20. Gavin
Gavin
For a long time in our marriage, I had not been emotionally available for Bree.
I’d let her down, emotionally, even while I was physically right there with her, doing everything a good husband is supposed to do.
What I’d completely and spectacularly failed to understand was that none of that was enough on its own.
When a man loves a woman, he has to show up for her in two ways.
Physically. And emotionally. It had taken Bree almost leaving me for good before I finally understood that showing up emotionally could matter even more than just providing for the family.
Even after Bree told me she wanted to come home, I kept showing up at the deli anyway. In the meantime, I had to absolutely make sure Wren was gone from our lives for good.
One day, I decided to drive back to Foxborough to get the full scoop on her, so that when Bree finally came home, there wouldn’t be a shred of drama left waiting for us. No more misunderstandings between us. I’d already decided that much for myself. So I told Bree what I was planning to do.
“You don’t have to go level the ground for me,” she said. “I can handle Wren if I need to.”
“I don’t want any more Wren drama in our lives,” I told her. “I have one last thing to do before we move back home.”
The first thing on my list was pulling a few connections to get myself an appointment with the leasing manager for the house Wren had apparently rented right across the street from our home.
If I was serious about helping Bree heal, Wren was the absolute last person who needed to be casually walking around that neighborhood.
The leasing manager, Claudia White, an older woman with auburn hair and a smile that reached all the way up into her eyes, welcomed me in and told me to have a seat.
“My manager called to say the Gavin Blakley wanted to see me,” she said with a smile. “About a lease on a property?”
I smiled. “Yes , Mrs. White. Just some information about the occupant. I sent the address to your manager.”
“Yes, my manager mentioned that,” she said. “Lease information isn’t usually something we share, but he asked me to make an exception in your case.” She looked down at her computer. “So what did you want to know about... 13480 Oakdon Square?”
“I want to know if the one-year lease under Wren Jacobs has actually started,” I said.
She scrolled through something on her screen.
“This lease started three weeks ago, but... Wren Jacobs?” She shook her head.
“No, this lease is under a different name. I can’t share those details with you.
But to answer your actual question, the lease Wren Jacobs signed was canceled about a month ago. She even paid the termination fee.”
She never moved in.
I was supposed to be happy about that but something was telling me this couldn’t be that simple. I thanked Claudia and headed out.
I drove around town after that, swung by Wren’s office building, and didn’t see a single car in the lot. I knew one person who might have more information about her. I called Lavi.
“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Lavi said. “One of the girls who used to work in Wren’s office told me the whole story.
Apparently, right after that big showdown you had with her in the parking lot, Wren met some guy almost immediately.
He’s a businessman, and from what I heard, he’s absolutely loaded.
He’s also decades older than her, like old enough to be her father, practically. ”
“Okay.”
“He started showing up at her office all the time after that,” Lavi continued.
“He’d bring her flowers, the whole big production.
And then, within about a month, she just shut the entire office down completely.
She told everyone she was laying off that she was going to travel the world with him first. After that, she said she was planning to settle down with him in New York for good. ”
I sat there in my car for a second, letting that sink in.
Good for her, honestly. She could be with whatever millionaire, or billionaire, she’d set her sights on this time. As long as she never showed her face around here again.
I drove back to New Haven smiling, feeling a kind of relief I hadn’t felt since that entire conversation with her.
I kept up the small gestures with Bree the weeks leading to our move back home together.
I wasn’t going to take her forgiveness for granted, not for one single second, and I wasn’t going to stop fulfilling every promise I’d made to her.
I had a woman to heal, from all the garbage I’d put her through, so I kept showing up.
I planned little dates for us, every single day. Nothing extravagant. Small, overlooked things, the kind of things I’d always taken for granted, always been too busy to make time for before.
One day, I left her a handwritten note asking her to wake up early, grab a cardigan, and meet me outside.
I drove her out to the most picturesque spot in New Haven I’d managed to find, tucked in behind the music conservatory, deep in a little nature reserve.
There was a small hill with a gazebo on it, overlooking a quiet lake.
I’d packed a thermos of coffee and a basket of fruit and breakfast sandwiches, and we sat wrapped up in one blanket together, holding hands, watching the sun come up over the water.
Another day, I took her to this old historic church that had been converted into a theater and a farm-to-table restaurant, and we spent the whole evening there together, listening to a slow jazz band, just letting ourselves be in the moment.
Another time, I took her to a children’s illustration exhibit at the modern art museum, and let her teach me everything she knew about the field.
She talked, so excited, about the history behind each artist, the stories behind the work.
I could tell how much it meant to her that I was actually showing interest in her world, and honestly, I kicked myself for never bothering to learn more about it sooner.
That same evening, after we got back from dinner, I sat down determined to educate myself more on the whole craft of children’s book illustration.
I found this YouTube channel called Illustration ABCs, and I started following it religiously.
I was genuinely amazed, humbled even, by everything that went into becoming a good children’s illustrator.
My respect for Bree grew about a hundred times over after that, every single time I’d catch her hunched over a project in the deli office.
She kept letting me hug her. Slowly, that turned into gentle kisses too.
Every single touch with her made my whole body ache for more of her.
I’d lie awake some nights just thinking about a kiss or a hug we’d shared earlier that day.
But I made myself give her the time she needed to feel ready again.
After nearly losing her for good, every single touch felt like a privilege now, not something I’d ever let myself take for granted again.
I always kissed her gently. I knew kissing had always been how she preferred to express love.
It was almost sacred to her. And since we weren’t fully back together yet, I kept everything slow, exactly the way I knew she’d want it.
Even Bree noticed. She told me my kisses had turned sweeter, gentler, that the kisses we were sharing now were the most beautiful ones of her whole life.
I already knew there’d be other kinds of kisses in the years ahead of us.
But those particular kisses, right there in that in-between stretch of time, would stay some of the most special ones I’d ever carry with me.
I hoped every single one of them was carrying the promise I intended to keep for the rest of our lives together.
That I’d always be in her corner. That I’d never let her feel emotionally alone again.
I found little ways to make her life easier too.
I helped clear out her backlog of client emails.
I shipped stacks of her hard-copy illustrations out to her publisher for her.
I was still waiting tables at Meat Cute the whole time.
Melvin had already told me he wanted me back on the field as soon as I was ready, “hitting the games again,” as he put it.
But I wanted to keep hanging around, keep helping him however I could, for as long as I possibly could.
As if Bree’s smiles and hugs and kisses weren’t already reward enough, Melvin handed me his own little reward one day too.
I walked into the deli one Tuesday morning, ready to check in the new supply order. When I opened the door, Melvin had his back to me, facing the corkboard on the wall. As I walked closer, I saw exactly what he was doing.
He was erasing my name off the Never List.
He turned around. “Welcome back to the circle of trust, son,” he said, this huge smile spreading across his face.
I honestly couldn’t believe it. I was back in. I could still be one of the lucky ones who eventually got a scoop of that sourdough starter someday. I don’t think I’d been as happy winning the Super Bowl as I was standing there, back in the running for a bowl of hundred-year-old bacteria.
“Thank you, Melvin,” I said. “This means a lot to me.”
He gave me a big smile. “You were a jerk. But you unjerked yourself. You’ve earned this, for everything you’ve done trying to win my daughter back.”
Those words hit me so hard I had to swallow down a lump in my throat. Melvin came around the counter and pulled me into a big hug.
“I promise, Melvin,” I said. “I will never be that jerk again.”
It was humbling, honestly, realizing how many small, everyday gestures I could have been giving Bree this whole time, over all the years we’d been married. In the weeks leading up to moving back home, I made sure I never let up, doing everything I possibly could to make her feel loved. Heard.
And the healing kept happening. Slowly. Bree started confiding in me again, telling me her worries about our future, asking me questions about what our life would look like once we finally moved back home.
I answered every single question as honestly as I could.
Some of them, I genuinely didn’t have answers for.
But mostly, I just listened, with the kind of patience I should have been giving her all along.
She kept leaning into me, little by little, handing me pieces of her trust back until, eventually, it became whole again.
One Sunday, I packed us a picnic and we drove out fifty miles to a wine festival. After a full day of wine tasting and a beautiful lunch spread laid out by the vineyard staff, she and I took a walk through the rows of grapevines.
“I always wanted to come here with you,” she said. “I never told you that.”
“I always wanted to bring you here too,” I said. “I just never found the time before.”
She smiled, then got quiet for a second.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you something for a while now,” she said. “And I think this is the right place to finally say it.”
I nodded for her to keep going.
“I don’t think you’ll ever treat me the way you did before,” she said.
“I’ve already seen it, in your honesty, in everything you’ve done.
And I believe it, Gavin. It’s still a leap of faith either way.
I just want you to know I’m taking it. I have faith.
In you. In us. I know you’ll always be there for me now. ”
I stood there quietly for a second, my eyes starting to sting.
“I will be, Bree,” I said.
“I don’t want to waste any more time, Gavin,” she said. “I want our future to start right now. This exact moment.”
And for the first time in my entire life, I did something without a single plan attached to it.
We didn’t drive back to New Haven that evening.
We drove straight home. Home, home. Some of the logistics did creep into my head on that drive, I’ll admit it.
What about all of Bree’s stuff, still sitting back in New Haven?
Our house in Foxborough was probably a total mess by now.
I’d already been quietly planning, in the back of my mind, how I’d turn our actual move-in day into a huge surprise, decorating the whole house, hanging up little notes for her to find, cooking her a three-course dinner.
When I brought that up to her on the drive, she just laughed.
“I want to go back to our home, Gavin,” she said. “Like newlyweds. And figure out the rest from scratch. Together.”
Her laugh faded into something quieter after that, softer, and she reached over and took my hand, resting it on top of hers on the console between us, her eyes staying right on mine.
Her smile was so beautiful right then, and I knew, looking at her, that for however many years we’ll have in this life together, I’ll look at each day as a precious gift with her.
“There’s nothing in this entire world I want more than that, Bree,” I said, driving us straight into the city limits of home.