Chapter 4 - The Mirror
The lock clicked and the house went dead silent.
"Where did you even find that guy?" Grant said. "A cologne commercial?"
"He sits ten feet from me. Every single day."
"So this whole time. At your job."
"You started this." I didn't raise my voice. I didn't have to. "You sat across from me on our anniversary and told me you wanted to go sleep with 'real women.' I said fine. All I did was hold you to your own idea."
He sank onto the couch and put his head in his hands. When he looked up, he looked younger and smaller and genuinely scared.
"I thought it would be easy," he said. "I figured I'd go out a few times, feel good about myself, and you'd just... be here. Same as always." His voice caught. "And then I walked in and saw you with him. Laughing like that. And I wanted to be sick."
"Did you honestly believe I didn't have feelings?" I asked. "That you could say that to my face and I'd just absorb it, like I absorb everything else in this house?"
"No. I mean — I wasn't thinking about you at all. That's the whole problem, isn't it."
At least he got there on his own.
"I've been coasting," he said. "Letting you carry all of it and telling myself I'd earned a break. I'm sorry, Danielle. Not the throwaway kind. I'm actually sorry."
I sat down on the far end of the couch. Not close. But not the doorway, either.
"An apology's a start," I said. "It's not the whole thing. If we do this, we do it for real. Counseling. You handling the school pickups twice a week. Me not being the only adult in this house who notices when we're out of milk."
"Whatever it takes," he said. "I mean it this time."
We sat there a while. The candles Adrian and I had lit were still burning down on the table.
"Remember our first date?" I asked.
He let out a shaky laugh. "I knocked my whole coffee into your lap and you still agreed to a second one."
"You were so flustered, dabbing at my dress with a napkin. I thought it was sweet."
"I miss when it was easy."
"It was never easy. It was just new." I looked at him. "We can't go backward, Grant. Forward's the only door in the room."
"Then forward," he said.
May you like
It wasn't a fairy-tale ending. Nobody rode off into anything. But for the first time in years, he was looking right at me when he talked — and I decided that was worth staying in the room for.
One day at a time. That was the deal.
