Chapter X #2
We’re sitting close enough that I can see the steady pulse of his heartbeat in his neck. It would be so easy to move toward that spot—the spot that once felt like a safe harbor. It would be so easy to graze my lips over that spot, to capture that pulse in my mouth.
His gaze scans slowly across my face, and it’s clear he’s thinking about this too. He takes in a sharp breath.
But then he runs a hand down his face, clears his throat.
“So the ex,” he says.
“The who?”
He laughs. “Had he always been so distant with you? Or was that the first time you really noticed it?”
I try to bring myself back to my wedding day, to haul that moment from the depths of my memory.
“You know, I think it’s the latter. James is .
. . complicated. When he first meets people, he’s warm and charismatic.
He wants them to feel comfortable around him.
That’s how he made me feel, too, at the start.
But that kind of attention drops off once he earns a person’s trust. After the wedding, when we settled into our regular life, he just kept drifting away from me. ”
“Sounds lonely.”
“It was. Initially I thought it was OK. Healthy, even. We each had our own things going on—he had his work, his routines, his goals, and I had mine. I’d always wanted to find freedom inside of a relationship, and I thought I’d found it in all that space between us.”
“There’s a difference between freedom and—well. Go on.”
I nod. “A couple years into our marriage, I tried to confront him about the distance between us, suggested we could at least schedule regular time together. He made us a dinner reservation for the following week, then never again. It was always on me to beg for his time. Eventually it just became too depressing to keep asking. And for a while, I convinced myself that I was happy to trade his attention for the security our marriage provided. I convinced myself that that was enough.” The anger roiling inside me breaks into a rich and profound sadness.
“We lived like that for almost ten years.”
Reid is quiet for a moment, like he’s absorbing the story. He clenches his jaw, then unclenches it. “You deserve so much more than that.”
I want people to be nice to you. I remember how Reid saying that simple phrase to me in Bryant Park five million years ago had made me feel worth protecting.
It was different from my parents’ protectiveness, which always had an anxious edge to it, like I was a fragile artifact encased in bubble wrap.
Reid had made me feel precious, but not breakable.
Now Reid shakes his head and lets out a humorless laugh. “Sounds like he’s a great doctor, but also an asshole.”
“That about says it.”
“So how did Emme fit into all this?” He looks at me apologetically.
“I know it seems misguided to bring a baby into this dynamic—believe me, I do. But I was hopeful that she would bring out all the best parts of him. In retrospect, it was incredibly naive.”
He runs his hand back and forth across his jaw. “Is it naive? Or did you just hope to see the best in someone you loved?” There’s a beat of silence, and I get the sense that he’s gone somewhere I can’t quite follow. Finally, he shakes his head. “You can’t blame yourself for believing that.”
I sigh. “I suppose so. Honestly, I think I wanted to have a child more than I wanted to fix my marriage. James just kept kicking the can down the road. First he had to finish his residency. Then his fellowship. Then pass the boards. Then adjust to his nighttime shifts. Then adjust back to his daytime shifts. And then I was thirty-four, and I knew that if I didn’t insist on having a baby then, James would let another ten years go by.
And when we had her . . . my marriage didn’t get better.
It didn’t slow down James’s pace. But my life started making sense again. ”
Reid smiles. “That’s how I felt when we had Gracie. She was like this extra puzzle piece that I didn’t even realize was missing.”
“I know I hardly know her, but Gracie seems like an amazing girl, Reid. A little scary. But amazing.”
Reid nods in agreement. “She gets the ‘a little scary’ thing from her mom. She was a force, and Gracie is too. But they both have these enormous hearts.” Reid tilts his head. “It’s taken a little extra work to keep her grounded, but between me, Cat, and my mom—”
“You’ve done great,” I say.
Reid’s use of present tense to describe his late wife isn’t lost on me. I want to ask more about her, but I still feel uncomfortable prying. Like I’m stuck in this purgatory of both barely knowing Reid and having known him forever.
Then Reid looks at me, opens his mouth to say something, and quickly closes it again. “I want to ask you something,” he says, “but I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”
“Just say it.”
“I’ll be less embarrassed if we’re walking.” He gets up from the bench and holds his hand out for me. I take it and stand. We drop palms, and I feel the loss in the marrow of my bones as we start winding around the park.
Finally, he says, “Why aren’t you dating anyone?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Why would you be embarrassed to ask me that?”
He appraises me for a moment. “Maybe not embarrassed. But I might be afraid to hear the answer.”
“Well, I am a very intimidating person,” I joke.
“You are, actually, very intimidating. Smart. Talented. Gorgeous.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. Reid just cocks his head at me, as if to say, I speak the truth.
I focus my eyes straight ahead of me. “I’ve gone on dates here and there since, but nothing serious.
The dating pool gets exponentially smaller as you get older.
Well, if you’re a woman.” Reid presses a hand to the small of my back to guide me around a skateboard abandoned in the middle of the pathway.
His palm is warm and solid beneath the fabric of my shirt.
“So there aren’t a ton of options out there to begin with, and among the men I have met, I just haven’t liked any of them enough to put in the work of a relationship.
Honestly, though, the divorce offered a lot of relief, after the initial gut punch of it all.
Trying to hold together a shoddily built marriage .
. . it took a huge toll on me, in pretty much every conceivable way.
Sometimes I feel like I’m still catching my breath. ”
“That makes sense,” Reid says, but he seems to be turning something over in his mind.
“How about you?” I, too, am afraid to hear the answer, but once I ask, I realize I’d simply assumed that Reid was single. What if he’s not?
“Same story. A few casual relationships, but nothing stuck.” He says it casually, but from the slight tension that sneaks into his shoulders, I can tell this is a topic he’s used to skirting. I recognize the response—I’ve done it myself.
“Really? What’s wrong with you?” I joke.
Reid laughs. “Is working too much a good enough reason?”
“Sure,” I say. “But I doubt it’s the only one.”
“I would venture to say we’re both afraid of losing more than we already have.”
How very Reid of him, to topple my carefully constructed facade with a simple, incisive comment.
“And yet, here we are.” I spread my arms wide at the park. “With parents getting older, kids going to college.”
“And at the end of the day, you’re still standing there on your own, trying to hold all the pieces together.”
Yes, and who is the person that I’m trying to hold together?
Does Reid recognize her? Can he spot the girl I once was?
It’s been a while since someone held a mirror up, asked me to explain the choices that have brought me here.
And now, peering in, I find myself in unfamiliar territory.
I see her, this woman I’ve become, like viewing a painting from too close and then stepping back: the brushstrokes make sudden, startling sense.
I understand the circumstances that shaped me, the small, accumulated moments that pressed me into this form.
But if twenty-year-old Lili were to materialize now, what would she think?
Would she be disappointed? She believed that something good, maybe even radiant, was waiting for her once she had finally crossed to the other side of her fear.
And yes, there have been times when I’ve stepped into the unknown, learned to tap into my own authority.
I even survived a heartbreak that had, at moments, felt unsurvivable.
In its wake, I constructed a life that makes me feel secure.
But what else? Now I worry that I’ve kept that something more at a distance—that the security itself is a trap I laid.
“Well,” I say. “That got bleak.”
“We’ve barely scratched the surface of bleak, baby.”
I laugh, because I know this is true. I’ve offered him snippets of my heartbreak, but I can only imagine how deep his grief runs.
But I also know that, on this perfect June day—likely the only one we’ll get—we need to lighten the mood. I think we’ve earned that.
“You know what we need?” I ask.
Reid arches an eyebrow at me. “I have an idea of what we need, but I’d like to hear what you have to say first.”
His voice is warm honey, sticky with intention, and it sends a rush of electricity through my body. I instinctively suck in air and swallow, which only intensifies the sensations of warmth gathering beneath my chest and between my legs. I bite my lip, trying to return to the moment.
“I was going to say more champagne.” My throat is dry, my voice rasping.
“I’ll take it,” he says, his eyes catching the light.
We leave the park and pause at the corner of Waverly, our bodies reluctant to move. A bar would mean more noise, more bodies, more demands on our attention. And right now, I just want privacy. I just want Reid for myself.
I gesture up ahead, vaguely in the direction of my house. “I have a bottle at home, if you want to come over. I’m about thirty seconds that way.”
I know what I’m asking, and I know he does too. Come home with me. Close the door all the way. The invitation floats between us, hovering there for a moment, caught in the morass of possibility. I wait for it to fall, or to be caught.
Reid’s eyes glitter with mischief. “I think I can make it that long.”