Chapter 30 Clover #2
Sydney gushes over her gift, an antique glass fisherman’s buoy in rope netting. She has a small collection of them and we happened to see a cranberry-colored one in an antique shop window in downtown Wexley.
“You know,” she tells us as we walk out to our cars. “They would use gold to create this particular color, and it’s quite the rare find.”
She gives me a kiss on the cheek and then a rare hug to Bennett. His body is stiff, and with how affectionate he is with me, it’s easy to forget that he and Sydney have always been a little physically distant.
The moment we get in the car, I buckle my seat belt and sink into a light sleep.
Bennett is silent as we walk up to the dorm, and I make a mental note to pester him when we’re in bed to see what’s on his mind.
As soon as he unlocks our door I shuffle inside and kick off my heels before flopping down on the edge of the bed.
But Bennett remains quiet as he begins opening and closing drawers and haphazardly throwing clothes into his gym bag.
I laugh because I’m a little nervous and because he looks like a little boy planning his big runaway. “Going somewhere?”
“This whole thing was a mistake, right?” he asks.
“What?” I’m on my feet now, reaching for him, but he rolls his shoulder back before walking past me to the bed. He picks up the small clutch I took to dinner and rifles through it, tossing my lip gloss and a tampon on the bed.
“What are you doing?” I reach for the bag, but he holds it out of my reach like a fucking bully.
He huffs, his frustration with the size of the bag growing, and eventually just shakes it out. My debit card and IDs and the rest of the contents flutter to the bed below. And then finally the crisp ivory business card Sydney gave me not even an hour and a half ago.
He holds it up, practically waving it in my face.
“This,” he says. “You’re letting my mother pay you off in exchange for divorcing me.
Is that it? Is that how much you love me?
I wonder what the exact price tag is on that, Clover?
Have you done the calculations? I know you love your numbers.
I heard you talking before I sat back down at the table. ”
I yank the card out of his hand, and I immediately regret taking off my heels because I would love a few extra inches right now so that I could at least attempt to get in his face. “Sydney is not paying me off. What the hell are you on about?”
“A mistake,” he says. “Isn’t that what you called us?”
“I’m using you, Bennett!” I shout back at him, neighbors be damned. “Don’t you see that?”
“At first, yes. And I deserved that.” His hands are in his hair, tugging against the roots. “I still do, but you can’t tell me that’s all that this is now.”
“Of course it isn’t, but you have to know that we did this all wrong.” My voice loses its edge. “This is our chance to fix it. I’ll have my housing taken care of next semester, so we can get divorced after finals. That was always the plan.”
“Well, pardon me for thinking the plan changed when I tore my damn heart out and served it to you on a silver platter, Clo.”
“Everything between us can still be true,” I tell him. “We don’t need a marriage certificate for that.”
“What if I do?” His voice is desperate and on the verge of cracking, his cheeks ruddy and eyes wide.
“You don’t. Bennett, don’t you get it? If you divorce me, then we can take our time and get to know each other. You won’t be obligated to me like you are now.”
“I know you,” he says through gritted teeth.
“I’ve known you and loved you all my life.
I have taken my time for twenty years, but I am done living without you, Clover.
Do you know what happened after that night at the country club?
I cut each of those so-called friends out of my life.
One by one, I found their dirtiest, most vile secrets and I promised them that if they even so much as thought about you again, I would make their lives miserable.
For the next two years, I went to school and I came home.
And then I did it all over again the next day.
I was a fucking hermit until Julian became my roommate last year. ”
I’m glad to hear it. I’m glad to know that his life changed after that.
Mine certainly did. But how does that make a difference right now?
“What do you want me to say to that, Bennett? Thank you? I never asked you to punish yourself, and I refuse to stay in a marriage that you entered to nobly settle some sort of moral debt with me. My god, I used you. How many more times do I have to say it for you to understand? This marriage is built on a collapsing foundation.”
“You are my wife,” he grinds out painfully. His eyes are ringed in red and the vein in his neck is pronounced and pulsing.
I want to sit him down and lay his head in my lap.
I want to comfort him. But I need him to see reason first. “You don’t have to let this be a bad thing.
We can do this the right way. Hell, Bennett, we can date and be a normal college couple if you want.
And we can do all that without me wondering what will happen if one day next semester you decide that this isn’t what you want. ”
“You are what I want. I don’t want a divorce.
I don’t want to date a normal college girl.
I want to date my wife. I don’t care how or why we got here, but we are here and it is everything I have ever wanted, and now you’re trying to take it away from me.
My mother might not have said that her financial support was contingent on our divorce, but I know that woman.
She is in my DNA. She doesn’t want this for us. ”
My lungs feel like they’re filling with fluid, like I’m drowning from the inside out. “I don’t think I want this either,” I whisper, because for as long as this marriage continues, I will fall asleep every night knowing that I bullied him into this.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed now and I go to stand in front of him.
“Bennett, if you love me—if we are meant to be—then one day we can do this all over again. We can get married in a church or on the beach or in that same damn courthouse. Our moms can be there. And it won’t be happening because I need something from you. It will be because all I need is you.”
He shakes his head. “You have me. Wholly and completely. You have me, Clover, and you’re cutting me loose.
All I need is you and you’re asking me to let you go because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do.
” He stands, his chest so close that I have to tilt my head far back to see him. “Fuck. That.”
Without another word, he shoves a few more things into his bag and hikes it over his shoulder before slamming the door so hard the windows shudder in their frames.
The room is empty.
Our bed is empty.
I am empty.