Chapter 18 Angeni Luna #4
“I’m good for now,” Angeni said. “Looking forward to the fire.”
When they arrived at the firepit, Erik got to work setting the logs and bringing the flames to life. She used to find this so sexy, the way he could command nature in this way.
Angeni chose her favorite tree-stump chair and wrapped her arms around herself to stay warm while the fire got going.
She searched her brain for a conversation topic and settled upon one that was more of a selfish choice—nothing to do with the two of them or their relationship, but something she couldn’t stop thinking about.
“Does Sitka seem weird to you lately?” she asked.
“Sitka?” he asked.
She was already annoyed. “Yeah. Sitka,” she said.
“No, why?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like she hates me,” she said.
He sat on the tree stump next to hers.
“Oh, babe,” he said.
He put a hand on her thigh, a hand that felt like it pitied her.
“There’s some hostility there,” she said.
“Hostility? From Sitka?”
The exaggerated inflection at the end of his words grated on her. He was saying, without saying it, that she was being ridiculous.
“I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Ang, she’s taking care of our baby. She adores Freya.”
“I know that. I’m saying she hates me.”
He held a stick over the fire, as if roasting marshmallows without the marshmallows.
“Do you think you’re having some complicated feelings because she spends so much time with Freya?” he asked.
He was using his gentle voice, the voice he used with her when trying to kindly suggest that she was losing her mind.
“I don’t think that’s it,” she said.
Or was it?
They sat in a moment of silence before she decided to fill it by changing the subject.
“Did you figure out any action we can take against that Nurture Mother account?” she asked him.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to shut them down. I did send the account a message,” he said. “Do you want me to just block them?”
She shook her head. “That won’t look good. Will make me seem petty.”
“You think anyone would notice?”
“I don’t know anymore. I feel like more people despise me than I realize. They’re waiting for me to do the wrong thing.”
“That’s not true,” he said.
She shrugged. She’d already been coming to terms with the fact that it probably was.
“We’ve been over this,” he said. “They’re jealous, babe.”
“Maybe. Jealousy may be the root of it, but they still despise me.”
“Some people are not ready for what you’re offering the world.”
It was kind of him to do this—always come to her defense. Did he ever doubt her? Did he ever want her to give up all this? She was afraid to ask.
Her thoughts returned to Sitka.
“She asked me today how we met,” Angeni said.
“Who?” he asked.
“Sitka.”
“Sitka?”
Her skin was hot, from the fire, or from irritation.
“Yes,” she said. “Sitka.”
“Oh. What did you say?”
“That we met at a retreat,” she said. “Not the details, of course. Just that.”
“Okay.” She could hear his thought: Is there more?
“Sometimes I think about that—how we met.”
“Love at first sight,” he said, a bemused expression on his face.
“Doesn’t it bother you, though?”
He looked at her, confusion all over his face. “What?”
“How we met,” she said.
She picked up her own stick, threw it in the fire, watched the flames grab at it and consume it.
“Why would it bother me? It was fate that we were both there at the same time. It’s a great story.”
“Right,” she said. “A story.”
“Babe, I’m sorry, I’m not following.”
“It was just all so . . . rushed. We were supposed to be taking our time.”
“Sometimes Spirit surprises you, right?”
“Do you think we would have gotten together if we’d really taken a full year to know each other, no sex to muddy things?”
“Muddy things?”
“I mean, sex complicates it. The hormones, the chemicals.”
“Babe, are you okay?” he asked.
He twisted in his seat so he was looking at her head-on.
“I’m fine, just talking,” she said.
He twisted back around, threw his own stick in the fire.
“I know this is a hard time for you,” he said. “You have the book. You’re still adjusting to motherhood. I’m trying to be patient.”
She flinched at the way he said the last part—I’m trying to be patient. There was a fatigue there she hadn’t known he felt.
“Oh, I see,” she said. “I’m testing your patience.”
He put his fingers to his temples like she was giving him a headache.
“Ang, you’re trying to pick a fight right now,” he said.
“Maybe a fight needs to be picked.”
He stood, started pacing. “Don’t do this,” he said, shaking his head. More exasperation.
“Do what?”
He stopped his pacing, stared at her.
“You’re trying to push me away. This is your pattern, remember? You don’t think you’re worthy of love, so you pick fights so people will leave you and confirm your belief that you’ll always be abandoned.”
He rattled off the narrative, her narrative, like it was old news.
She stood in a futile attempt to be on his level—she was so much shorter than him, and the discrepancy made her feel powerless.
“You resent me,” she said, stating it as a fact.
“What?”
“I just realized . . . you resent me.”
It was something of a revelation. She’d thought he was different from all the stereotypical new fathers that were fixated on their own unmet needs while their wives turned their attention to the helpless offspring. But no. He wasn’t.
“I don’t resent you. You’re doing your thing, picking a fight.”
“Looks like you got me pegged,” she said.
“That’s not—”
“Are you bored of me? Is that it?”
He let his head hang back and stared at the sky above them.
“You’re still doing it,” he said, speaking to the stars.
“I’m going inside,” she said.
She turned on her heel and started walking, waiting for him to come after her.
This was the chase they’d played out years ago, in the beginning of their relationship, after the honeymoon phase had ended and their issues reared their ugly heads.
She’d thought they had evolved from this.
Their entire business was founded on them having evolved from this.
“I’m not following you,” he called after her.
He was refusing the chase. She knew that was the right thing to do, rejecting their old dynamic, but she couldn’t help but feel it as a rejection of her very self.
Her entire body hummed with heat and anger. She stopped on the path. Her breathing was fast and furious. She raised one arm above her head, her hand clenched in a rebellious fist, then released one finger—that finger—toward the sky. It was immature—it was not her higher self—but it felt glorious.