Chapter 28
Skyler
Iam not a Thompson anymore. That name doesn’t belong to a man sitting on rough-hewn pine, sweating through a twenty-dollar work shirt while the Chicago sun bakes grit into his pores.
It has no place near a peanut butter sandwich on generic white bread, or a Styrofoam cup of instant noodles where sawdust flecks swirl in the yellow broth.
Around me, the site roars in a coordinated symphony.
Two guys wrestle a window casing into place nearby, their voices rising over the staccato burst of a nail gun, while the generator hums a low, vibrating note I can feel in the soles of my boots.
My back aches with a dull, persistent thrum, a souvenir from the hundred sheets of drywall we moved this morning.
It is the best pain I’ve ever felt. It’s honest, and it doesn’t require a PR team to spin it.
I take a bite of the sandwich, the peanut butter sticking to the roof of my mouth. I used to hate this kind of bread—too soft, too processed, lacking the structural integrity of sourdough. Now, I appreciate it. It doesn’t ask much of me.
I see her before she sees me.
Harley is walking across the lot, her movements careful as she navigates the piles of gravel and the coils of orange extension cords.
She’s wearing a navy blazer and gray slacks.
Behind her, Mrs. Delgado is talking to Diego near the front porch, her hands moving in excited arcs as she points toward the kitchen window.
Harley stops ten feet away. She looks at the scaffolding, then at the half-finished roof, and finally, her eyes settle on me.
I’m a wreck. I know it. I’ve got a smudge of drywall mud on my cheek and a film of sweat that’s turned the dust on my forearms into a gray paste.
She hesitates. I can see the gears turning, the old reflex to be polite warring with the newer, harder instinct to maintain the distance. She takes a breath, her gaze dropping to the cup of noodles in my hand.
“You’re going to get an ulcer,” she says.
Her voice isn’t cold, but it isn’t warm, either. It’s just an observation, like a doctor noting a patient’s poor diet.
“Salt and carbs keep the heart beating.”
I shift over on the sawhorse, making space. It’s an unspoken invitation. For a second, I think she’ll walk away, but then she moves forward.
She sits beside me.
Playing it cool, though I’m anything but, I stir the noodles, the plastic fork scraping against the sides of the cup.
The silence between us isn’t empty. It’s weighted down by everything I didn’t say at the altar, everything we discussed in her father’s living room, and everything I’ve whispered to the empty walls of my new apartment.
“Is she happy?” I ask, nodding toward Mrs. Delgado.
“She’s terrified. But the good kind. The kind where you’re afraid you might actually get what you’ve been praying for. She’s already picking out curtains in her head.”
“Good, though she might not want ones in the kitchen. It’s got a good view of the park. I made sure of that.”
I take another bite of the sandwich, looking out over the site. A worker yells something in Spanish, followed by a burst of laughter.
Once the noodles are gone, leaving nothing but that salty, yellow residue in the bottom of the cup, I set it on the gravel between my boots.
“I was a coward, Harley. And I don’t just mean at the wedding,” I continue, my voice steady, though my heart is trying to kick its way out of my ribs. “The wedding was just the collapse. I used you. For three years, I used you like a piece of structural support I didn’t want to pay for.”
I feel her shift beside me, the navy fabric of her blazer rustling.
“I did it with Amanda, too,” I say. “I found women who had what I lacked—integrity, a spine, a sense of self that wasn’t dictated by a board of directors.
Too weak to find my own, I wrapped myself in your strength.
I used you as a shield against Robert and Elaine.
I figured if I was with someone like you, then maybe some of it would rub off on me by osmosis.
I could pretend I was standing up to them just by being next to you.
Or on my worst days, I’d sacrifice you in order to keep them away from me. ”
I finally turn to her. She isn’t looking at the site anymore. She’s looking at me, her expression unreadable, her hands still tight on her briefcase.
“Every time they insulted you, every time my mother made a ‘suggestion’ about your clothes or your career, and I stayed silent, I wasn’t just failing you as a partner, I was failing myself as a human being.
I was prioritizing a version of me that lived in their heads over the woman who actually loved me.
I wanted their approval more than I wanted your dignity.
And that’s never going to be okay. I just wish I’d been strong enough to deserve you then.
But I’m trying to be strong enough to deserve my own respect now. ”
“Thank you for saying that, Skyler.”
Her voice is soft, the professional edge finally blunted.
“I needed to hear it,” she continues. “For a long time, I wondered if I was the one who was crazy. If I was being too sensitive, too ‘difficult.’ You have a way of making people feel like their boundaries are just inconveniences for your parents. Hearing you admit that it was a pattern helps.”
She stands up, smoothing the wrinkles in her slacks. She looks back at me, and for the first time, I see the girl I fell in love with—the one who works in a cramped office and believes in justice even when it’s inconvenient.
“I think you needed to say it, too,” she adds. “Good luck with the house, Skyler. I think it’s going to be a good one.”
The lunch whistle blows.
“I’ll have those cabinet specs for you by tomorrow,” I say, pushing myself up from the sawhorse. My legs are stiff, my back is protesting, and I have a long afternoon of labor ahead of me.
“I’ll be here,” she says.
She turns and walks toward the front of the site, where Mrs. Delgado is waiting by the car. Harley doesn’t look back.
I watch her, but I don’t feel the desperate, clawing longing that used to keep me awake in the mansion. I don’t feel the urge to run after her and promise her a mansion or a diamond. But I do feel respect.