Chapter 11 #2
Then I got up and walked to the lobby myself. Not for her. For me. To see the door close. Lara stood at the reception desk, in dark glasses, a suitcase at her feet. Security kept its distance—polite, no spectacle. She saw me and took off the glasses.
"Like this?" she asked.
"Yes."
"You won't even talk?"
"No. We talked."
"You're a coward."
"Possibly."
"She won't forgive you anyway."
"That's between me and my wife."
"Your wife? She already took off the ring."
"Lara, you're trying right now to get into a place where there's already too much blood. It won't work."
She laughed, but her eyes were full of tears.
"You think if you're tough with me, she'll see it and appreciate it?"
"Niki won't see this. And she shouldn't. It's not a performance."
"Then why did you come out?"
I looked at the suitcase.
"To say in person: you no longer walk through any door in my life."
She flinched.
"Very dramatic. Write it down—you can read it to her later."
"I won't be telling her about this conversation."
"Afraid she'll ask why you didn't say it sooner?"
"No. I know she'll ask. And she'll be right."
Lara paled.
"You've become boring."
"Possibly."
For about ten seconds she looked at me as if waiting for me to soften. I didn't. She picked up the suitcase.
"I'm flying out tonight."
"Good."
"Don't you want to know where?"
"No."
"And if I don't come back?"
"That would be the right thing. The wonderful thing, even."
That was when she cried. Not prettily. For real, angrily, her face twisting. And for the first time I felt no urge to comfort, no irritation, no attraction. Only empty exhaustion.
"I really did love you," she said.
"No," I said. "You loved watching Niki lose what she thought was hers."
She slapped me. Security stepped forward.
"Stand down," I said.
Lara backed off on her own.
"Tell her she'll remember me every time you touch her."
I felt my face go cold.
She left. The office doors closed behind her quietly, almost prosaically. No music. No justice. Just a woman with a suitcase walking out of a building, and I was left with the understanding that sending Lara away had been a thousand times easier than sending her out of Niki's memory.
I came home earlier. Niki was sitting in the living room with her laptop, talking to Ira.
She was laughing. Briefly, tiredly, but laughing.
I stopped in the foyer, and that sound hit harder than Lara's slap.
Not because Niki was happy. No. Because that laugh had appeared without me.
Not for me. Not in response to my words.
Not as an answer to my warmth. It was hers. Small, hoarse, but hers.
"Right, I get it," she was saying into the phone. "No, Damien doesn't get to choose the fixtures. Damien is not part of this project."
I smirked, though everything inside clenched.
She saw me and didn't flinch.
"I'll call you back."
"Don't hang up on my account."
"I'm not hanging up because of you. I need to get the kids."
"I'll get them."
"No. Today it's me."
"Niki, I'm not trying to take the wheel from you. I have free time, you have a project."
"You're offering help again as if without it I'll collapse."
"And you're hearing control where I can genuinely be useful."
"Because I have good precedent."
"Bad precedent."
"But accurate."
I inhaled.
"Fine. You get them. I'll make dinner."
She eyed me with suspicion.
"What?"
"Dinner. Food. Not a strategic operation."
"In your version everything's a strategic operation."
"Then let it be Operation Pasta. No briefing, no formation, no heroic face."
"Don't try to be charming. Right now it looks like camouflage."
"Noted. I'll be a sullen chef."
She turned away, but I noticed: her lips twitched. Not a smile. Almost. I grabbed onto it like an idiot on the edge of a cliff.
That evening Tim came home moody. At practice he'd barely glanced at me again, but at home he brought me a broken car from the building set.
"The wheel won't hold."
I took the piece.
"Take a look?"
"Just the wheel. Don't redo the whole thing."
"Deal."
He sat beside me, but at a distance. I fixed it slowly, narrating each move, not taking the toy away entirely. My son watched my hands and was quiet. Then he said:
"You didn't yell today."
"At whom?"
"At anyone."
"Day's not over, but I'm trying."
He looked at me seriously.
"Don't try. Just don't yell."
"Fair."
"And with Mom too."
"Especially with Mom."
He nodded. Took the car and went to Marta. Didn't hug me. But came on his own. A minute later Marta charged into the living room in one sock, a plastic teapot under her arm, face grave as a courier with a classified parcel.
"Daddy, the bunny's soup is cold."
"That's serious."
"Very. He's sad."
I glanced at Niki. She wasn't looking at me but heard every word.
"Then we have to warm it up," I said. "Where's the stove?"
Marta pointed at the floor by the couch.
"Here. Just don't sit on the doll—she's sick."
I sat down beside the toy kitchen, carefully, like a sapper in a minefield, and Marta pushed a tiny spoon into my hand.
"Stir."
"How long?"
"Until it's pretty."
And it was impossibly stupid and painful: me—who could line men up in a hallway with a single look—sitting on the carpet stirring an empty plastic cup, afraid to make a wrong move, because in this house now even pretend soup required permission.
I looked at Marta, at Tim in the doorway, at Niki with a knife at the cutting board, and understood: here they were.
My family. Not words. Not a seal. Not a surname on the gate.
People I'd treated as though they were obligated to withstand my character.
After the children fell asleep, I went up to her door. Didn't enter. Knocked.
"What?" she asked.
"May I?"
The pause was long.
"No."
The word hit, but I stayed standing.
"I won't come in."
"Then why did you ask?"
"Habit."
"A bad one."
"Trying to burn it out."
Silence.
"Niki, I need to say one thing. No argument."
"Say it through the door."
I placed my palm on the doorframe. Not on the handle.
"Today Lara came to the office. She wasn't allowed past the lobby. Before that I blocked her everywhere: phone, apps, email, social media, house and office access. She's flying out. I didn't ask where."
Silence behind the door.
"I'm saying this not for gratitude. And not to show you what a good boy I've become. I just want you to know she won't be around anymore."
"She already will be," Niki said quietly. "In my head. In our bed. In every red dress. In every remark about my body. You can't block her there, Damien."
I closed my eyes.
"I can't. And that's the most disgusting thing: the outer door I locked in a minute, but the inner one you'll be kicking out of yourself alone. All I can do is stand beside you and not pretend I've done enough."
"Then don't say that word."
"I won't. That word has no right to sound easy."
"What else?"
I swallowed.
"I won't let go of you simply because I'm scared.
And I won't let go because I'm guilty. That would be more comfortable: suffer beautifully, let you leave, and spend the rest of my life considering myself noble.
No. I'll stay nearby until you tell me to leave for good.
I'll do things. I'll make mistakes. I'll get hit in the face if I deserve it.
But I won't hand you over to the consequences of my own filth without a fight. "
"You still say 'won't hand over' as if I'm a thing."
"No. I say it as if I've finally understood that I love a person who has the right to leave. And I still want her to stay."
She didn't answer.
I stood behind the door like an idiot. Without orders. Without a key. Without the right to enter. Then I heard her steps. The door didn't open. Just on the other side the lock quietly turned.
Click.
Not outward. Inward.
She'd locked it.
And for the first time I wasn't angry.
I leaned my forehead against the door and whispered so softly she might not have heard:
"Teach me not to make it worse."
Behind the door it was quiet.
Then Niki answered:
"Start by walking away from my door."
I stepped back.