Rebound: Chapter 6

We’re back home and in our perfectly decorated living room. This house has several rooms for entertaining where Amber and I have hosted dinners, charity events, and parties over the years. It’s also big enough that we have our own space, allowing us to coexist in distant harmony.

Tonight, though, we’re sitting together—sitting together as we discuss how to be apart. She’s on one couch, I’m on another, and I fucking hate everything about this whole setup. I want to drag her into my arms and kiss her so hard she can’t breathe. I want to tell her how much I love her, how much I want this marriage to work. How much I need her.

“So, are you thinking a separation first or straight to divorce?” I say instead in a calm, steady voice, needing to keep a grip on my emotions because I can tell that she’s barely holding it together. She’s curled up with her legs underneath her, dressed in her silk pajamas with a blanket over her lap, her hair towel-dried and shaggy against her shoulders. She looks nothing like the glamorous creature who emerged from this same house earlier today, but I love this version as much as that one. We were soaked through by the time we got back, and we immediately went to change. Logs are burning in the fireplace, the drapes are closed tight, and the lights are down low. Despite the size of the room, it’s cozy and intimate and warm. The very opposite of our conversation.

She bites her lip and swipes at her eyes. Her makeup has been removed, but a random smear of mascara has clung on, straggling over her left cheekbone in a forlorn black smudge. She looks frail, and I know she’ll hate that. She stays silent, sipping from the mug of hot cocoa between her hands. She made me one as well, which is a rarity—how ironic that it takes discussing a divorce to bring out such kindness. I added a glug of good Scotch to mine—I have a feeling I’m going to need it.

“You’re doing your fake-calm voice, Elijah,” she finally says, gazing at me over the haze of steam. “Or maybe it’s not fake, I don’t know. Maybe this is all a relief to you. You finally get rid of me but you don’t have to be the bad guy who dumps his barren wife. The coldhearted bitch who made your life a living hell. I can be the villain of the piece, as usual.”

The words are harsh; she’s lashing out because she’s hurting. This will all be easier for her if it turns into a fight because it will validate her choice.

“I’m not calm,” I reply. “I might sound it, but I’m not. I’m all kinds of things right now, but calm isn’t one of them. I’m pissed. I’m shocked. And I’m … Fuck, Amber, I’m sad, okay? I’m just fucking sad. I never wanted this, so don’t act like I did. I’m not the one asking for a divorce, am I?”

“Not in words, no—but in actions, yes. You’ve been asking for one for years in your own way. The amount of time you spend at the office. Moving into your own bedroom. Your devotion to your family, who hates my guts.”

I keep my face impassive as I examine those comments. I want to argue with her, tell her it’s all bullshit, but there are enough grains of truth in her words to stop me. It’s more complicated than she presents, but I can’t deny any of those accusations. Maybe I can at least try to explain them though.

“Amber, I hear you. I do work too much, I know, but in my defense, you seem to prefer it that way. If I’m hanging around you too often, it seems to make things worse. The bedroom … well. Yeah. I’m only human, and there was only so much I could take. Having you lie there next to me but completely untouchable? Turning your back on me every night as though you couldn’t bear to look at me? I had to end that because it hurt, Amber. It fucking hurt. It still does.”

Each sentence gets louder than the last, and the final one seems to ring in the air for several long seconds as she stares at me, her eyes wide. There’s a little tremor in her hands, and I take a deep breath. Shouting won’t help either of us.

“As for my family … Look, is there any point rehashing this? You don’t get along. It’s not the first time that’s happened in the history of the world, is it? I still don’t understand it, but it is what it is. Do you want me to choose between you? Do you want me to cut them out of my life? Would that make you happy?”

Would I do that? She’s never outright asked me to, but would I? There was a time she loved being a part of my family. Somewhere along the way that changed, and I have no idea why. And I never fucking asked her. I just accepted it, letting the gap between them grow wider until it was too big to bridge.

It’s an impossible choice. I love Amber, but I love my family too. We share the same blood; we’re bonded by the same memories. I run the company my dad built, and I’m the oldest of the clan, the big brother and now the doting uncle. Could I turn my back on all of that? I’ve always hoped things would change. That something would eventually give. It’s been tough, being stuck in the middle, but I was okay with that if it meant keeping both halves of my world happy. Except happy isn’t a word I would associate with Amber. Or me, for that matter. We’ve both been fucking miserable for years, and I’m not sure there’s a way to change it. Shit. Maybe she’s right. Why am I even fighting this? Is it only because I’m stubborn—because I don’t like to fail? Or do I really think there’s hope for us?

“I would never ask you to make that choice,” she says, her voice small. “I’d never ask, but even if I did, I’m not sure you’d choose me. I’m not a fool, Elijah. I’m aware of how difficult I am and how little I have to offer. I’m aware of how hard all of this has been for you. So maybe it’s time to stop trying. We’re both exhausted. Drained. And it’s not too late to salvage some happiness from life. You’re young enough to find someone else, someone who can give you what you want.”

“And what would that be, Amber?” I ask, knowing exactly what she’s talking about, but I need to hear her say it. I don’t know why. It will hurt us both to discuss this, but perhaps we need to. Perhaps we should have discussed it years ago.

Fresh tears spring to her eyes, and I instantly feel like shit.

“That, Elijah, would be children. You can’t pretend you don’t want your own. The way you talk about Luke, the way you were with Libby … It’s still there in you, that paternal instinct. And there’s nothing wrong with that, nothing at all. It’s one of the things I loved most about you when we met. You were so strong, so protective—I knew you’d make a great dad. And we planned that, didn’t we? We planned our family. I wanted two, you wanted as many as we could manage.” She gives me a weak smile, a peace offering.

I will always remember those late-night conversations, back in the days when we talked until the early hours, so fascinated with each other that we never ran out of things to say. She wanted a boy and a girl, wanted to name them Margot and Mikhail after her favorite ballet dancers. I said I wanted a minimum of six, but we compromised and agreed to settle for three or four.

God, we were so naive. So confident that we could make plans like that—that we were in control. In hindsight, I see that’s where things started to go wrong between us. After years of expecting it to happen naturally, sex became more regimented. We did it at certain times of the month, even certain times of the day. It was less like making love and more like a medical procedure. Amber tried herbal remedies and drank foul teas and banned me from booze and riding my bike. We ate a god-awful diet with walnuts and salmon in every damn meal, and there was a strict no-jerking-off policy to keep my swimmers in prime condition. Despite it all, despite all the research she did and everything we tried, she would emerge pale-faced and tearful from the bathroom every month when she got her period. One time, she was a week late and so excited to do a test—but again, crushing disappointment was all that followed. I was upset too, but Amber was distraught.

When we finally saw a specialist, we found out that her fallopian tubes were too badly damaged for her to conceive naturally. We were devastated. And exhausted. There were alternatives—surgery and IVF, surrogacy, possibly even adoption—but at that point, I think we were too wrung out to make any decisions. We agreed that we’d give ourselves a break, try to break our obsession with it.

Then my mom got her cancer diagnosis, and all our energy became focused on that. It was an absolute double whammy, and truthfully, I don’t think our marriage ever recovered. Clearly, Amber didn’t. She refused to discuss it later and retreated further and further every day. Now she’s sitting opposite me, so close but a world away, crying into her cocoa as we discuss our divorce.

I want to go to her, to comfort her. Hell, I want her to comfort me as well. I want a time machine, to go back to those early days so I can figure out what went wrong and fix it.

I make to stand up, but she holds up a hand and shakes her head. “No! Please don’t. I can’t … I can’t cope with you being kind right now, Elijah. I just can’t. I’m sorry. I know this isn’t only about me and that this is a shock—but it’s the right thing. We hurt each other so much, don’t we? Every single day. It’s like a war of attrition that neither of us can win. I’m so fed up with all of it. I want to stop scoring points. I just want …” She blinks down at the mug in her hands and murmurs, “I want to be happy,” and it’s as though being happy is such an alien concept that she wonders if she used the right word.

“And you don’t think you can be happy married to me?”

“Based on the last year, I don’t think either of us can. I don’t blame you, and I’m not saying any of this to make you feel bad. We’ve both tried, and we’ve both failed, and I hate what we’ve become. I want better—for both of us. You deserve to have children. And I deserve to stop feeling like such a failure, like someone who’s let you and your family down. And neither of those things can happen if we stay together.”

I bury my face in my hands, feeling like crying myself. Is that really how she’s felt all this time? Like a failure and a disappointment not only to me, but to my entire family? Fuck. That’s too much pressure for anyone to carry. “Baby, I don’t see you as a failure. I have never seen you as a failure,” I tell her, my voice cracking. “Was it me? Have I made you feel that way?”

“No. Don’t do that to yourself, Elijah, it’s not all down to you—you’re a good man. It’s … God, it’s complicated, isn’t it? But if I’m being honest, I never quite believed you when you said that I was enough. I never really thought I was, and I know your family resents me. Your parents wanted you to have kids. You were the oldest, and there was this weight of expectation because you were lined up to take over the business. You were supposed to produce an heir. I couldn’t give you that, couldn’t give them that. I couldn’t give myself that. I’ve felt that loss every day and also felt … I don’t know, guilty?”

She has never spoken like this before. Never shared these feelings, this pain—at least not with me. Why not? And why now? She might say I’m a good man, but I don’t feel like one. I let her retreat when I should have been fighting harder for her. I suppose I assumed that she would always be around, that there would always be more time to fix things. To find our way back to each other. Was I wrong?

“Amber,” I say softly, overwhelmed with emotion. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know that’s how it made you feel. That you were going through so much. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“To start with, because I needed time to process it all. I was so upset, and I knew you were too. But then, not too long afterward, your mom got sick.” Hand shaking, she brings the mug to her mouth and takes a small sip. “That was a long, hard battle that we all fought, especially her. Then she died, and … well, the time never seemed right. You were hurting, I was hurting. Your whole family was broken in so many different ways. Do you remember? It was like you were all made of glass and someone threw you from the top of a building. You all shattered, and the last thing you needed was me bleating in the background while you tried to glue everyone back together.” She grimaces, those brown eyes full of suffering. “I spoke to my parents about it though.”

I recoil, shocked. Amber and the wolves are not close and never have been. The only family member who ever showed her any love was Lucille. Amber seemed way fonder of my mom than she was of her own, and she used to tell me all the time how much she loved being part of our family.

“What did they say?” I ask, dreading the reply.

She raises her eyebrows at me. “Well, as you can imagine, it was a very inspiring talk. My dad basically told me I was lucky you still wanted me, considering I was defective, and that I should be grateful for whatever scraps I could get. My mom very helpfully added that he was right and that no other man would want me now either. Then they both asked about the terms of our prenup.”

“You’re not defective,” I say, snarling, my hands balling into fists at my sides. I should fly to DC and put Ronald Warwick’s fat head through a window for saying that. How dare he?

“He didn’t use that word, honey, don’t go all macho on me. I think he actually said ‘subpar,’ which now that I come to think of it isn’t much better.”

I love it when she calls me honey. That hint of Southern belle peeks out when it slides from her lips, and it makes me feel warm inside. There are so many things I love about this woman, but apparently there are also many things I don’t know. Am I really going to lose her?

“He’s an idiot, whatever word he used. And we never had a prenup because I believed in us. I still do. I don’t want this, Amber. I don’t want a divorce. I want to work things out.”

She gives me a sad smile. “That’s the shock talking, darling. And maybe your pride. You know you don’t like to lose. But ask yourself this—how many times in the last month have you enjoyed a peaceful hour in my company? How many times in the last month have we laughed together? How many times have you genuinely looked forward to coming home and seeing me? Now compare that to how many times we’ve fought, cursed, glared, or avoided each other … The math doesn’t lie. I know this hurts right now, but the truth is we’ve been hurting for a long time. I’ve come between you and your family, and I don’t even make you happy. It’s like … death by a thousand paper cuts, every damn day. I can’t go on like this, and I don’t think you should either, Elijah.”

Jesus fuck, my head is all over the place. I’m so shocked I can barely think. She’s being way too open, way too reasonable, way too honest. I don’t know how to handle this Amber.

“Today was not a good day, admittedly.” I scrub my hands through my hair. “But it wasn’t any worse than usual, not by our standards.”

Her laugh is a delicate sound that seems so out of place in the middle of all this. “Oh, sweetie. Are you listening to yourself? You just proved my point. I don’t think either of us should be settling for ‘no worse than usual,’ do you? Do you really, truly want to spend the next few decades measuring our days by how bad they weren’t rather than how good they were?”

I stare at her, this wife of mine. Wrapped in a blanket, hair a mess, face clear of her normal glamorous mask. I have loved her since the day I met her. Since I saw her sprawled on a picnic blanket on the college lawn, listening to music on her iPod, a daisy chain in her hair. Eyes closed, singing along to that Dido song “White Flag” so badly that I had to laugh. On our very first date, I knew she was the woman I would marry, the woman who would be the mother of my children. The woman I would grow old with. Now it looks like only one of those predictions came true.

The worst part is, I can’t even deny what she’s saying. We do torture each other and bring out the worst in one another. We are a fucking disaster zone, and I spend as much time despising her as I do adoring her. She’s right—we don’t share peaceful evenings in or laugh together, and yeah, sometimes it’s a goddamn relief when I get home and she’s not here. How many times have I ducked out of her charity events for work or dumped her when one of my brothers needed me? How often have I really tried to talk to her, to reach out and connect? When was the last time I genuinely put her first? When did I last tell her that I love her?

“Let’s leave,” I say. “Right fucking now if you like. Pack a bag and head off somewhere new. Somewhere nobody will find us. I’ll give up work and my family. I’ll give up anything, Amber. I love you, baby. I don’t want this to end.”

She can’t hide her surprise, and for a moment I think she’ll go for it. For a moment, I’m exhilarated and terrified and pumped up all at once. But then she shakes her head, smiles that sad smile, and says, “And what would we do, Elijah? Run a beach bar in Mexico? Hide out in a cabin in the woods? Live the rest of our lives in barefoot bliss?”

“Yes. All of those things. Any of it. Whatever and wherever you want.”

“And what happens when you start to miss your brothers? When you see a headline about Jamestech stock plummeting? What happens when your dad’s health gets worse? You would hate missing out on Luke’s childhood. How long would it be before you resented me for taking you away from your world? No, it’s not realistic. I’d never ask that of you. I’d never ask you to change who you are just for a shot at saving a marriage we both know is already over.” She takes a deep breath and then says, in a voice so heartbreakingly tender, “But for what it’s worth, honey, I love you too.”

Her rejection hits me like a hammer to the heart, but again, she’s only speaking the truth. I am not that guy. I have responsibilities here—to my family, to my business, to my employees.

But if she’s right, then why does this feel so wrong?