19. Brooke #2
“But I need you to hear the rest of it,” I say, because this part matters more than the forgiveness, “because forgiveness isn’t the same as going back, and we are not going back.
I’m not walking into this glass box and being your wife again the way I was your wife before.
That woman’s gone. She made herself small enough to fit in the space you left her and she called it love and she nearly disappeared, and I am not resurrecting her for you or anyone.
So if this is you getting the old thing back, it’s not on the table.
The old thing is dead. I killed it. On purpose. ”
“I don’t want the old thing.” His voice is wrecked. “God, Brooke, I don’t want the old thing back. The old thing was me not seeing you. Why would I want that.”
“Then here’s what I’m offering.”
I stop right in front of him, close enough to touch, and I don’t, not yet, because this has to be said standing on my own.
“We start at zero. Not where we were. Zero. Two different people who’ve never done this before, on new ground, with new rules.
I don’t want your promises, I’ve got a folder full of your promises and not one of them held.
I want the thing you’ve actually been doing, the showing up, the seeing me, the asking for nothing.
I want to be known, Adrian, not adored, known, the way you finally started knowing me somewhere in the last few months.
And the first time, the very first time, you go back to loving me through glass, from a comfortable distance, chasing a room full of strangers clapping instead of the person right in front of you, I will walk out that door and I will not come back, and there will be no parking lots and no cardboard houses that fix it.
Do you understand me? This is the only chance. There’s no third one.”
“There’s no third one,” he repeats, and his voice cracks all the way through.
“I understand. I understand, Brooke. Zero. New ground. I’ll take zero.
I’ll take any number you give me. I’ve been living at less than zero for months, I’d take negative infinity if it came with you standing in my living room at midnight telling me you forgave me. ”
I almost laugh. It’s such an Adrian thing to say, turning even this into a number, and God, I’ve missed him, I’ve missed him so much I couldn’t let myself feel it until right now.
“One more thing,” I say, and I reach into my bag, and I take out the divorce papers, the ones with the little colored tab that says sign here, the ones he refused to sign for months, the ones I’ve been carrying around like a loaded threat. “You never signed these.”
“I was never going to sign those.”
“I know.” And I walk to the kitchen counter, and I find a pen, and I don’t sign them either. Instead I tear them, once, cleanly, down the middle, and then again, and I drop the pieces in the trash, and I turn around and look at my husband. “Neither am I.”
He makes a sound I’ve never heard him make, half a laugh and half a sob, and he takes one step toward me and then stops himself, that terrible learned restraint, that foot of air he’s kept for months, waiting for permission even now, even after all of this.
And I am so completely, finally done with the foot of air.
“Adrian,” I say. “Come here.”
He comes to me the way he does everything now, carefully, giving me every step to change my mind, and this time I don’t want to change my mind, I want to close the distance myself, so I meet him halfway across the cold glass living room and I put my hands flat on his chest, and I feel his heart going like he’s run a mile, and I look up at him.
“No foot of air,” I say. “Not tonight. Not anymore.”
“Brooke.” My name, again, like he can’t believe he’s allowed to say it this close. “If we do this, I need it to be real. I can’t do the cabin again. I can’t have you and then watch you rebuild the wall in the morning. If you’re not sure…”
“I’m sure.” I slide my hands up to his jaw and I hold his face the way I used to, the way I haven’t let myself in months.
“That was the whole point of tearing up the papers, Adrian. I’m not going anywhere.
So stop being careful with me. I don’t need careful.
I need you to finally, actually be here, all the way, no distance, no glass. Take me somewhere warm and be here.”
A thing breaks open in him at that, the last of the restraint, and he kisses me, and it is nothing like the cabin.
The cabin was a fight. This is a homecoming.
The cabin was teeth and anger and a score to settle, both of us trying to burn the day down, and this is slow, so slow it aches, his mouth soft on mine, unhurried, like we have the entire rest of our lives, which, I realize with a swoop low in my chest, we finally, actually do.
There is no storm. There is no cold. There is a warm dark apartment and a man kissing me like he’s memorizing it, one hand coming up to cradle the back of my head, the other splayed warm and steady at the small of my back, holding me like a thing he’s afraid to break and can’t bear to stop touching at the same time.
“Bed,” I manage against his mouth. “There’s a whole bedroom, Adrian, we are not doing this against a wall like teenagers.”