Chapter 14 #2
“Of course I want security, and of course I’m proud of you, but when it requires that you spend every waking minute focused on your business, and you have no waking minutes left to talk to me, or to notice that I’m grieving, or to understand that our miscarriage was more than just a couple of cells leaving my body, and that it devastated me, and that I wanted to talk about adoption and you didn’t want to have anything to do with it, then it’s a problem. ”
She’d ranted a bit, and she deliberately closed her mouth and took a calming breath.
“I don’t know if I understand the appeal of children.
They’re messy, demanding, and you’re miserable while you have them.
I just saw my sister and her husband, and they looked exhausted, like they hadn’t slept since the babies were born, and I know my sister was up all night, she got maybe five minutes of sleep, if that. ”
“Those are some of the sacrifices that you make for children. I’m willing to make those, I want to make those. Just because you’re inconvenienced doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.”
He seemed to think about that, but she knew he didn’t agree.
“When you have a problem with your business that you have to spend a lot of time and money solving, you don’t think ‘all this is inconvenient, why did I ever start this business?’”
“Sometimes I do,” he said around a mouthful of spaghetti.
Apparently he wasn’t trying to impress her enough that he would actually wait until his mouth was empty before he talked.
But she didn’t mind. That was what happened when people were comfortable with each other, right?
She’d liked that part of marriage. She liked that comfortableness, that total lack of self-consciousness when he was around.
She could be herself, and he loved her anyway.
Or at least, he was supposed to. That was the way she thought of him too.
He could be comfortable with her, and she would love him anyway.
Could be totally himself, not put on any kind of civilized trappings at all, and she would love him anyway.
Just him. Not the persona that he showed to the rest of the world.
“Okay, so parents probably think, ‘what was I thinking,’ when they have children. But you don’t for one second think it would be a good idea to sell your business, right?”
“Yeah. I understand what you’re saying. The inconveniences are annoying at times, but the overall joy I get out of it makes it more than worthwhile.” He got joy out of his business. That seemed to be a revelation, and at the same time, it hurt.
“Do you get joy out of your marriage?” she asked.
He blinked, surprised, and this time, he kept his mouth closed, chewing thoughtfully.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of it that way before, but yeah.
Marriage might be a bit of an inconvenience at times…
” He looked around ironically, and she understood what he was trying to say.
It was a huge inconvenience for him to be in Raspberry Ridge right now rather than running his business where he felt he belonged.
“But it’s more than worth it. You’re more than worth it. ”
“I guess I just didn’t feel like that was the way you truly feel.”
“That’s a lot of feelings. Could you put it into words that I understand?” He was kind of kidding, she was sure, but that went back to what Skyler was saying. The man was smart, so smart it was almost sinful, and yet…he couldn’t figure the simplest of relationship ideas out.
“I think it goes back to the diamond. If I give you a diamond that you need a wheelbarrow in order to haul around, you’re not going to appreciate it.
Because it’s not what you want. You’re not going to look at that and go, ‘boy, my wife really loves me.’ You’re going to look at that and be like, ‘boy, what did I do to tick her off that she gave me this big old rock to haul around?’”
“I gave you rocks to haul around?”
“You were giving me…things that made you feel like you loved me, an d you didn’t care how it made me feel. Or you expected me to feel a certain way and didn’t bother to take time to check and see if what you did actually made me feel the way you thought it would.”
She got too many feelings in there again, and she lost him. She could see it in his eyes.
“So… You just made me supper. I assume you did that because you love me. I am sitting out in my truck in front of your house to make sure that no one breaks in. Are you not assuming that I’m doing that because I love you?”
“Yes. I’m assuming that you love me. But if I had dumped a bunch of rocks on your plate and set it in front of you, you wouldn’t have appreciated it, right?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly, nodding once, but obviously the light was not dawning.
“All right. But if I put actual food that you like on your plate, you’re going to see that as a good thing from me, right?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. So I need you to sit with me, to take off work, to show me that I’m more important than your job and your business when I’m sad, and I want my husband to put his arm around me and tell me that it’s going to be okay.
That’s how I feel loved, not when you sit in front of my store protecting me from something that’s not there. ”
“We already went through this. It’s when you let your guard down?—”
“I know. But I don’t see a threat, so for you to do that, you’re actually making yourself feel good. You’re not really making me feel good.”