Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Henry
March 20th, 2015
It takes a little over a year for me to make it through all five stages of grief.
The denial lasted longer than I expected. I wasted months believing Kimberly would change her mind. Come around. That we could be happy together, the way I always wanted us to be. I couldn’t believe the curious, affectionate girl I met that night on my school’s gymnasium steps was the same woman now telling me our marriage was worth nothing to her, and she’d be discarding it like expired milk as soon as she possibly could.
After she declined couples’ counseling for the third time in as many months, I moved on to anger. Anger that spread my patience so thin I became a version of myself that I hardly recognized. Students complained I was getting my period. Kimberly nearly took my head off for snapping when she made one of her signature biting remarks. Even Delilah, who remained levelheaded as I usually was, asked me if something was wrong after I overdid it when she came home with a less-than-stellar exam grade. That shook me loose from my distemper. I couldn’t let my suffering become hers, too.
Bargaining was brief. Not much to bargain for when you’ve already given up so much, and none of it good enough.
I thought I knew what depression felt like. I remembered the months following my father’s death, and then my mother’s, in which it felt like all the light had been drained from my world. But there was pain in that darkness. Agony in its truest sense. When depression finally arrived, it cast a cloak of numbness over my heart and mind. Left me desolate. Bereft. If grief is feeling everything all at once—anguish over the loss, longing for their return, even joy at the memories you once shared—then depression is the complete lack thereof. There is no pain, no hope, and certainly no happiness. I suddenly understood why people contemplate self-harm, if only to feel something. Anything, rather than nothing at all.
Acceptance arrived out of the blue one day, without much fanfare or even a signaling shift in the air. It was a parcel placed inside my mailbox, one that was lost somewhere along the journey but found its way to me after a few missteps and wrong deliveries. A little rough for wear, and long overdue, but here all the same. The day I woke up and realized that life was handing me a second chance and I better not fuck it up, I shook off the dark cloud that’d plagued me for far too long and finally started looking forward to the future and all the possibilities it could hold.
Which is why I’m sitting at the bench of my classroom piano, bathed in only the dim light coming from my office, dreaming about those possibilities.
Delilah will be off to college in a year. And then what? Kimberly leaves. I’ll be left with a house I inherited, in the town I was born into, with only my former childhood love and a few coworkers for friends. It feels like a recipe challenge on a cooking show. How do you take these ingredients and make a meal worth eating? How do I take these pieces and make a life I could love?
My hands fall roughly on the keys, filling the room with a note so jarring I flinch.
“Yikes, you’ve really gone downhill in recent years.”
The bench groans as I pivot, glancing over my shoulder to find Lucy leaning against the cinder-block wall just inside the doorway, a teasing grin playing on her lips. My thoughts go blissfully blank in her presence. And thank God, because I’m so tired of thinking myself in circles.
“I’m kidding, of course. We both know you’re the next Mozart.” She accompanies her wink with a giggle, so girlish that for a moment I see her as she once was, with fewer curves, no fine lines framing her face, but the same bright sparkle in her gaze.
I sigh heavily, hoping it’ll loosen my suddenly aching chest. “I forgot about that.”
“I did, too, actually.” She produces a small stack of papers from behind her back, all bound together with a rubber band. “Found these the other day when I was cleaning out a closet. I was coming by to drop them off on your desk when I heard the world’s worst piano solo.”
I laugh, but it’s pinched at the edges. My gaze is trained on that small stack, my breath a little sharper as I take it in. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yep, all our notes.” She waves the stack in the air by her head. “Well, the ones where the conversation ended with me, anyway. Obviously.”
I shake my head, my jaw slack with surprise. “I can’t believe you kept those all these years.”
“Technically I didn’t know they were still around until I evicted the dust bunnies from our spare bedroom closet, but yes. I kept them.” She shrugs, her narrow shoulders shifting beneath the loose silk of her pale green blouse. “They meant the world to teenage me.”
A knot forms in my throat. I wring my hands in my lap, because if I don’t, I’ll be tempted to get up from this bench and cross the few feet that separate us. To wrap my arms around her and not let go. I’m starved for affection and far too emotionally raw to allow myself to step into her orbit, even for a second.
She jams a thumb over her shoulder toward the hall. “I caught the tail end of the concert. The kids did great.”
“Thanks,” is all I manage to squeeze out. My lungs are tight, compressed by my pounding heart. It’s the millionth time I’ve been near her, so why does it suddenly feel so nerve-racking? I stand and smooth the wrinkles from my slacks to hide the tremble in my hands. “What’s got you here so late?”
“We’ve been reading Great Gatsby for the past few weeks, and I promised the kids that if they had an average of eighty percent or more on their comprehension test, I’d throw a party for them, 1920’s style.” She bounces on her toes, smiling widely. “They took it today and nailed it! Nearly eighty-seven percent as the average score. So I stayed late to decorate my classroom. If I never see another art deco print, it’ll be too soon.”
My responding chuckle shakes a bit of the tension out of me. “It’s been a while since I read Gatsby, but if I’m understanding correctly, you turned your classroom into a speakeasy? For teenagers?”
“Not quite.” Laughter floods her cheeks with color. She fans herself with our bundled letters, sucking in deep breaths until it’s reduced to residual giggles. “We’ll be leaning more into the Prohibition side of the roaring twenties, if you know what I mean.”
I suck in air through my teeth, grimacing as I shake my head. “Oh, well, in that case I’m going to have to skip that party.”
“As if you were invited!” She pushes off the wall and takes a step in my direction. Her hair is swept into a low ponytail that swings over her shoulder, revealing delicate gold hoops hanging from her ears. Her fingertips brush one lobe like she’s caught me looking. I meet her gaze, and I swear a shudder runs through her, but it’s gone before I can convince myself it was more than a trick of the light.
She closes the distance between us, holds out the stack of notes we once passed each other, and arches a brow. “And besides, since when do you drink?”
I pluck them from her grasp and turn them over in my hands. Ink bleeds through time-worn paper, a testament to the history between us. The reason she knows I don’t drink in the first place. Save for the night of prom, and that was enough to turn me off it forever.
“You caught me,” I say, raising my hands in a show of innocence. “Drinking has never been my vice, thankfully.”
“I’m not sure I believe you have any. You’re too in control.”
I toss the stack of notes on top of the piano, hoping the sound will drown out my pathetic, “Oh, you have no idea.”
It doesn’t, of course. When I glance back at her, Lucy’s brow is furrowed. Her gray eyes flicker, catching on something in my expression that makes her say, “Name one,” so softly I have to lean close to make it out.
You, I almost utter. But what good would that do? She’s still married to Waylon. I’m still with Kimberly, if only in name. Our opportunity long passed us by. I know this deep down, no matter how much I wish it wasn’t so.
In the silence following her command, she winces as her words echo back to her. She tucks a stray hair behind her ear and casts her eyes to the ground. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…I wasn’t trying to insinuate?—”
“You didn’t.” I reach for her hand without a thought. We both stare at this point where we connect, her lips parted in a drawn breath and my lungs bow-string tight. I drop her as though I’ve been burned. “I’m sorry. I— You didn’t insinuate anything. I’m a little slow on the draw, that’s all. I promise I don’t mean to be. I’ve been all over the place lately.”
I rub my palm against my thigh, trying desperately to forget the feel of her skin. Lucy’s right. Control is my strong suit. So why am I struggling to maintain it?
A wrinkle forms between her eyebrows. “If something’s going on, you know you can talk to me about it, right?”
“Like you talked to me about what happened with your black eye?”
Her lips flatten. I’ve broken the unspoken rule, and we both know it. I expect to see vitriol in her gaze, perhaps even disgust that I’d bring this up after she made it clear it wasn’t a topic up for discussion. And I’d deserve it. I don’t know what’s gotten into me, that I’d be so abrupt. I open my mouth to apologize, but she speaks before I can.
“You were right,” she whispers. There’s a quiet grief lacing her expression. An understanding. “About Waylon. He’s not usually like that. Things got a bit heated, and it went too far that time. He felt really bad about it.”
I scrape a hand over my mouth. “You could’ve told me, Lucy.”
Her watery smile could break a thousand hearts. “I know. But like I said, it was a one-off. There was no need to worry you over something so stupid.”
Rage blinds me momentarily. No amount of time, distance, or regret from his sorry ass could lessen it. My mind races with all the things I want to say, wondering if any are words she needs to hear. I nearly grind my molars to stumps trying to hold back every curse, threat, and promise that comes to mind. Finally I force out, “One time is a time too many, Lucy.”
From the way she swallows, tilts her chin up, and meets my gaze with unwavering resolve, I’d guess she knows that already. But I don’t regret saying it, just in case.
“I couldn’t have any more babies after Truett.” Her lips quiver, but she does not look away. Doesn’t close her eyes even as tears fill them. “We tried for years, but nothing happened. Secondary infertility, they called it. But Waylon just called it my fault.
“I always wanted a house full of babies. It was the only good part of my life growing up. Having a brother and sister to lean on when times were hard, to laugh with when they were good.” She snorts softly, crinkling her nose. “Maybe it was a blessing in disguise. Maybe they’d have ended up exactly like my siblings and me. After all, Waylon is so much like Daddy. I worry sometimes that Truett’s so sick of it that he’ll leave when he turns eighteen and never come back. And the worst part is, I wouldn’t blame him.”
This time I don’t stop at grabbing her hand. I use it to pull her into me; then I wrap my arms around her shoulders and squeeze tight. The scent of honeysuckle floods my senses. I nuzzle into her hair, drinking it in. She exhales against the curve of my neck. Goose bumps break out along my flesh. I feel every inch of her molding to me, and it’s perfect in ways that Kimberly and I never were.
“That boy will never abandon you. He loves his mama too much.” I stroke a hand down her spine. Her blouse is so thin I can feel the heat coming off her, and I allow it to thaw the anger filling me till it’s nothing but its molten core.
“I’m gonna leave him.” Her words are a whispered confession. One that sets my heart to a gallop in my chest.
I pull back enough to see her eyes. To measure the truth there. “What?”
She blinks rapidly like she’s surprised at her own confession. “I’ve been saving up my money. Once I have enough, once I know I can afford to do this and put Tru through college if he wants to go, I’m leaving.” She bites her bottom lip. “You can’t say anything. Truett doesn’t know. Waylon would lose his mind?—”
All that control I’m famous for disappears in a flash. For a moment there is no Kimberly or Waylon. The years that separate us from the kids who wrote those notes on the piano cease to exist. There is only me and my strong, brave Lucy. Only her lips and my desire to taste them.
Only a second chance, and my determination to take it.
My mouth slants over hers, fusing us together. A whimper spills from her lips. She arches into me, her breasts pressing softly into my ribs. Electricity courses through my body, grounding itself in every place Lucy and I touch. I search for more. Need it like I need the very breath in my lungs. My tongue strokes hers. Her teeth drag my lips. It’s bold in all the ways our first kiss wasn’t. Perfect in all the ways that it was.
I find the hem of her shirt and slip beneath it. Her spine, the soft flesh of her sides—I trace it all like a road on an atlas. My fingertips brush the space I vowed years ago to kiss, to rewrite the harshness of her father’s touch, and I outline a heart against her skin. It’s a mark on the map that my lips can later follow, if only I can get this shirt off…
“Mr. Ridgefield?”
The moment fractures. One second she’s everywhere. Everything. The next, we’re five feet apart, staring down one of my students in the doorway.
“Jessica,” I say, my voice a fault line at risk of breaking. “Did you need something?”
Jessica has a thick head of dark brown curls and tawny skin that makes her green eyes pop in contrast. A spitting image of her mother, Angie, who met me once at a school event and asked me out on the spot, despite my very present wedding band. I politely declined. Next thing I knew, Angie was signing her daughter up for band, and herself up to chaperon every competition. Never mind that Jessica absolutely despises playing clarinet. And, subsequently, my class.
So when a smile curves the corner of her mouth, dread spills through me, freezing my organs in place. Jessica pops her lips, rocking back on her heels briefly, and lets her gaze drift slowly from me to Lucy, who I swear is about to faint on the spot.
“You know what?” Jessica says, shrugging. “I forgot what I needed. Oh well. Sorry for interrupting.” Then she pivots on her heel and bolts down the hall, back toward the front of the building where the auditorium is.
“Fuck,” Lucy groans. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
My hand is at my throat. I don’t know how it ended up there. I’m out of my body, somewhere above, looking down on this moment in absolute horror. I’ve risked not only my job but Lucy’s, too. And what about our kids? There’s no chance Truett and Delilah’s friendship comes out of this unscathed.
I turn to Lucy. Her chest is heaving. Panic widens her gaze. I did that. My recklessness did that. It took our first chance from us all those years ago, and now I’ve swept our second right from under our feet.
Damage control. I have to do damage control. I might’ve signed myself up for a one-way ticket to hell, but there’s no way I’m taking Lucy down with me.
I just hope I can make Delilah understand.