing for anyone else. He told me how he felt like he had made a lot of mistakes with Dad when he was my age.”
Ari had always made it seem as though not only were we to provide a long-awaited grandchild in exchange for him to get to chase his dream, but also that we had to sell our son’s soul to his grandfather and encourage Brody to fill the shoes that Ari hadn’t. But David had realized his mistakes, likely well before last week, and was able to develop a rich and meaningful relationship with his grandson. Which also happened to be blossoming into a mentorship.
Brody pinched his eyebrows. I always appreciated all the nuanced expressions of the empathy and emotion that he was so easily able to access. So unlike his father, despite resembling him so much. “Mom? Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Are you changing your name because of Dad?” Brody was incredibly intelligent, just like all the Ristows. Which meant that not only had he excelled in academics, checking off AP class after AP class in high school and having been easily accepted to Marquette without the need of a legacy boost from David, but also that he knew far more about his parents’ marriage than I ever let myself believe.
Part of his education and part of my parenting had been to teach Brody how to manipulate the Ari equation like I was able to. But unlike me, he would push against the algebra and challenge his father. Mostly when it came to defending me.
“Yes. It’s because of Dad.”
“Mom, I know he wasn’t good to you.” Brody moved his body to face forward, looking down at his lap. This was hard for him. “Even when I was little, I knew. When you would tell me everything was okay, I knew that it wasn’t. I would follow you when you would go and hide, and I’d hear you crying.”
It broke my heart to picture my sweet curly haired boy trailing me to my bedroom as I fought the tears until I was safely inside. I hated that much of his childhood had been spent in such worry and concern. I had tried so hard to keep him sheltered from our storm, but with a force as strong as Ari was, that was impossible.
“He wasn’t a great dad. But he was an awful husband,” Brody admitted.
I nodded. There was no use denying it. And Ari didn’t deserve my defense.
“He…he dismissed you,” he said softly.
My eyes filled with tears. Not because of how truly dismissive my husband had been, but because of how insightful my son had become. He saw something that had taken me so long to realize. To admit.
“It’s such a shame,” he continued. “He didn’t appreciate you, or really even know you. I don’t think he knew your favorite color or your favorite movie. He didn’t get to see the person that I’ve always seen when it’s just the two of us. How smart, how funny you are. I mean, you hardly ever laughed when he was around. He missed out on so much.”
“He missed out on you, too, Brody. It’s not an excuse, but he wasn’t capable of loving us the way we should have been loved. The way we deserve to be loved.” The words made my heart lurch sideways. There was something tugging on it that didn’t seem to be about Ari or Brody.
“Maybe someday you’ll find someone who doesn’t dismiss you, Mom. Someone who will want to get to know you, really know you. Appreciate you. Someone who will love you the way you deserve.”
With that, the image of a ball of yarn rolled out from a dark corner of my mind.
“I’m going to go up to bed. Are you going to be okay?” Brody asked.
As I wiped a few lingering tears so grateful for this gentle and wise soul of a son, I said, “I’ll be just fine. I love you so much, Brods.”
He hugged me then, in the special way he would when he knew I needed it most. He wrapped an arm around my back and put a hand gently behind my head, holding me to his chest. It was a gesture so tender, so protective. I smiled. Someday, someone else will love him the way he deserves too, and in turn, he will hold them like this. Even if they are over six feet tall.
Halfway up the stairs, Brody turned back to me. “Mom, you do deserve a happy ending. I would hate for you to think that happily ever after is something you can never have.”
Something I can never have.
Brody had just tugged on the end of the wayward ball of yarn.
“Something I Can Never Have.” The song that Jake was tinkering around with on the piano at his house. A Nine Inch Nails song for his “darker moments.” Had his darker moments been about me? Had he known I would break his heart?
Just then Minx jumped up on my lap, and it all began to unravel.
For a long time, I managed to convince myself that Jake was a merely a distraction and an escape from the responsibilities of my real life. A long overdue, much needed, and well-deserved vacation for my nervous system.
Or even a pair of training wheels to learn how to be with someone who wasn’t Ari.
Physically with Jake, I could never get close enough, desperate to meld with his body in every conceivable way. But emotionally, I’d held him at arms’ length; when I wasn’t actively pushing him away, that is. And he knew it.
In fact, he’d told me a bedtime story about it.
Since the night he left my house, the night I’d let him go, I’d been very careful not to let myself think about him. I hadn’t watched the Emmys. I immediately pressed “next” if I heard a few recognizable synth beats of a Depeche Mode song on an eighties’ playlist I was listening to. I avoided the Encounter Channel at all costs. Those were easy.
Having to give up making Cherrie Bombshell content was harder. Even the simple act of getting myself ready in the morning snagged sometimes, when I swear I’d catch his reflection behind me in the mirror.
At work, in the spaces where our story started, something would often haunt me without warning, and I’d have to stop and nurse a powerful wave of an emotion I couldn’t define.
And he managed to infiltrate my dreams nearly every night.
Those mornings, in the moments between asleep and awake, I would allow myself to think about him. Whatever the dream had been I would allow it to continue to play out in my imagination or I’d roll through a memory like a scene from a favorite movie. How could I possibly have fully denied myself indulgence in the some of the best moments I’d had in the last twenty years? Then, after full consciousness took over, I would dutifully start my avoidance practices all over again.
In San Francisco, after I had fainted, after Jake had put me to bed and we’d both fallen asleep, I woke up thirsty in the middle of the night. I carefully got out of bed trying not to wake him, and I began my cautious navigation through his house. Thankfully, thoughtfully, he’d left a light on over the stove in the kitchen. I was able to easily find my way through the maze toward it, and I started looking through the cabinets for a glass. Standing in the kitchen in my bare feet wearing one of Jake’s T-shirts, I started to wonder. I wondered what it would be like to wake up in the middle of the night here all the time. I started to wander around the house.
I walked slowly through each room, trying it all on to see how it would fit.
What would it be like to curl up on this magical couch with a cup of tea and a book on a rainy afternoon with a golden retriever houseguest snuggled up next to me? To sit next to Jake at the piano while he’d play me a new song he was learning. To set the table with the charming, mismatched dinnerware and light the candles while Jake was in the kitchen making food for me—sharing his art in that powerfully intimate way. Having Jake watch me bake and stumbling upon another one of his quirky and endearing kinks for us to explore.
Dancing in the dining room on a Tuesday night.
I walked back into the bedroom and climbed into the bed. Jake lay fast asleep on his side, the curtains open, bathing him and his new tattoo in soft moonlight. Shadows and hues of grays and blues danced along his peaceful silhouette as I traced my fingers along his body millimeters away from his skin. Just for now. Just for tonight . I allowed myself to wonder what it would be like to spend forever next to this man.
After Ari died and I’d been released from the prison of my life with him, I hadn’t taken one step of freedom before immediately erecting another set of walls. For protection, I told myself. A fortress. And although within it, I’d done a good amount of healing, I was still alone. Still captive in a prison of my own design.
The reality of the next morning at Jake’s house had chased the dream away in an instant. I reinforced the fortress walls that had been compromised, and I left.
But I didn’t just leave.
I ran.
“Hello?”
I shivered when I heard Jake’s voice even though I was already trembling. Had he already deleted my number? Or was he just being cautious?
“Jake, it’s me. Shelby.”
“Heeeyy,” he said, gently. “How are you? Everything okay?”
Warm, friendly, curious, concerned. I don’t know why I would have expected anything else.
I was terrified. I’d so quickly pulled up his number from my “favorites” contacts and clicked on it before I fully knew what I was doing. Before I could talk myself out of it.
I began to verbally vomit into the phone. “Jake, I lied to you. At your house. I don’t know why I did it, I guess I was scared…I…I got scared.” Tears welled and began to fall. “Brody hadn’t been in a car accident. I just…being in your house and you being so good to me. It was overwhelming. I had to leave.”
Brody had, in fact, texted me that night, but it had nothing to do with a car accident. He was headed to a water park for the weekend and needed to know where his swim trunks were.
But that morning, in my panic, I’d fabricated what I’d thought was a good and valid reason for sprinting back home. One that no one would question.
And I’d spent my entire travel day in tears.
“What? Oh.” Jake seemed at a loss for words.
“I realized… I realized that I had feelings for you. Feelings I wasn’t ready for. Or at least I didn’t think I was. But I shouldn’t have let you go.”
“Shelby—”
“I hope it’s not too late. Is it too late?”
“Shel—”
“I… I love you, Jake. I’m in love with you,” I said, between breaths, my lungs struggling to keep up with my racing heart.
Silence. I was aware Jake had been trying to interject, but my words had been trapped and buried so long and they’d all been so desperate, tripping over themselves to get out.
“Shelby, I…I can’t do this.”
“What?” My stomach seized.
“I can’t do this right now, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Jake said, sighing.
I opened my mouth in protest, but no words would come.
More silence.
He’d ended the call.
And with that, my heart blew apart.
A million pieces of shrapnel shattering and scattering in every direction. My chest, hollow and heaving, excruciating pain radiating from the blown out, gaping chasm to every inch of my bones, muscles and skin. My shoulders, burdened with the sudden, massive weight of a thousand regrets, twitched and ached and burned. The tears blinding and stinging as I convulsed and collapsed into wracking sobs on the floor.
Grief.
I didn’t grieve the loss of my husband when he died, but here I was grieving the loss of this love I could have had. A love that I couldn’t or wouldn’t see from behind my walls.
A love that could have stitched and mended all my last remaining torn and broken parts. Filled all the cold and empty spaces with warmth and tenderness. A love able to wind its light through me and illuminate every dark corner.
Jake’s love. The love that I deserved.
I dragged my body up to my bedroom and before my heavy head hit the pillow, I texted Darius that I wouldn’t be able to come to work the next day. And that he had been right about Jake.
I hadn’t been careful with his heart at all, and I had annihilated any chance I’d had with him.