Страница 8 из 16
I’m bothered by the intensity of my desire for him. I want to turn and fill his mouth with my tongue. I miss the taste of him, the smell of him, the sound of him. I miss when he would be on top of me, so consumed by me that it felt like he might tear through my chest just so he could be face-to-face with my heart while we made love. It’s strange how I can miss a person who is still here. It’s strange that I can miss making love to a person I still have sex with.
No matter how much I mourn the marriage we used to have, I am partly—if not wholly—responsible for the marriage it’s turned into. I close my eyes, disappointed in myself. I’ve perfected the art of avoidance. I’m so graceful in my evasion of him; sometimes I’m not sure if he even notices. I pretend to fall asleep before he even makes it to bed at night. I pretend I don’t hear him when my name drips from his lips in the dark. I pretend to be busy when he walks toward me, I pretend to be sick when I feel fine, I pretend to accidentally lock the door when I’m in the shower.
I pretend to be happy when I’m breathing.
It’s becoming more difficult to pretend I enjoy his touch. I don’t enjoy it—I only need it. There’s a difference. It makes me wonder if he pretends just as much as I do. Does he want me as much as he professes to? Does he wish I wouldn’t pull away? Is he thankful I do?
He wraps an arm around me and his fingers splay out against my stomach. A stomach that still easily fits into my wedding dress. A stomach unmarred by pregnancy.
I have that, at least. A stomach most mothers would envy.
“Do you ever . . .” His voice is low and sweet and completely terrified to ask me whatever he’s about to ask me. “Do you ever think about opening it?”
Graham never asks questions he doesn’t need answers to. I’ve always liked that about him. He doesn’t fill voids with u
Right now, this is my least favorite thing about him. I don’t want this question because I don’t know how to give him his answer.
Instead of risking the wind blowing my words back down my throat, I simply shrug. After years of being experts of avoidance, he finally stops the divorce dance long enough to ask a serious question. The one question I’ve been waiting for him to ask me for a while now. And what do I do?
I shrug.
The moments that follow my shrug are probably why it’s taken him so long to ask the question in the first place. It’s the moment I feel his heart come to a halt, the moment he presses his lips into my hair and sighs a breath he’ll never get back, the moment he realizes he has both arms wrapped around me but he still isn’t holding me. He hasn’t been able to hold me for a while now. It’s hard to hold on to someone who has long since slipped away.
I don’t reciprocate. He releases me. I exhale. He leaves the bedroom.
We resume the dance.