It was morning, and I was sprawled on the couch, the half-drunk bottle open beside me. The cushion behind my head was wet, and I could only imagine I’d lain there snoring and drooling the better part of the night.
“Why are you in my house?” I asked with a tongue that felt three inches thick.
“Because I owe you an apology.”
That brought me upright. Oh shit. Ouch. “Huh?”
“Daniel made me realize—” Shelly stopped talking, taking a step back and glancing around. “Listen, could you maybe like, take a shower or something? And then we can talk.”
“I don’t want to take a shower,” I said, though I was just being stubborn. Even I could smell that I would benefit from some hot water and soap. “Fine.”
Twenty minutes later, I walked back into my living room to find Shelly fluffing couch cushions, the vacuum pulled from the closet and resting in the corner. “You’re cleaning?”
“Just tidying up. I guilt clean, you know that.” I did remember that.
“Why are you guilty?” I was a bit hungover and also needed her to narrow it down.
She handed me a glass of water and sat on the couch. I took a seat beside her.
“I’ve been a shit,” she said.
I lifted a shoulder. “I’m used to it.”
“Thanks.”
“So what’s changed?”
“Our son,” she said, staring at her hands resting on her knees. “He made me sit down and listen to him the day after we walked in on you groping that Tanner chick.”
“Always a snappy turn of phrase at the ready.”
“Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “This is hard for me, Mike. But I think I was wrong. I think I’ve been wrong.”
“About what?” I could count on one hand the number of times Shelly had apologized. Once was for telling me the corsage I bought her for prom looked cheap. Once was for screaming at me that everything was my fault while she was giving birth to Dan, and once was for eating all the cookies and cream and then putting the carton back in the freezer. That was it.
“I’ve been unfair.” Her eyes raised to meet mine then, and the sparkling blue depths I remembered from high school looked worn, faded. “I haven’t been happy for a long time,” she said. “And so I didn’t want you to be happy either.”
She paused and I let that sink in. It wasn’t a shock, but it was a shock to hear it out loud. And it was more of a shock to know that Shelly was mature enough to say it.
“I didn’t like the arrangement with Addison. Not because of Dan. Because of me.
“But when we caught you guys the other night and I got angry, we went home and I guess we both thought about it. Because the next morning he sat me down and asked me to drop my custody fight. He told me that the last few months have been the best ones he’s spent with you—that you’ve been more alive than ever before.”
That crushed me to hear. I’d been failing him all along without even realizing it.
“He said that seeing you happy and being with you while you were full of joy was like getting his family back.” Her blue eyes lifted to mine again, and they were shining with unshed tears. “Mike, I feel like we’re just screwing this all up with him. He just wants to see us both happy, and I’ve been too busy being mad, and you’ve been too busy beating yourself up. All he wants is for us both to be happy.”
My heart crumpled into an even smaller ball than it had been before at the thought of Daniel being unhappy. Because of me. Because I was so busy making myself miserable I didn’t realize I was making him miserable too.
I dropped my head into my hands. “Fuck, Shell. What the hell do we do now?”
She sighed, flopping back into the couch beside me. “I don’t really know. I guess we start thinking about what we really want out of life?”
I let out a humorless laugh. “Right.”
“Well, it’s easy for you,” she said.
I turned to look at her. “What?”
“You just need to tell Addison you love her.”
“I don’t love her. I just met her.” But that wasn’t really true. None of it was. I’d known her my whole life, in a way. And I found that I very much wanted to know her for the rest of it too.