17. Preferences
PREFERENCES
Ivy
Shutting the door silently and locking it behind me, I set my keys down and walked into my apartment. The phone call had been unexpected to say the least. Normally when I waited till the last moment to get home, he didn’t even notice.
I walked into the living room. He was sitting on the couch, a beer in his hand as he stared at the television, even though the screen was dark.
“Hey babe,” I said gently as I sat next to him.
The last four months had been tiring. I’d moved back in after our fight in January, and things had slid back into a normal routine.
We worked, he worked more. I cleaned the apartment, talked to the walls, and tried my best to put on a happy face.
But the words he’d spoken still hurt. His actions still hurt.
His lack of action now hurt even worse. And I wasn’t sure how to even begin to repair things, especially when most of the time it felt like I was trying to do so on my own.
“Where were you?” he asked quietly, still not looking at me.
I bit back the ‘I already told you’ portion of the conversation. “Oliver needed help with his son this evening. He’s in a hockey camp before the season starts, and with the family’s work and school schedules, getting him there in the afternoons has been challenging. I offered to help.”
Todd nodded, the movement slow, and I wanted to ask how much he’d had to drink already, but I bit that back as well. What was the point?
“How was your night? When’d you get home?” I asked, instilling any amount of cheer in my voice that I could manage, as if I could just counteract his bad attitude.
“Been home a while. Figured I hadn’t seen you much and we could have dinner together, but you were gone. Calendar said you’ve been off since three, so I waited,” he explained as he shrugged.
The guilt swept through quickly and thoroughly. I hadn’t been updating the calendar, and I’d been avoiding being here as if it wasn’t my apartment too.
“Why didn’t you call me earlier? You could’ve come to practice with me and then we could’ve gotten dinner or something.”
He scoffed. “I don’t want to go to some kid’s hockey practice, Ivy.
I want to see my fucking girlfriend. Since when is that a crime?
” He stood, a slight sway in his step as he walked into the kitchen and threw the bottle away, only to grab another from the fridge.
Cracking it open, he stared at me expectantly.
I stood and followed him in, my hip against the counter.
“Why don’t you save that for later? We can go grab a late dinner and talk. You’re right. We haven’t seen each other a lot lately. I want to see you,” I whispered as I stepped forward, and my hands wrapped around his waist.
He set the beer on the counter and his arms wrapped around my back, pulling me in for a hug. His face buried in my neck as his lips began grazing along my skin.
“Mmm,” I hummed. “Let’s eat and come home. Whole night, just us, please.”
Todd took a step back, nodding. “I’m going to take a quick shower. Order something instead.”
“Preferences?”
“Whatever’s fine.”
He walked past me as I pulled out my phone and started scrolling through what would deliver. It wasn’t until the food order was placed that I realized he took the beer with him to the shower.
Letting out a sigh, I changed my clothes and waited for the food to arrive.
When it did, I set it all up in the living room, glasses of water for us both, just as he walked out of the bathroom.
“Really? Italian?” he grumbled.
“You said whatever was fine?”
He let out a huff. “Yeah, just didn’t think you’d pick this.”
“You like Italian?”
“You’re right, Ivy. Whatever. Let’s just eat, okay?”
I sat down on the couch, turning on the movie I picked out, and did my utmost to ignore the eye roll and sigh when he saw the opening credits. If he wanted to watch something else, the damn remote was right there.
We are in silence for the first chunk of the movie, pasta and breadsticks filling the pauses of dialogue between actors. I should’ve picked a rom-com. Something I actually enjoyed instead of some inspiring sports movie I thought would make him happy.
When it was clear that nothing I was saying would make up for picking Italian and a sports movie, I decided to break the silence. Might as well rip the Band-Aid off.
“So, I snagged another job,” I said, breaking the silence as he sipped his beer.
“Doing what? Was two not enough?”
“Oliver asked if I minded helping in a more permanent way with Hudson. It’s only two nights a week right now, and then three or four during the fall with the hockey season starting.
Maybe a bit less if Oliver can take him, of course.
Plus, you said we needed extra money for the bills and stuff. Figured I’d do what I could.”
I once more swallowed down the guilt that was accompanying me over the fact that I actively sought these jobs out to keep busy. It didn’t feel relevant, and it felt stupid to admit maybe I was desperate and wanted him to miss me.
Todd stared at me, his brows pulled together. “So what? You’d be playing mom to this kid? Staying over there for hours at another dude’s house?”
“I—what?” I shook my head. “No. I mean, I’ll be at his house, but only with his son. When he gets home, I’m done and leave.”
He rolled his eyes. “Sounds like he’s offering you a job to get in your pants. Be real, Ivy. Who’d want you watching their kid otherwise?”
The question brought my blood to a boil before I could even think of something else to say.
“What the fuck is your deal, Todd? Do you not want children? I’ve been taking care of kids with my mom for years.
I took the job helping the kids skate. I love kids, and Oliver trusts me with his.
This is a good opportunity to do something else outside of the restaurant. Why can’t you be happy for me?”
His eyes left mine and turned back to the TV, the soft voices once more filling the now-silent room.
“Really? Silence? That’s your response right now?” I stood, shaking my head and taking our plates to the kitchen. “I took the job. I’ll update the calendar for you, so you don’t worry or wait up. But I really wish you’d just be happy for me, Todd. This is for both of us, not just me.”
He shook his head. “You bangin’ the boss isn’t for us, Ivy. Oh, and I don’t want kids, by the way. Never have.”
I set the plates in the sink, the disbelief sinking into my bones.
“I think I’m going to head to bed before we both say shit we aren’t proud of. I’ll see you in the morning.”
That night as I lay beneath my thick, white comforter, I thought of all the times Todd and I had laid on his old blow-up mattress in his dad’s spare bedroom, talking about what we’d name our kids. How many we’d have and what we thought they’d be like.
I wondered if this was how couples who’d been together for thirty years, married young, suddenly divorced with no sign to others.
It wasn’t fair to compare myself to couples like that, of course.
We weren’t married. We’d only been together a few years, but maybe it felt like that on some small scale.
As if I’d wasted years not truly knowing someone and what they wanted. What I wanted. If those things matched at all.
People changed, and maybe that was what happened between us. Maybe we’d changed. But I wasn’t sure where that left us.
Hours later, when he crawled into bed and slid his arms around my waist, whispering that he loved me, I wondered briefly if we could figure it out together. If one of us would concede and give up whatever notion against what we wanted.
Especially the following morning, when he asked about the new job color on the calendar, and I realized he didn’t remember any of what we’d talked about the night prior. A whole fight, erased from his memory once more.
Must’ve been a nice world to live in. To just erase all the bad and continue on, ignorant to it all.