Chapter 5 Mile Five
MILE FIVE
MY WIFE
The burner’s click, click causes me to tilt my head towards the kitchen. “Wait, I thought you were making me a PB and J?”
“I am,” Garrett says. The soft clunk of a pan hitting the burner accompanies his response.
“Since when do you use the stove for PB and J’s?” I yank on the hoodie he’s lent me and then shuffle towards the counter island separating the kitchen and living room spaces.
The heat that coursed within me during our impromptu boxing session is dissipating, leaving me cold. I’m a California girl to my core and tend to complain anytime the temps drop below seventy.
“You do when it’s a grilled PB and J.”
“I didn’t know you could grill them.” I lean against the counter. A large grin kicks across my face.
“You can grill just about anything.” He flips the sandwich.
“Ice cream. Soup. Pudding…” I sass, tapping on each finger.
“Just about anything, smartass.”
I finger-comb my hair up into a messy bun. “Is this like the Dr. Marlowe medicine for getting over being ditched by literary fuckboys? First, rage against the boxing bag and then comfort PB and J’s?”
He shrugs. “Sort of… Mom always made these for us when we had bad days as kids.”
“And you still make them for yourself when you have a bad day?”
“Yeah.”
I nibble on my lower lip, stopping the audible Aw that wants to come out. It’s adorable to think of Garrett coming home after a long shift at the hospital to make himself comfort PB and Js. As much as I know about Garrett, there’re closed drawers about this man I’ve never ruffled through.
“Did your mom have you tell the bag before you got your comfort sammy when you were a kid?” I slide onto the island stool.
“Sammy?” He huffs an incredulous snort. “We’re not calling it that.” He clicks off the burner and places the sandwich on a plate. After cutting the sandwich, he places the plate in front of me.
I pick up one of the triangles and take a bite. The salty sweetness explodes on my taste buds; the creamy peanut butter and the tart raspberry jam.
“Oh god.” Eyes closed, I release a breathy moan. “This is next level.”
“Thanks.”
“No. You don’t get it.” I gesture with the sandwich. “Where has this been my entire life? I’ve been doing PB and Js totally wrong this entire time.” I take another bite, licking excess jam from my lips.
“Glad you enjoy it,” he says, amusement radiating from him.
“Have some.” I push the plate toward where he stands on the other side of the counter. “Technically, you didn’t tell the bag, but you earned a treat with this yumminess.”
“Thanks.” He picks up the other half.
“Where did telling the bag come from anyway?”
“Bryce recommended it to me a few years ago.”
I’ve met Garrett’s family a few times. His parents have been out here twice in the last five years.
Both his older brother, Bryce, and younger sister, Lara, have also visited.
Outside of those trips, Garrett doesn’t seem to get back to Chicago to visit them that often.
Which is weird because in the few interactions I’ve had with them, they seem close.
Garrett even does virtual Sunday dinners with them each week, where they all cook the same thing and eat together via video chat.
It's odd. Anker and I drive up to Solvang to see our parents each month. Not to mention, we spend every holiday with them. Garrett spends most holidays here, unless we drag him along with us. Unlike my brother who uses all his leave to travel for races or to visit our parents, Garrett claims it’s hard to take time off as the hospital’s inpatient service chief.
From what Anker explains, between he and a few other seasoned attendings, there are people who can cover, yet Garrett rarely takes time off.
“Bryce thought it would help me with my anger and emotions,” he says before taking another bite.
“Anker says that about running for him. I think even if the Larsen lore wasn’t a thing, he’d still be as voracious about running.”
Our dad, a runner like my brother, got Anker into sports as a kid to manage his social anxiety.
It’s hard to think of my now-social-butterfly brother being awkward and shy, but he was.
Athletics, especially running, gave him direction.
Whenever emotions get too much, he goes for a run.
I, on the other hand, turn to pastries or cry.
After tonight, I see the value in exercise as a coping strategy. Even if boxing didn’t fix anything, I do feel better.
“Is boxing for general mental health maintenance or to deal with specific emotions?” I take another bite of my sandwich.
“General now, but specific then.” He clears his throat. “Probably still specific.”
I meet his gaze in a silent conversation.
Does he want me to ask more? I know I want to know.
Let’s face it, it’s only a matter of seconds before I prod him.
While I may hold back with most men, I’m incapable of doing that with Garrett.
From our first meeting, just about every thought or question spinning inside me about him has come out. Just about…
“My wife,” he says, as if that offers any explanation.
“You have a wife!” I say, mouth slack. “How? When? Where is she?”
This explains his almost monk-like existence, but what the actual fuck?
In five years, you’d think he’d have mentioned that.
In the whiplash-inducing relationship I have with Garrett, where one moment it’s like we’re friends and the next moment it’s as if my existence is barely tolerable, this tips the scales in favor of me being nothing more than an inconvenience he has to deal with.
Don’t friends tell each other things like this?
“Had a wife.” He swallows thickly.
“Had?” A crease dips my brow.
“She died.”
“Died?” I breathe.
I place my hands on the counter, trying to regain emotional equilibrium. Garrett had a wife who died. He had an entire life before moving here that I had no idea about. How long were they married? How did she die? Does my brother know?
“Almost six years ago,” he says.
“Almost six years ago… Right before you moved here?”
“Yeah,” he breathes.
“Is that why you moved here?”
“Yeah.”
“Does Anker know?”
“Yeah.”
“But you never told me, and I’m assuming you asked him not to tell me.” A twinge in my throat makes my words come out gruff.
“I don’t like to talk about it.” He lets out a long breath. “And you like to talk about things.”
He’s not wrong, but it doesn’t soothe the ache in my chest that, after all this time, he hasn’t shared this with me.
Even if he’s telling me now, it doesn’t mean we’re friends.
In the hot and cold relationship Garrett and I have had for the last five years, it may only be a few minutes before he closes himself off to me again.
Just like the first night we met. One minute I’m asking him about the Palmer House in Chicago, and the next moment I’m overhearing him call me a yappy yorkie.
“Anker is the only one outside of my family and people back in Chicago who know about Val,” he says. “It wasn’t about keeping it from you… Well, only you. I don’t like to talk about Val with anyone.”
“Her name was Val?”
The curiosity to know more pulses inside me. What was she like? How did you meet? What happened to take her away from you? Do you still love her? They’re all rude, and none of my business. Still, each question swirls inside me like confetti waiting to burst out.
“Yeah, her name was Val.” He heaves a heavy breath. “We met in medical school, fell in love, and then she died.”
It’s succinct and unemotional, as if he’s recalling what happened on a random Thursday. Though the way the air goes stale between us, I doubt it was a random day for him. I can’t imagine having met your person, only to lose them.
Tonight, he has listened to me complain about the situationships that broke my heart, while he’s experienced the real deal. Shame scalds me, flushing my cheeks at the idea of comparing what I’ve gone through with men to Garrett’s heartbreak. That’s true heartbreak.
“I’m such an indulgent twat.” I rub at my temples. “God, here I am blathering on about men that I choose not liking me and calling it heartbreak, when you’ve lost a wife.”
“Pain is pain,” he says. “However we’re cut, we feel it. We still hurt.”
“And you still hurt?” I cringe. “Of course, you hurt. That was stupid to say.”
“Yeah, I still hurt,” he murmurs.
“Is it the same hurt as when it first happened?”
“No… I don’t know. It’s different. When she first died, everything was so hard. Breathing. Moving. Thinking. Not thinking. I just wanted to stop hurting.”
Tilting my head, I take him in. The overhead lighting fixtures illuminate his features. His mouth is a firm line, posture rigid, and his hands are curled tight around the counter’s edge.
“In Chicago, I’m Val’s widower. With colleagues at the hospital where we worked. Our friends. Even with my family.” He turns his head, breaking our tethered gaze.
“Is that why you left?”
“Yes.”
“And why you rarely go back?”
“Yes,” he rasps.
“Because there you are just Val’s husband?”
The question is reminiscent of tentative steps onto a frozen pond.
One misstep and I could slip. The present tense he uses telegraphs that to so many this is who he is.
He’s not Garrett—the often-grumpy man who begrudgingly dotes on his cat and makes comfort grilled PB and Js on bad days. He’s Val’s husband.
God, I understand what that’s like. To only be seen as something that happened to you, instead of the many pieces that comprise you. For so many people, I’m just the blind woman.
“I’ll always be Val’s husband,” he says sharply.
“I know… I didn’t mean it like that.” I look down at the sandwich and then back at him. “It just must be hard to be there without her, but with the constant reminder of her.”
“It is,” he says. His voice is hoarse and quiet.
“How did you meet?”
“Only you.” Head shaking, he puffs out a soft laugh.
“Only me what?” I scrunch my nose.