Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
THREE SILENT WORDS
LOUISA
Why am I here? Not in the existential sense, though that question has also been rattling around in the emptiness of my skull where up until two hours ago he occupied every single thought in a very different way.
I’m staring at the wall of a federal immigration office in a blazer I borrowed from Chandler because it felt like the kind of appointment that required a blazer and I don’t own one.
I paired it with embroidered jeans so at least I can feel somewhat like myself when they confirm what I already know, that I am not good enough to have a life here.
All while my husband plans one without me.
My eyes feel like they've been turned inside out, and no amount of chocolate digestives or even Hugh Jackman could improve it.
Whose fault is that? Mine. Obviously. (It's always mine.) I let myself fall in love with the wrong person and then stood in the wreckage surprised, even though, for as much as he lied about my apartment, he told me the truth.
Love, loving him, a risk and liability. Well, I took the risk, and now I am most certainly liable for whatever happens next.
He played the longest game of chess I’ve ever watched anyone play, and I walked right into every square of it because I wanted to, because I was too busy learning bridge with his grandmother.
I was so desperate to believe that someone finally saw me clearly and chose me anyway.
But he didn't choose me. He chose chasing some success to claw back affection from people who never showed him when he was younger. Another notch in his belt that he can show off to prove ‘look, I don’t need you, Mom and Dad.’
Should have known. The man who believes not telling someone something isn't the same as lying.
Well, I didn’t tell him how I felt either.
So I suppose we are both, in our own specific ways, very honest people.
This waiting room was designed to communicate that comfort was not a consideration in its construction.
They want you to be uncomfortable, but surprise, I don’t need a plastic chair for that.
I give up my seat for a woman who is pregnant and carrying a toddler on her hip, and stand near the wall instead, which is where I am when the door opens and he walks in. Because for once, I’m early.
I spot him as he scans the room with the focus he brings to every space he enters, already three steps ahead of wherever he is.
He looks prepared (of course he does) without visible anxiety, (good for him) and something about that, about how composed he looks when I have spent the last two hours coming apart, makes my chest tighten in a way I have to actively breathe through.
Then he finds me and something in his face opens.
It does that now, or it started to, this small involuntary unlocking that I have spent two weeks believing meant something, and maybe it does, maybe it means exactly what I thought it meant and to him, that just doesn't change anything, which is somehow worse.
He looks at me more carefully, trying to read me, his eyes move over my face the way they do when he’s collecting information.
A slight narrowing, and a stillness that means he’s waiting for me to speak, because I always do.
But not now, when I am barely holding it together.
I wasn’t even going to come, I seriously considered if it was worth it.
But if he gets what he wants out of this, then so do I.
“What’s wrong,” he finally asks.
“You tell me,” I say through gritted teeth, trying not to cry.
“Louisa.” He uses my name to coax something out of me. Frustration, cooperation, affection, friendship, an orgasm, love…and for the first time, hearing it doesn't cause my stomach to fill with butterflies.
“Hudson.” I say his name back to him in the same severity he used mine, and I watch as he registers the difference.
“I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me what happened.” He steps close to me, we’re having a conversation with nothing but whispers and stares.
“I don’t need you to fix everything,” I snap under my breath. “But then again, it really only matters how it works out for you, right?”
“What?” His face contorts, genuinely looking confused.
“If you wanted my apartment, you should have just been honest. You didn’t have to lie. I would have left, it would have been easier than staying married to you,” I say, harsher than I mean it. But here we are. At a crossroads I could have never predicted.
“You know,” he says, and I’m not sure if it’s relief on his face.
“I do, and I'm glad,” I reply, the kindness stripped from my voice. Replaced by a gross combination of anger and heartbreak. “You must have thought I was so stupid, all this time.” His face searches mine for meaning he can’t find.
“Please,” he says, looking around. “This is the last step, let’s get through it and I’ll explain,” he says.
“Why,” I spit out. “You got everything you wanted, the apartment you can add to the list of accomplishments, you can fulfill whatever boyhood dream you think it might. But it won’t, because you chase things instead of happiness.
You know the difference and choose to have people look at you and be impressed, but you’ll end up alone.
You’ll think it’s by choice but it’s not.
It’s every decision you made where you thought someone else being impressed by you would be as fulfilling as being proud of yourself.
Well, it’s not. I know because I’ve spent my life being unimpressive to people who love me, while strangers fall in love with me.
And ya know what I learned, it doesn’t fucking matter.
” I take a breath, my tone is filled with disgust.
“You said you were good at mergers and acquisitions. I just didn’t think I was what was being acquired.
So I’m glad we can stop pretending. But mostly, I’m glad you got to fulfill the fantasy and fuck me, before you completely fucked me over.
” The words land between us like something dropped from a great height, and I feel them hit him, one after another.
I watch it move through his jaw, tightening his shoulders, he absorbs the blow.
And I feel sick and righteous, completely gutted in equal measure. “At least that part was real.”
“Lou,” he says, a nickname he’s never used, trying it now in desperation.
“I'll be moving out today, of both apartments,” I say.
“That’s not—”
“Hudson Ellis?” A woman in a lanyard is standing at the door to the interview corridor with a clipboard, looking between us. “We're ready for you.”
He doesn't go immediately when they call his name the first time.
He looks at me instead. The waiting room continues around us, forms and fluorescent light and the quiet machinery of other people's lives, and he steps closer, close enough that this is only for me, his voice low, and I hate that my heart responds.
“I know you're angry, I know you think you hate me,” he says. “I know you think you know what it all means.” His eyes are on mine with intensity. “But you don’t, so I need you to listen to me, just for a second, before I go in there.” A breath.
“They were going to sell it, Louisa. To someone else.” His hand runs the length of my arm as he speaks.
“You did all of this,” I say, and my voice is very quiet, “for a fucking apartment. And now you have it.”
“No.” The word comes out rough and immediate, stripped of everything careful. He takes one step toward me and his eyes are dark and completely unguarded. “For fuck's sake.” His jaw tightens. “I did all of this for you.”
“Mr. Ellis.” The woman with the lanyard again, losing patience.
He doesn't look at her. He looks at me for one more second, and it looks like he’s hoping for something, waiting for anything, and I don't know how to give him it right now.
When I don't move, something reshapes his face, and it breaks my heart as much as I would imagine it breaks his. If he had one.
“And what about the divorce papers,” I ask.
“Again, I did this, for you,” he says quietly. Then he turns and walks through the door, to play the most doting husband. But not before he turns back and mouths the three words to me that I’d understand in silence.