Magnolia
Lukas pulls the truck into a spot near airport dropoff and puts it into park. We both sit silently, having spent most of the drive making small talk ever since we left Rick and Candi’s house.
I have never been drunk before, but I imagine this is what it would feel like.
My mind is spinning. Brain is frazzled. Concentration shot.
My body is physically spent and still trying to adjust from the red-eye flight two nights ago, let alone allow myself to feel relief knowing that Nana is truly going to be okay.
Throw in seeing Lukas, and the absolute whiplash of emotions that I felt over the last two hours.
“What are you thinking about?” Lukas has one arm slung over the steering wheel, the other stretching out, fingertips flexing along the back of my seat.
I turn to face him, and his hand falls to rest on the seat between us.
I reach for it, grabbing his hand and holding it between my palms. I run a thumb over the callouses, ones he’s earned from spending his days on the farm.
“You’re a wonderful dad. I can tell that from the two minutes I got to see you with Ivy.
” You can’t look at him and miss the affection, the love pouring out of his chest and into that little girl.
“You’ve managed to have a good relationship with Candi and Rick, and that couldn’t have been easy.
And now, all I can think of is that I have been forcing myself to stay angry, to stay so ugly and bitter inside, but all the while, you were the old you again, creating this really good life. A life that I hope you’re happy in.”
“I am.” His voice is low and tentative. “I love my daughter. I’m happy to be back with my family, and surprisingly, happy to be working on the farm. There’s just something missing, Mags.” His heavy gaze tells me everything, and I don’t need to ask him what’s missing.
“Do you remember that night we were on the phone, the first time I answered your call? You said that we were both to blame for how things ended between us.” I look past his shoulder toward the airport, staring at the automatic doors to the entrance as they open and close.
People filter in and out, pushing past one another, everyone from families with oversized bags to a businesswoman in a sleek two-piece suit with nothing but a leather carry-on with her.
There are the young travelers, the backpackers, and every now and then, there's someone who looks defeated, like they're dreading getting on the flight.
And I imagine when I walk in, that's what I'll look like as well.
I can feel Lukas turn a little more to face me, adjusting himself in the seat. The old fabric creaks under his weight.
“I didn’t want to think about it like that, especially during our breakup.
I think it helped me to focus only on how you changed, on what you did.
It made the hurt sting a little less, letting myself believe that you had turned into this …
this monster. Someone I didn’t want to know.
It helped me cope, to imagine you back home drinking and doing God knows what.
I let myself live in that … because if I had realized that I gave up on us—” My voice cracks, and Lukas’s hand grips mine, fingers flexing as he squeezes.
“If I had realized that I promised you forever. That I said I’d wait, no matter what, and then I gave up on us as soon as it got hard? Well…”
“Hey,” he breathes. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have called you out like that.
We both were at fault, yeah, but I was just talking out of my ass.
I know that I was the one to ruin us. I think …
sometimes, I almost wish we both played a part in it.
” He shrugs a shoulder. “Make the guilt easier, I guess.”
“You were right, though.”
His head swivels to face me, and I lean back in the seat. “I think I hadn’t wanted to believe it myself at the time. Just like you wanted to place some of the blame on me, I wanted to put it all on you. It hurts less that way, you know?”
He nods once. “When?” he whispers. “Mags, I’m desperate to know when it happened.
Was it slow? Did I change so much that you couldn’t stand me anymore?
Was there one defining moment? One that you stood back and realized I wasn’t someone you wanted in your life?
” He exhales roughly, pulling off his ballcap and tossing it onto the dash, running his hands through his hair.
“You don’t know how many nights I stayed up, driving myself absolutely mad, trying to figure out the moment it was first over for us. ”
I stare at his old ball cap, one he’s had since high school.
It’s one that I’ve stolen a time or two, tossing it on my own head only to see the heated look that would cross his face when he’d see me in it.
“The day I fractured my foot. Well, the day I got out of the doctor’s office when I was told I fractured it was the day you called me to say you volunteered for another deployment.
I was so mad at you, Lukas.” I turn toward him, and his watery eyes reflect my own.
“We had already spent so much time apart. We were already crumbling, trying to make it through the different schedules, different time zones, and your current deployment. We had already lost the spark in our relationship. I think we can agree on that.”
He nods at that. “Was that the moment? Was that when you gave up on us?”
“That was the moment we splintered, but if I’m truly honest about it, it was long before that.
” Lukas flinches, but I force myself to keep going.
“You called me one night, I was in the dressing room, and I had about ten minutes to go on stage for what was going to be the biggest performance of my life at that time. I was going to step into the principal role in Giselle. It was a part I had wanted for so long, and it was finally mine. It would have been the pinnacle of my career, and then you called.”
His voice was haunted, and I knew as soon as I heard him on the other end that I shouldn’t have answered.
But I missed Lukas like I missed a limb.
That phantom pain you swear you feel, even though it’s gone.
“It was the first time in our whole lives that we talked, and I didn’t recognize the man on the other end of the line. ”
I knew the military was going to change him. It changes everyone, one way or another. Some for good, some for the worst. Some in ways that they’ll never recover from.
“That phone call ruined everything. Do you remember what you said to me?” His brows twist together, and he very faintly shakes his head. He’s hesitant, even with that act, as if he doesn’t want to hear the next words that come out of my mouth.
“I’m sorry, Mags. I said a lot of not nice things back then, things that I’d kill anyone else for saying to you.”
I squeeze his hand, shaking it once. “This isn’t me asking for an apology.
” I push out a heavy breath. “You weren’t saying much, so I was talking double time, trying to fill in the awkward silences and pretend that we were fine.
I was telling you about how busy I had been, how my training had intensified, and how the few months leading up to that performance were some of the hardest of my life. ”
His eyes, which had been laser focused on me, flinch, and his head twists to look out the windshield.
And I can see the moment he recalls the memory.
Shame floods his handsome face, and I reach for his hand again, holding it tightly between my palms to ground us together.
“You told me I had no idea what hard work was. That the only decision I had to make was to spin right or left. It was the first time in our entire lives, Lukas, that you demeaned my passion like that. You talked down to me, about my career, as if I was some idiot, chasing a foolish childhood dream.”
“I’m sorry, Mags,” he rasps, his hand squeezing mine harder.
“Those few words from you, that’s all it took, and suddenly, I felt like I lost my spark.
Going on stage in the next few minutes didn’t hold the same appeal it once did.
One conversation with you, and everything I had been working for since I was a child was ruined.
” I realized two things at that moment. One, the Lukas I had known and loved wasn’t the same Lukas anymore.
And two, I had invested so much of myself into him that I wondered if there was such a thing as being too intertwined with someone.
A relationship takes a certain level of vulnerability, yes, but there has to be a point where your partner’s opinion of you, or what you’re doing, isn’t the driving point to push yourself forward.
“I think that was the day,” I whisper. “That’s when I first started giving up a little or at least holding back.
I ignored some of your calls after that.
” I wince as I say the words. How awful it must be for him to hear that while he was homesick and depressed, I was avoiding the little contact we had.
“It was still during your first deployment, and I knew something had happened. Something changed you, Lukas. I could hear it in your voice, your words. I could feel it all those miles away.” I tried to focus on that part.
Focus on the assumption that something so horrific had happened in Lukas’s world that it changed who he was as a person.
I had hoped it was temporary, but as the next year went by, it seemed to be who he had become, and the person he became wasn’t someone I could stand to be around anymore.