Before
BEFORE
On our seven-year anniversary, I finally reach my breaking point.
It’s already dark outside when I pull the steaks for our celebration dinner off the grill. Michael hasn’t come downstairs yet, so I parse out the asparagus, set the table, and light two taper candles before pouring some bubbly cider.
My husband has a decade of sobriety behind him, which astonishes me when I realize how much time has passed. Ten years have gone so quickly, six and a half of them here in Seagrove. As expected, moving allowed Michael and Benny’s business to explode, which has left us flush with financial comfort, and my husband couldn’t be happier. He relishes the constant press of work. But I...
Well, I have no cause to complain. And now I write for a living, the way I always wanted, even if endlessly chronicling medical devices isn’t exactly what I had in mind.
I put the finishing touches on the table. After one last glance at the hallway mirror to confirm my hair is properly curled and my little black dress tight in all the right places, I venture upstairs.
As usual, Michael is bent over his drafting table, his eyes fixed on whatever architectural wonder he’s currently transcribing from his imagination. I clear my throat.
He looks up. “Hey.”
“Hey. Dinner’s ready.”
“Great.” He smiles in that muted way that tells me he’s still miles away, in drafting mode. “I’ll be right there.”
Back downstairs, I wait so long that the steaks cool. I sigh when I think of how much the meat cost, but...oh, well. We can afford it, thanks to him.
Finally, Michael takes the chair across from me and drapes a spotless linen napkin over his lap. “This looks amazing. Thank you. And happy anniversary.”
“Happy anniversary.” I smile as we toast. Cidery sweetness fizzes on my tongue.
While we eat, we revisit all our usual topics—the amazing July weather, the dinner party we have planned with Kate and her new husband, the question of whether or not we should get a dog. I vote yes, Michael votes no. It would just be extra work, he says, for no real reason.
Ultimately, I let him win, because the conversation functions as more of a pressure-release valve than anything else. As a stand-in for discussing the one thing he can’t buy me. Because I’ve already brought that up enough times, and it always ends with him sending me off on a run.
Over dessert, Michael sets an envelope on the table.
I stare. “I thought we agreed on no gifts,” I squeak out.
“I couldn’t help myself.” He smiles. “You know how I feel about spoiling my angel.”
I try to smother the thump in my veins, but this is no jewelry box. It’s an envelope . The kind that just might have plane tickets inside.
I can’t wait another moment. I snatch the envelope and tear it open, then whip out a...
...gift certificate. To a dog breeder. For a shockingly large sum.
I turn it over a few times, my brow furrowed. “What’s this?”
“What does it look like?”
“But...didn’t you just say no dog?” I go hunting in the envelope again, but it’s empty.
“It was a bluff, Mina.” He looks concerned by my lack of enthusiasm. “I found a breeder here in Seagrove who’s got a litter of purebred Labrador puppies we can choose from. We’re scheduled to have a look tomorrow.”
“A puppy? A purebred?” I fiddle with the paper. On the off chance Michael ever agreed, I pictured us going down to the animal shelter for a toothless, half-blind old mutt, the kind that needs love and snuggles in its twilight years.
Besides, Darlene could probably fund the shelter’s efforts for half a year with a check this large.
Michael’s face falls. “Is this not what you wanted?”
I tuck the certificate away. “I... When I said I wanted a dog, I meant one that needed a home.”
He looks mystified by that. “Oh. Okay. Well, if you’d rather go to the shelter, we’ll do that. I’ll just call the breeder and tell her we had a change of heart.”
I muster a smile. I love the idea of a stinky old dog lolling around on our pristine leather couches, but...
The hole the dog conversation fills yawns wider than ever.
Michael’s brow pleats. “Why don’t you look happy right now?”
Oh, god. I hate that I’m doing this. I pull my smile wider. “I am happy. Thank you.”
When he searches my face, I know I haven’t fooled him. For a moment, I have the strangest urge to go get him his pencil, because he’s studying me the same way he studies his drafting board, as if he can design his way to the desired outcome. Just adjust this angle over here, shift that wall to the left, and voilà. Everything in its place.
His smoky voice turns rasping. “What’s this really about, Mina?”
I tell myself to let it go. Then, for some reason, I don’t. “To be honest, the dog thing has mostly been a way to distract myself.”
“From?”
“Asking for what I really want.”
“Which is?”
I clamp my teeth over my lip. Not today, of all days. I already know how this will end. “Never mind.”
His mouth thins. “You want to go on vacation.”
I push my asparagus around on my plate. “You said it, not me.”
Michael sighs. “Is this ever going to stop coming up? You know what work is like for me.”
“You asked for a few years, Michael,” I blurt. “It’s been six and a half .”
“Business is crazy right now.”
“Business is always crazy right now. And what about the fact that Benny and Sarah spent Christmas in Tahiti last year? If he can leave, why can’t you?”
“I’ve given you everything else. Everything you could possibly ask for.”
I flinch, because he sounds hard-bitten and weary, as if he’s done his utmost to make me happy and can’t understand why it’s not working.
I look around. I am happy, really. I should be. I couldn’t ask for more than what’s spread out before me—a beautiful house, if in the last place I thought I’d settle down, a beautiful husband, a beautiful everything . And yet...
I clear my throat. Crap. I can’t seem to help myself. “Do you remember when we drove out to that observatory, back when we first met? The one outside Seattle?”
He blinks, long and slow.
The blankness in his eyes stabs at me. He can’t have forgotten, can he? “Where you first told me you loved me?”
“Right.” He sets his fork down. “What about it?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that. A lot.” Endlessly, in fact, but I don’t need to rub it in his face. I twist my napkin, then give up and toss it onto the table. “It keeps coming back to me. How you looked up at the stars and said what you did. My whole world shifted in that moment. It felt like we were the only two people in the world right then, and I keep thinking it’s because we were out there being free together. Away from expectations. Just us and the sky and the world. And I miss that. I miss us, together, being like that.”
His gaze slides away. As if he’s uncomfortably aware that he’s no longer the same man who stood on that mountaintop and read poetry in the stars. “That was a different life, Mina. A different me.”
My heartbeat snags in my throat. “It doesn’t have to be. If we just went somewhere, if we could get some distance from Washington, we could reconnect. The way we used to.”
He huffs a humorless laugh. Something about it sounds hollow. Like I could reach across the table and my fingers would pass right through him.
“Things change.” He keeps his tone measured, but underneath, emotion thrums, some caged reaction he refuses to grant me access to. “People change. This is me, now. This is our life. I don’t know what more I can give you.”
I ease back in my chair, at a loss. Of course he’s changed. Ten years have changed me, too. But I can’t help feeling like he’s forgotten his own advice, like he’s fallen asleep . That we both have.
How I long to wake up. To lure the Michael I fell in love with from the hibernation Grayson drove him into. I’m certain he’s still in there, buried beneath the hurt. Somewhere under the work deadlines and haircuts and grocery runs.
“Are you ever going to let this go?” he says softly.
A shuddering breath steals out of me. “I don’t think I can.”
The moment it’s out, I realize it’s true. Underneath the shine and glamour of our life together, I’ve never forgotten that I gave up Greece for him. For this. And while I don’t regret the sacrifice I made to build a life together, I always thought Michael would live out some version of my dream with me. Except he refuses. For years, it’s been eating at me, and now there’s no place left for my frustration to go except spilling across the table.
“Why don’t you go somewhere with Kate?” he says, his voice taut. “Book a trip to Cancun or something?”
“I don’t want to go with Kate,” I force out. “I want...”
I grope to fill the blank as taunting possibilities cascade through my mind. I want to travel with him . I want him to wake up. I want him to wake me up, to stand under the stars again and hold my hand.
Michael closes his eyes, as if forcibly mastering himself. When he looks again, his gaze is calm. “Mina. Come here.”
I hesitate, because I know, even before I circle toward him and his fingers go skimming up my bare thighs, what will happen next. One touch, and I melt into a puddle of want.
This never fails to distract me, and he knows it.
Sure enough, when he pulls at me, need takes over. I tear open his shirt, buttons flying, then yank down his zipper. He whisks my underwear off and I sink onto him right there at the dinner table, a mindless cry simmering out of me as two become one.
His artist’s fingers hike my dress up and dig into my bare ass. I ride him hard, with a kind of desperation, my hips rolling as my back arches and my eyes fall closed.
Michael clutches at me. I rise and rise and rise inside until I crest somewhere in the stratosphere.
When I come to my senses again, limp and draped against him like a rag doll, I raise my head.
He looks up at me. “ This is what we have, angel. This, and our house, and our life. Where we take care of each other. Forget the past.”
“I can’t,” I murmur. “And none of this changes what I just said.”
Alarm crowds his gaze, quickly masked.
“What I really want for our anniversary,” I press, “is to go somewhere. With you.”
A slow sigh bleeds out of him. “Fine. The Oregon coast, then? We could drive down next weekend and—”
“No.” We did that last summer, and it wasn’t enough. We only managed to bring all the same work—emails, Michael’s conference calls, my lethally boring articles for Medical Devices Monthly— to a different place and do it there. “I want to go somewhere real. On an actual airplane. No half measures this time.”
His muscles lock. I’m afraid to see what I’ve just done, so I concentrate on disentangling our bodies and snagging a clean napkin to stem the flow of him down my legs.
“I don’t like flying,” he says tightly.
I frown. He’s never said that before, and when I finally meet his eyes, the shutter that has become so familiar has dropped into place.
“I didn’t know that.” Maybe I should chalk up his hesitation to a flying phobia and be done with it, but my mouth keeps on producing words. “But are you telling me that’s it? We’re just never going to go anywhere we can’t get to in a car?”
Michael makes a noncommittal noise and tucks himself back in his pants, then stands to clear the dishes. He leaves me standing there with a napkin pressed between my legs and an awful, stony lump in my throat.
I try to fight it, but when he retreats to the sink at the island, I feel myself losing ground. Fear of flying or not, it feels like he’s taking our night at the observatory and yanking it straight out of my hands—hands that have turned that memory over and over again in adoration.
He glances up from the dishes. “You’d feel better if you went for a run.”
I don’t want him to see how close I am to breaking, so I march upstairs, exchange my cocktail dress for running clothes, and pelt out into the night.
Even though it’s nine o’clock and pitch black, I run until my lungs crack open and my teeth jar in their sockets.
When I finally stumble back inside, Michael has cleared off the dining table and polished the granite. The whole kitchen looks brand-new. But he hasn’t gone to bed. A pool of light brightens the lawn out back, which means he’s in his office. Again.
I mount the stairs. For once, the run hasn’t taken enough out of me. For once, I refuse to back down.
I can’t . I miss him too much.
In the doorway to his office, I prop my hands on my hips. Michael looks up, startled.
“I can’t live like this,” I announce. “I can’t be married to someone who won’t go anywhere with me. You promised we’d travel, and we haven’t, so if your answer’s still no, I’m finding us a couples therapist tomorrow.”
His eyes widen. He blinks, apparently struck dumb by the fact that I’ve abandoned our script. Long moments pass, punctuated by the tick of his tabletop clock.
“Say something.”
“I...” He swallows. “All right.”
“All right like, ‘Let’s go to therapy’? Or all right like, ‘Go ahead and book a ticket’?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose with the hand holding his pencil. “I mean, all right, book the tickets. Jesus, Mina. Just... Where’re we going?”
I nearly choke. I can hardly believe my ears. Greece , I want to say, but I know that chance has come and gone. Best choose something that doesn’t involve crossing international borders. Less to explain to my mother that way, too. “Hawaii.”
“Okay,” he says. “Then choose the dates and book us in first class. Put it all on the Mastercard.”
My jaw slackens. Apparently we’re both breaking form tonight, because for him to give me carte blanche to interfere with his work...
I don’t dare complete the thought, even to myself. There’s something about gift horses and mouths that suits this situation perfectly.
“Thank you,” I say. “Wow. I love you so much.” I turn to go.
“Mina?”
I glance back to find him still swiveled toward me, his back to the desk. “Yeah?”
“I love you, too. You do know that, right?”
“I do.”
A few beats of silence pass before he asks, “Do you still want the dog?”
“Yes.” I smile. “I still want the dog.”
A week later, we bring home a shaggy, twelve-year-old mutt with a coppery coat and wretched breath. The shelter warns us she’ll have to take special pills for the rest of her life because of an issue with her kidneys—the reason her last family surrendered her, apparently—but I don’t care. I’m in love even before she flops down beside my desk in the living room.
We name her Penny.
“Just don’t let her up on the furniture,” Michael says.
I reach over my chair arm to pat her head. “I don’t think she could get onto the furniture if she tried.”
He cracks a smile. “Good point. Maybe you were onto something with the whole no-puppy thing.”
I smile back. “Maybe I was.”
In the weeks that follow, things change. I no longer write in solitude—Penny keeps me company, stinky breath and all, and Michael starts getting up ridiculously early, like he used to. He even starts running again. I can tell by the shadows beneath his eyes that the late nights and early mornings are taking their toll, but when I ask why, he only flips his shirt up to display newly chiseled abs.
“We’re going to the beach,” he says. “Do I really have to explain?”
My stomach clenches. I would never call him chubby, but the eight-pack had slowly coalesced into something more like a two-pack. Now...well, he looks like he did at twenty-five.
Predictably, we end up having sex right then and there, him hoisting me up against the wall and driving himself into me until I unravel.
When he puts me down again, my knees make a reluctant agreement to keep holding me upright. “I think we need to do that every day on vacation,” I slur. “Twice a day.”
I expect a smile, but he gives me a serious look. Not his normal I’m-working-right-now-can-we-do-this-later look, but something else. “Actually, what do you think about no sex on vacation? Just you and me and...us staring at the stars together. Or however you described it.”
“No sex?” A thoughtful note sneaks into my voice. “You mean like when we first met?”
A beat of silence passes. “Yeah. Exactly.”
My ensuing rush of longing catches me off guard. I love having sex with him. Would crawl across a desert for it. But I can’t deny that our first—and only—sexless month wielded a singular magic. One I’ve been trying to recapture for years. Maybe this is the key. It’s certainly a strategy I haven’t considered before.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it. Or rather, not do it. For ten long, horny days. But only because you let me test-drive those new abs in advance.”
His shoulders relax. A smile brightens his face. “You look so happy right now.”
“I am,” I say. “I really, really am.”
“Because of the sex thing?”
“No. Because I’m finally going on an adventure.” I lean up to steal a kiss. “And it’s with you.”
The morning of our flight, we drop Penny off at Kate’s house. For the rest of the drive to Seattle, I wonder if I’ve gravely miscalculated. Michael’s gotten quieter and quieter, and while I tell myself not to ask why, I eventually have to.
“I’m just nervous,” he says. “About flying.”
“Really? It’s that bad?”
“Yeah. I hate airplanes.”
“Huh.” I study him. He looks pale. Sweaty.
I wonder how he could possibly fear flying but routinely guide this car through curves that statistically have a way higher likelihood of killing us than a measly airplane. “Is there anything I can do? Hold your hand while we take off, maybe? Bribe the captain to announce that it’s your birthday?”
That earns me a lopsided smile. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”
It doesn’t seem that way, though. The closer we get, the tighter he winds, and as we make our way through security, I wonder if he’ll implode.
At the gate, he keeps checking his phone without seeming to see it, and I can’t keep my mouth shut any longer. “Is there a reason you hate flying so much? Something in particular?”
He jerks a glance at me, his cheeks ashen. “Um... I’m going to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”
I stare after him, plagued by the sense that I’ve just touched on something forbidden. Something to do with Lily.
I smooth down my floral-print dress and consciously decide to let it go. Michael has conceded on both the dog and the vacation. The least I can do is let Lily and Grayson lie. Besides, this is supposed to be our time.
No tomorrows. No yesterdays, either.
Michael is gone for several minutes. When he comes back, he looks better. Astonishingly so. He’s splashed water on his face, and his hair is wet in front, combed back with his fingers. The color in his cheeks has returned.
He comes close, stopping inches away. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Sorry about that. I just needed a minute. What were you saying?”
I gaze up. He’s done such an admirable job of getting himself together that I lose myself to a heady whirlwind, the kind that robs me of breath and makes me wonder if someone has injected pure sunlight into my blood.
A moment later, I realize why.
Michael’s looking at me like he used to. No shutters, no walls, just a wide-open aquamarine infinity. He stares at me like the rest of the world has faded. Like I’m the only woman he sees.
Someone announces our flight over the loudspeaker. People jostle to line up, but neither of us move.
Lily doesn’t matter, I realize. Grayson doesn’t, either. Nothing does, just us. Just this.
“Nothing important,” I say. “Except that I love you madly.”
Longing kindles in his eyes. He’s probably already regretting the no-sex rule. “I love you, too. You have no idea.”
My heart skips. “Oh yeah? Prove it.”
“How?”
I smile slyly. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”
He gives me a considering look before we board the plane and settle in for the long flight to Oahu. During takeoff, he tenses, but when we level off at cruising altitude and the seat belt sign goes dark, he flips up the armrest and takes my hands.
“You want proof?”
“Desperately,” I say.
“I love these fingers.” He kisses each one. “The way they make that clacking noise when you type. How ordinary it sounds, except the words coming out are anything but.”
Something catches in my throat. “You mean my medical articles?”
“No. Your travelogues.”
I would startle if I didn’t find the movement of his thumbs across the backs of my hands so soothing. I haven’t written a travelogue in years, and had come to consider my long-ago dream of travel writing as taboo a subject as Lily. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m the one who locked up that fantasy and threw away the key.
His fingers trail up my arms, leaving electric ripples in their wake. “And I love these shoulders, the way they hunch up when you’re brushing your teeth. Like you’re worried someone’s going to sneak up and steal your toothpaste.”
I blink. Do I do that?
“And these ears.” He fondles one lobe. “I love how this one’s rounded at the tip, but the other one has the slightest point. It’s subtle. But adorable. Like a secret someone can only discover if they’re paying attention.”
My breath dwindles. My god. It’s just my ear, but lightning strikes my core, a direct hit.
“And these eyes.” He tugs me close. “I could stare into them all day. All year. All my life.”
For long moments, he does exactly that. I can’t breathe. I just gaze back for some delirious amount of time measured in heartbeats instead of seconds.
“Do you believe me now?” he says.
A smile more genuine than any I’ve felt in months blossoms on my face. “I’m getting there. But you might have to keep this up. Until I’m fully convinced.”
He chuckles. The sound slides into the base of my stomach and pulls everything tight, and I wonder how on earth I’m going to keep from ripping his clothes off for the next ten days. Because it’s working. We’ve barely left the ground, but already, the freedom of hurtling through the sky, the promise of an island my feet have never touched before, these compliments, holy shit, these compliments —everything simmers in my blood, effervescent.
Michael laces his long fingers through mine. As our palms lock together, something clicks inside me, and I think, This man was the right choice .
And he always will be, as long as he’s holding my hand.