24. James
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
James
NOW
It’s been two weeks since our argument that didn’t even feel like an argument.
It hit the cusp of one but never tipped over the edge.
And I don’t even know if that’s a good thing.
We didn’t even hash out the details that led to our fight.
I didn’t get a chance to tell Kendall how sorry I was that I couldn’t just keep my mouth shut.
I didn’t get to explain to her I only talked to my sister because I didn’t know how to just sit with the fact that my marriage was falling apart and I just wanted to be there for my wife.
How it’s been falling apart, piece by piece, for the past few years.
I didn’t get to ask her how we got here, unable to talk without our entire lives catching up to us.
I’ve been going in and out of the house as if I’m a guest in my own home. Slipping away whenever I have the chance, finding excuses to be at my parents’ house or at one of my brothers’. Anything to be less present around Kendall where I feel like…a burden.
“James.” I look up from my monitor, my office a near ghost town with the exception of myself and Diane in my doorway.
“Hey, Diane,” I answer. I get a quick glimpse of the time and see it’s after eight. Far beyond my regular work hours. “I didn’t know you were still here.”
“I didn’t know you were still here either,” she counters.
“I, uh, I’m leaving in a minute.”
The sun isn’t fully set outside, but it’s inching toward dusk. I’ve been looking for things to fill my time, and after creating two new irrelevant folders in my inbox and separating my paperclips by size, I realize I’m stalling.
“I’ll see you Monday.”
“See you Monday,” I call back.
I watch Diane walk away with her bag hooked over her shoulder, and her presence is replaced by the evening cleaning crew.
They trudge in with their rolling cart and vacuum cleaner, a little taken aback there’s still someone still at their desk as darkness takes over outside, and I know it’s time for me to go home.
I check my phone for what feels like the hundredth time.
I don’t know if I expect Kendall to ask me when I’m coming home or wonder why I’m working so late, but neither inquiry comes.
It’s like we live separate lives. She doesn’t wonder what I’m up to or who I’m with, if I’m really working, and I’ve lost the right to ask her those same questions.
By the time I pull into my driveway, I’ve checked my phone another twenty times. Getting into my car, in between stops at a red light, walking through the front door. And nothing. Complete radio silence.
It’s dark inside. The only lights on are upstairs and a few in the kitchen.
The ones we keep on, day and night. I don’t bother stopping by the kitchen.
I head straight upstairs. I don’t know what I expect to see when I walk into our bedroom.
Maybe Kendall is going about her nighttime routine, getting ready for bed with Sophia sound asleep in her room.
The last thing I expect to see is a suitcase splayed open at the foot of our bed.
“Kendall?”
She walks out of the closet, a stack of folded clothes in her arms. She looks at me, her eyes wide like she’s been caught doing something she isn’t supposed to, but it slips away, replaced with silence.
“What’s going on?”
She still doesn’t answer, but her movements become rough. Harsh and curt, as if she’s taking her anger out on her clothes.
“Kendall,” I push. “Are you going somewhere?”
“I talked to Sylvia today,” she finally tells me, her eyes on her suitcase. “And since I started summer break last week and Sophia’s last day was Wednesday, I thought I’d go visit for a few weeks.”
“When?”
She doesn’t answer me.
“When are you leaving?” I ask again.
“Sunday,” she tells me, annoyance steady in her answer. “I booked a morning flight.”
My insides feel like they’re whirring inside a blender, loud and chaotic. A quiver settles in my stomach, and I don’t know if I’m going to like the direction this conversation is heading. “When were you going to tell me?” I manage.
“When you got home,” she answers coolly.
Everything about her is distant and cold.
Like there’s a double-paned glass wall between us, and it doesn’t even bother her.
In fact, she prefers it this way. Always, for the rest of our lives, seeing me through an immovable barrier, one neither one of us will ever be able to test or push.
“Kendall, I— Why didn’t you talk to me about this? I want—I would’ve wanted to know—”
“It’s fine,” she interrupts. She steps away to a drawer in what can only look like avoidance, but she hides it well by gathering more clothes. “I just used our points, so I got a good deal on the tickets, and Sylvia said there’s plenty of room for Sophia and me—”
“You’re taking Sophia with you?”
“Of course.” She finally looks at me, anger flaring in her eyes. “You thought I’d leave Sophia here with you? You still have to go to work.”
“I mean, I don’t know,” I tell her. “I just—this is kind of sudden.” I pause, stumbling over my words. “Can—can you please stop packing for a second and just talk to me about this?”
She huffs a sigh, her tense body language and the sag in her shoulders difficult to decipher. I don’t know if she’s angry or frustrated or…just giving up. She braces the edges of the suitcase and says, “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m visiting our friends.”
“Are you going to see your mom too?” It’s an irrelevant question considering there are bigger topics to discuss.
Her mom lives just over an hour away from Sylvia and Tommy’s, so it’s not a completely erroneous inquiry.
And I guess I’m stalling a little bit too, hoping I can sway her with a few more minutes of her time.
We can plan things out a little better. I can take some time off work too if she’d give me a second to get things in motion, and I can join her. If she’ll have me.
“She and my stepdad are in Canada,” she answers. “They won’t be back until the end of the month.”
“So, you’re just going to visit Sylvia?”
“I’m just…getting away for a few weeks.”
“From me?” I ask, saying what we’re both avoiding. “Are you getting away from me?”
“No,” she answers instantly, a groan rumbling past her lips. She knocks over a bundle of socks that was sitting at the edge of the bed, and they tumble around us. “I don’t know, James.”
Her honesty feels like a stake driven into my chest. I’m not supposed to be someone she needs to get away from.
I’m her husband. I’m supposed to be the one she comes to.
The silence between us turns delicate, and I know we need to tread carefully if we ever want to come back from this.
And I want to. I want to come back from this.
I want my wife back. I want our family back. I want her.
“I think a little time apart would be good for us,” she finally says, sadness leaching into the strain in her voice. I can hear the tears she’s holding back. As if they’ve turned into a solid knot lodged in her throat. “I think it would help us think about things to see if…”
“What?” I take a step closer. She doesn’t turn away. And I almost believe the hope that we’ll be okay. Maybe she’ll sit down and talk about this instead of running away.
“To see if we want to keep doing…this.”
“If.” I say the single-syllable word as if I’m testing it out.
Feeling the rough, spiky letters on my tongue only to confirm my assumption of it.
I hate the taste. The impossibility of it.
The disappointment and failure of it. If.
We should’ve never turned into an if. We’re a sure thing. We’ve always been a sure thing.
“I know this isn’t…how we thought things would be,” she continues.
“But I don’t know, maybe this will be good for us.
Some distance and space.” Something about her softens, becomes gentle and easy.
As if saying all of this feels like a weight lifted off her shoulders.
And as she moves closer, I notice how she’s been holding so much back.
It took a breaking point for those cracks to splinter all the way open.
“Kendall, I don’t know if you going away for the summer is going to ‘fix’ things,” I try to argue. “We should be talking about things and doing this—”
“I—” She interrupts me, my confession suffocating when it should be anything but.
But she doesn’t say anything beyond this interference.
Her thoughts are left out, splayed and exposed, and we don’t know what to do with them other than just stare at them, hoping they’ll turn into something we can work with.
And then she finally lands the final blow.
“I don’t know if there’s anything left to fix, James. ”
“How can you say that?” I start to cry, and my voice wavers.
“How can I not?” she argues. “Look at us.”
“I do, Kendall.” I grip her arms. I do so with a little more force than I intend to but the desperation coursing through me is catching up.
“I look at us, and I see so much worth fighting for. I see the first time we met. And the first time we kissed, and when I told you I love you. I see…all the things we’ve lost along the way, and regardless of what we’ve struggled through and what we’ve been through, we are worth every bit of that fight. ”
“I don’t see any of that anymore,” she confesses through watery eyes. A tear slips down her cheek, and she doesn’t bother to wipe it away. “All I see is how much we hurt each other. And I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”
“I don’t want to hurt you either.”
“Then please…” she cries. More tears streak down her face, and it shatters me. I can see all the tiny pieces of her heart scatter around me. And it looks so utterly broken.
“I love you.” It’s a plea, not some brave declaration.
Her eyes search mine, quietly contemplating her next words, before she says, “I don’t think that’s enough for us.”
I love her. That will never change.
But loving her—loving each other—was never the problem.
If anything, our ability to love each other through everything is part of the problem.
Because how easy would it be to not love each other.
To move on without even looking over our shoulders.
But the hope that comes with our love makes us want to fight. Until our very last breath.
She looks away, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth.
Her jaw ticks like a tell. Like she tried to hide her disbelief through a lie but couldn’t.
Silence falls over us like a heavy downpour.
There’s nothing left to say. So, she continues packing like I’m not standing there, watching her consider a life without me.