ready to walk away? Come on now. I love you.” He said it sadly, looking like a man devastated.
This is what he does. Don’t buy it. Not for a second.
He was going to tell me how sorry he was, how much he loved me, but I knew a tiger couldn’t change its stripes.
“Are you trying to make me believe that you have no love inside you to fight for us?” he challenged.
Only a small hint of frustration seeped into his words. Considering the magnitude of our conversation, he wasn’t even close to reacting the way I had expected him to.
“Of course I have love for you. But it’s not enough anymore.”
My reply threw him off. He sat back in his seat, staring at me with his “lawyer gaze,” the one where he shrewdly picks apart a person and tries to call their bluff. He could keep looking, he could dig deep into me until he reached my marrow, but he’d find nothing but the truth.
Very carefully, I thought over my words. “Neither one of us is happy anymore.”
“What are you talking about? Everything is perfect between us.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. I was starting to feel like I was in the Twilight Zone. Was he delusional? I leaned in slowly and lowered my voice. “Nothing about us is perfect.”
“Then that’s the problem, because I see a relationship that’s strained. But I love my wife enough to stick it out.”
“Stick it out?” My voice went up an octave, earning the gazes of people around us. “That’s all I’ve been doing for a year!”
“A year?” Wes snorted. “And now you’re magically asking me to buy in to this idea that you’re unhappy?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m asking you to do.”
“Un-fucking-believable.”
“I didn’t reach this point suddenly. It’s impossible to forget the years we’ve been together and the memories we have.”
“If it’s impossible, then stay with me.”
His hand reached out and this time I hesitated, because it would have been so easy for me to give in—to shrug my shoulders and agreeably say okay.
I dropped my hand into my lap. “I can’t, Wes. If I stay with you, then I stay with pain. I stay with abuse.”
“There’s no abuse. Just moments where I lose my temper.”
“And that right there is exactly why I can’t be with you anymore.”
The imploring expression disappeared, replaced by a coldness that I’d expected. To me it seemed like the reality of the situation was finally sinking in for him. There was no amount of “sorrys” to bring us back to where we once were.
“Is there someone else?” he asked, a biting tone in his words.
For so long I had agonized over whether I should tell the truth, but I was also extremely aware that Wes would use that against me and it would put me in a bad light. Never him.
I sat up straight and looked him in the eye. “That doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters. Why can’t you answer the question? ‘Yes, I’m with someone else.’ ‘No, I’m not with someone else.’ Two easy responses.”
“You’re going to sit there and give me the third degree, yet you’ve been seeing someone on the side.”
Wes slammed his hands on the table. “I told you that I’m not seeing her!”
Conversations around us died. I could feel the stares. Wes looked around and instantly lowered his voice. “If you want to divorce, get a divorce. I can’t stop you….”
I waited; he was getting ready to deliver a blow. “But I’m not going to make this easy.” His brusque tone was what I expected yet it still managed to give me chills.
As Wes asked for the check, I stayed in my seat. Not because I had to. Not because I was scared. Not because I was sad. I stayed because I knew this would be the very last meal we would ever share as Mr. and Mrs. Donovan.
We walked out of the restaurant together, saying nothing. The silence was unbearable, masking unsaid words that the two of us were just dying to hurl at each other.
We left in separate cars. I watched him take a right and peel out of the parking lot, toward the direction of our house.
I took a left.
I drove toward Sinclair.
October 2014
No one in good conscience wants to get a divorce.
You don’t plan your wedding and go through all the work, thinking to yourself, Oh, I can’t wait for the divorce. That’ll be even better! That’s like building your hopes and dreams with glass and letting them fall in