All You Could Ask For A Novel - By Mike Greenberg Page 0,99

uncomfortably. “What did you hear?”

I didn’t have any desire to hurt him, I really didn’t. Despite all the horrible things I had wished upon him over the years, here was the perfect opportunity to hurt him and I didn’t want to do it. Maybe because he looked so vulnerable. Maybe that was really all I needed, not to see him suffer, just to see him in a place where he might. I didn’t need to tell him what I’d heard just to humiliate him, but the truth is the truth and there didn’t seem much point in hiding from it.

“I heard that Holly was having an affair,” I said slowly and carefully. “That was the rumor that ran around the office. But I’m aware of how inaccurate the grapevine can be, so I assumed it probably wasn’t true.”

“It was.”

I couldn’t quite place the look in his eyes. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“Thank you,” he replied, and then paused and took a little breath. “But there’s more to the story than that.” He pulled another cigarette from the package and held it, unlit, between his fingers. “I don’t have any idea why I’m telling you this, but for some reason I want you to know. Maybe it’s because of everything that happened between us. Maybe it’s because I think it will make you happy. Or maybe it’s just because I need to tell somebody and for some reason I feel like, in spite of everything, I’m still closer to you than anybody else.”

I just stared at his face, and started to feel a little angry. After all these years, why the hell was he talking like this now?

“You’re about to become the only person besides my doctor who knows about this. There are confidentiality laws that dictate he has to keep it between us. No such laws govern this conversation, of course, but I trust that you understand I am telling you this in confidence and it will stay between us forever.”

“I won’t say a word,” I said.

“My marriage has been in major trouble for years,” he said. “And to tell you the truth the reason why is the same reason I chose her instead of you.”

I sat up a little taller. “Well, I can’t wait to hear this.”

“Holly didn’t challenge me so much,” he said. “When I took her to restaurants, she thought they were the most special evenings in the world. When I talked about going to Europe, she acted as though it would be like flying to the moon. You were different. You had more than I did coming in and just the same vision for the future as me. I felt like anything I could give you, you already expected. She appreciated it all so much more. Somehow that made her much easier for me.”

I’d heard those words before. I’d heard myself say them, but coming from him I found they left me feeling disappointed. Twenty years of my life boiled down to nothing more than this: Holly was more impressed to have whatever Phil chose to give her than I would have been.

“At first it was fine,” he continued, “because of the kids. When they were small I was always working and she was always with them, so the time we had together was usually reserved for sex. But when Daniel was ten or eleven, and Michael was away at boarding school, then it became just her and me, and there was nothing there. She didn’t push me. She didn’t challenge me. And where I once thought that made her the perfect wife, suddenly it was the opposite.”

I cut him off, sharply. “Phil, nothing about this story interests me so far, and I am having really serious doubts about it getting any better. I thank you for taking care of my money, that was a wonderful gesture on your part and even if you did it solely to assuage your own guilt over all the bullshit you put me through, I still appreciate it. And, frankly, I have come to realize in the last few months that it wasn’t you that put me through all of it anyway. It was me. All you did was dump me, and worse things than that happen to people every day. The fact I chose to let it define me for so long was my problem, not yours. And in the very same way, the fact that you chose to marry a vapid whore is your problem,