Chapter 1 #4
Jack was close with his family. Not just see each other at holidays close, but live together close, all up-in each other’s business close.
His granny lived with his family as he was growing up, and the first time I met her, she hugged me so tightly I squeaked.
Losing access to Jack’s family was a second source of heartbreak when we split.
“Still alive, yeah,” he answers. “My abuela, too, if you’d believe it. Apparently I have superhuman genes on both sides.”
A goofy wiggle of his eyebrows brings an echo of the silly Jack I married, the guy who found me a desk chair on Craigslist and decorated it with streamers and “Just Married” signs so I swished every time I moved.
“Now,” he continues, “every time you’re on is another chance for her to lecture me about how foolish I was to let you leave. It’s a frequent reprise of hers.”
“Oh.” I blink and take a slow sip of the tea.
It’s generous of Jack’s grandmother to blame him for letting me leave, when I was determined to do so.
When I got into a PhD program in California, Jack wouldn’t come with me, so that was that.
We’d only been married two years, and it was almost too easy to part ways, blaming our young marriage on immaturity, acting like filing the papers was no big deal.
“She isn’t wrong,” he says quietly, avoiding my gaze as my heart surges in my chest. “I was a fool to let you—”
“Jack.” Cutting him off is a matter of survival.
Because as much as I pretended our split was easy, it broke a piece of me that never quite recovered.
I went to LA and glued a smile on my face and lived twenty years keeping all the What Ifs locked away.
Knowing he might have been nursing his own set of regrets is a reality I’m not ready to face.
“We don’t need to walk down memory lane, okay? ”
He swallows. “Sure, yeah. I’m sorry. I’ll, uh, go check the storm. If we’re lucky, they plowed the roads and I can get out of your hair.”
Jack
The roads weren’t plowed. This is exactly why I came up early, because the likelihood of the county prioritizing our small mountain road in the week before Christmas and New Year’s is slim at best.
So I’m here for another night, at the very least. Tessa took the news well—which is to say with a chilly nod and a little “okay.” I want so much more from her, like the moment of connection we had this morning, when she told me about how she’s been doing and I promptly messed it up by saying I was a fool to let her leave back then.
It’s such a quintessential truth of my adult life—losing Tessa was the worst thing that has happened to me—that it just slipped out.
And with it, I lost the tiny bit of vulnerability she offered up, sweet and sleepy in her worn T-shirt and socked feet.
That Tessa could think negatively about herself or her body pisses me off.
Not at her, but at a world that would make her feel anything less than perfect.
Because I wasn’t lying when I told her she was aging beautifully.
Tessa is as radiant as she ever was, but now her simple beauty is backed up by the confidence of a grown woman, the wisdom of someone who’s spent her life looking into history to try to help us understand the present and create a better future.
And being in this cabin with her all day is a delicious kind of torture.
Since she cut me off earlier, I’ve been on my best behavior, keeping any short chatting to superficial topics like the snowfall outside or how her family has been.
I get that she doesn’t want to go there—to the past, to our marriage, and our split, and all the ways we might look back on it now—even if I’m craving it.
In these last two decades I’ve moved through waves.
I have times when I push the memories of Tess from my mind, when I invest my heart in other people.
But then a new wave will crash on shore, and I’ll think of her—her laugh, the way she scrunched her nose as she read a book, how she saw through my funny clown act and dug at the substance of who I really was.
The heartache of our divorce is rising to the surface with a vengeance. And now she’s here, and I could ask her: Do you miss me?
But instead I let us spend the day moving around the cabin like strangers.
Our ability to pretend to ignore each other in this tiny space is impressive. We’re taking turns prepping food for ourselves in the kitchen, or restocking the wood stove, then retreating back to our sides of the cabin, her on the bed and me on the couch.
But we’re both pretending. Tessa “read” her book for 20 minutes without turning a page, and any time I glanced her way—which, okay, was a lot of times—we’d make a flash of eye contact before she lowered her gaze again.
She’s watching me, and I’m watching her, and the air in the room is thick and electric.
We’re twenty years older, but the bright thing between us hasn’t faded.
It’s pulsing at my throat and tingling my skin.
We’re still attracted to each other, and skirting around each other all day, ignoring it, is only making it worse. I expect everything I touch to spark.
When an error of timing had us both sitting down to the table at the same time for lunch, Tessa told me she’s still teaching at UCLA, and I told her about my change to high school, where I teach civics and government.
Tessa had the kindness to act like it’s a great job, not pointing out how I’d vowed, when we’d split, that I’d do something Big and Bold.
I managed to tell her that my abuela was devastated I was single, just in case she was wondering.
We passed a whole day like this. Days at the cabin are like that—they stretch for hours but are over in a flash.
The snow had stopped by mid-morning, but the depth of the snowfall and continued high winds meant going outside for more than a bundle of wood from the porch wasn’t the best idea.
So we read, and ate, and watched each other while pretending to do other things.
And now all our lights are off, but moonlight streaks through one window, so I can watch the show of a restless Tessa, grumbling as she flops from side to side on the bed.
It’s fairly amusing, and I finally say so. “Sounds like there’s a fish in there with you, flopping away.”
“Oh my god,” she groans. “Shut up.”
I always loved Tessa sassy, and find I want more of it now.
“What? I’m spouting facts. You’re going to break that bed if you keep it up.”
“If we never broke the bed, I’m sure a little tossing and turning won’t hurt it.”
I can just barely make out the outline of her arm, slapping a hand over her mouth.
But it’s too late. I know she’s thinking about it, about us, and how we fucked with absolute abandon, everywhere.
Including every surface in this room we’re now sharing.
I’ve had good sex since Tessa, but it’s still sometimes her I think about when I get myself off—the way she was so in control in all the aspects of her life, but ceded power to me in the bedroom.
Or the kitchen, or over the couch, or a few times, out in public…
And that bed in particular, the one she’s on right now, the same one I threw her on our first night here, when she gripped the headboard, moaning my name as I pounded her from behind. It is a miracle we didn’t break that thing.
“I usually go for a hike when I’m here,” she says fast, like she’s covering up her last sentence. “Tire myself out. But I couldn’t today, so I guess I’m just…”
“Restless?”
She sighs. “Yeah.”
“If you need to listen to a podcast or something, I won’t mind.”
More rustling. “I don’t have anything downloaded on my phone.”
If this was then, I’d rub her back, massage the palms of her hands, talk until my voice was hoarse to give her brain a place of refuge.
Though when she was really having trouble sleeping, the best solution was an orgasm.
Good, great. Now I’m hard in my pajamas with my ex-wife across the room.
And the darkness is making me bold. It’s easier, somehow, to not see her, not negotiate space. She’s over there and I’m over here and even though I shouldn’t it emboldens me to say, “If you need to, uh, take care of yourself to be able to sleep, that’s fine.”
There is silence, then a gasp. “Excuse me?”
“I just mean, I remember. How sometimes if you couldn’t sleep it helped if you—” Yeah, this was a bad idea, but now I’m committed. “If you got off.”
“Oh my god.”
“Sorry. Pretend I didn’t say anything. That’s probably changed. Forget it. Sorry.”
More silence. More rustling.
Finally, she clears her throat. “It hasn’t changed. But I don’t—” A new resolve enters her voice, like she’s now dropped to my level and may as well embrace it. “I wouldn’t do that with you in the room.”
“I don’t mind,” I respond, probably way too quickly. But hell, I’m in this now. And I really wouldn’t mind. I mean, I want her to be able to sleep. “It’s nothing you haven’t done before.”
“Well, yeah, but that was—”
“Are you seeing anyone?” I blurt. “I should have asked. I get that that would cross a line.”
“No,” she says quickly. “No, there’s uh, no one.”
Relief floods through me as I tell my body to stop celebrating.
“I usually read something,” she continues. Her voice is a little louder, more confident. “When I need to do that, I usually read something. But I don’t have anything saved on my phone.”
“Oh.” Now I’m imagining Tessa in bed, her phone lit up with some dirty story as her other hands works beneath her panties. Fuck my life.
This is no longer about helping her sleep, this is about something bigger. A chance I’d never thought I’d have again to hear Tessa come.
“I could help.”
“What?”