Thursday, November 5, 2009
THE NEW SLEEPING ARRANGEMENT with Casey suited me fine.
Waking up with his arms around me felt like the way waking up should be. The most horrific part was realizing that all along he was right. It would be too hard to wake up with him not there.
I had promised Grant I would come home for a weekend and it seemed that Casey’s and my time was on fast forward right to that day. Both Casey and I knew it was coming. I'd told him the night before over dinner, that even though I didn't want to leave, I had to.
He got quiet for a while, but he didn't fight me. Maybe we were all fought-out by then.
“I hate it,” he said. “I hate you going back to him. Every cell in my body says no.”
“It won't be for long.”
He leaned forward and ran his hands over his head, and I noticed how much it had grown in only the past few weeks. He was frustrated and I physically watched as he denied himself telling me not to go.
“I'll be back on Monday.”
He looked out into the setting sun. “Monday then.”
The next day he said he was going to go for a bike ride while I waited for the cab. He didn't want to watch me leave.
I left a note for him in the bed that we’d shared for fourteen nights in a row. I also left my ships.
As I sat in the porch swing waiting on the car, a little silver, hybrid pulled into the drive next to Casey's black Lexus RX.
It was Morgan. Just what I needed. She didn't like me much, Audrey had alluded to that fact.
“Hello, Morgan,” I said politely as I watched the yellow cab turn down the lane and begin that way. I stood to ready the bag I was taking back with me for the weekend.
“Hi, Blake. Is Casey here?”
I started down the sidewalk, knowing that one of us would have to step aside. Even though I was years older than her—she was inches above me, tall like her brothers—we both stopped feet apart, at an impasse.
“He's on a bike ride.”
“Does he know you’re leaving?” she asked as she noticed the cab pulling up behind hers.
“God, yes. He knows I'm leaving. It's only for a few days.”
She smiled, but it lacked authenticity. “Good. He seems a little better on the phone. I came to see if he wanted to go get some lunch, since I got out of class early.”
“I'm sure he would like that. He won’t be long. You should wait for him.” I smiled and tried to show her what a real one looked like. He always talked about how Morgan was a sweet girl, but to me she seemed a little short.
“I think I will,” she said and stepped to the side so I could pass with my small suitcase that I was rolling behind me.
“Thanks,” I said as I walked toward the taxi. “Morgan?”
She turned back to me and popped her hip and tilted her pretty blonde head. “Blake.”
“When Casey is hurting, I'm hurting too. I just want you to know that.”
“Good, then stop hurting yourself and come back.” Then she gave me a genuine smile. “Please.”
There she was. There was the sweet sister Casey had told me about.
When I got home, I was surprised to find that Grant was already there. Quite surprised really.
Go figure, on the day I was initiating the demise of my marriage, by speaking my mind and being honest with him and myself, he’d be there like a perfect husband.
That's how I’d decided to go about it anyway. Honesty was supposed to be the best policy, or some shit like that. I was going to be truthful. See what happened.
There he sat, in our house, the house he gave me that never was a home. It isn’t a home if you don’t feel like yourself when you’re in it.
“Hi there, you,” he said when I walked in and dropped my bag.
“Hi. I didn’t think you’d be here,” I said quietly.
“I haven’t seen you in two weeks. Of course, I’d be here. I missed you.” He smiled at me and I forced a smile back, acknowledging inwardly that it probably looked like Morgan’s.
I hadn’t called much, but he didn’t either. I could only guess he’d been busy and assumed I had been, too.
The San Francisco office was busy, there were many projects in the planning stages, but honestly I could have done most of the work I added to my plate from Seattle.
I’d only been in that house, with him, for minutes and I already felt drained.
He was home. Like he should have been.
That night went slowly and also faster than I’d hoped. I was staring bedtime in the face. I tried to fake being asleep on the couch while we were watching something on CNN. On another night it would have naturally put me to sleep. But on that night, my adrenaline was off the charts and my heart raced like a frightened bunny.
Still, I closed my eyes and laid my head back like I would if I really was tired. And deep down I was tired. Just not the sleepy kind. I was tired of pretending. Tired of all of it.
I wasn’t shown mercy.
I managed to fall asleep, but I woke up in Grant’s arms as he carried me to our bed.
Dread washed over me like it had before.
I felt it. My intuition knew that I was about to have sex with my husband and my soul knew it was about to be unfaithful to its mate.
Like time and like again, being with Grant made me think about Casey with another woman. Aly. That was a game my mind loved to play with me.
Grant’s lips on me. Her lips on him.
Grant removing my shirt. Her breast in Casey’s mouth.
My stomach lurched. My moaning, again, misinterpreted for desire.
Then, my thoughts of Casey saved me. He came to me through my senses. I was able to pretend it was his fingers caressing me, his body entering mine.
It was a fuzzy view, but I fought like hell to see it as my husband touched me in all of the ways he’d thought I’d loved.
My defenses knew what to do and propelled my body into action. I knew what he liked, too. I needed him to come for my thread-bare sanity to return.
“Call me, Betty,” I begged, needing that extra push to aid my show.
“Betty,” he panted in my ear on cue. “I missed you so much, Betty.”
It was erroneous. I was abysmal. In those moments I hated myself, but I’d decided to tell the truth. So I said the truth, but I wasn’t speaking it to Grant. I was talking to Casey, my words falling on the sheets of my husband’s bed.
“I missed you, too,” I said and I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“I’m going to come,” he admitted like he always did.
“Yes, please,” I said, knowing it was almost over. I pinched my eyes tight and pictured Casey’s face giving me his best smile, I mentally held tight to it as Grant cried, “Betty!” into the pillow beside my head.
When I was sure that he was asleep, I got up and retrieved my phone and went outside to send a message to Casey. On my way, I grabbed my favorite mug, the one that originally said, “Lou likes trouble” and filled it with cold water from the tap in the door of the brand new stainless steel refrigerator.
I sat on the concrete stoop just outside the back door.
Me: Remember the mug you bought the morning after we met?
Casey: The yellow one or the striped one?
He replied almost immediately and oxygen reentered my bloodstream.
Me: The yellow one. I still have it.
I bit at my thumbnail waiting for him to reply.
Casey: It’s a good mug. Is it Monday yet?
Me: Almost.
Casey: I want you here. I can’t sleep.
Me: I can’t either.
A feeling in my gut knew that I had to stay in Seattle. The right thing for Casey was for me to stay and get this marriage ended as fast as possible.
I wanted him, but I wanted him in a permanent way. I didn’t want to go back for another two wonderful weeks and then have to leave him all over again. It wasn’t fair.
But I couldn’t tell him in a message. I pressed the call function and his line rang.
“Honeybee?” he said as an answer.
I could feel the agony for both of us and I hadn’t even said hi back yet. I sat there actively reminding myself to breathe in and out. Preparing my throat for the ugly words that were about to pass through it.
In the long run, this was the best way. The only way. This would cause the least amount of damage for us, if we really did have a future.
I was done with yanking him around.
“I don’t think I can comeback on Monday.”
“What?” he shouted on the other end. My eyes screwed shut. That one word brought home exactly what was coming and my heart broke hearing the distress in his voice. I wished it wasn’t me who’d always made him sound that way.
“Blake, don’t even start with this shit. You’re coming back,” he demanded.
“I want to, Casey, so bad, but I need to do this right. I can’t keep going back and forth. It’s not fair to anyone and it’s making me crazy. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I keep hurting us. I just don’t want to hurt any more people than I have to. I can’t come back to you until this is done.”
“So, fine! Make it done by Monday. Even better.” I heard something smash, it sounded like a bottle. “I knew you were going to do this.”
“Listen to me before you get mad. Please.” I felt my pulse everywhere. Was there ever a more shitty situation?
“Mad?! Is that what you think this is?” he asked.
There I was hurting him again. How could I even make this right, make this all up to everyone.
I rushed to add, “It will make me do this faster if I have to leave you alone. Does that make sense?”
Reminding him of how I felt about being without him had to work in my favor. It was all I had left.
“So what? You want to quit talking again?” He huffed a sardonic laugh. “No f*cking way, Blake. I shouldn’t have let you go.”
“It’s a means to an end. Don’t you see that?”
“So no talking again, until this is over?” his voice calmed, but not in a good way. “Damn you, Blake. God damn it!”
I begged, “Please, Casey. Please trust me.”
“Trust you?” he repeated, like hearing it back would make me grasp exactly how outrageous I sounded. Like I didn’t already know.
“Trust. Me.” I stood and nervously paced, my index finger taking a mauling.
“Promise. Honeybee, promise me you’re telling the truth.”
“I’m telling you the truth, but I will not promise. I’ve already made promises. And I’ve broken every single one of them. My promises aren’t worth much these days.”
We were both silent, like my fresh tears, for empty minutes.
“Then what?” He sounded so defeated. “What can you give me? How do I know? F*ck! How do I know this is real this time?”
“Because. Because it’s true. I want you. I need you. And I want to really be yours. It’s true.” The pitch of my voice, while trying to keep my volume down, only came out squeaky and shrill.
“Don’t take too long,” he said. “You said a year the other night? So here it is. Your year. I hope, God I pray, that it doesn’t take that long. And if not talking to you helps you move this shit along, so f*cking be it. Don’t call me. Don’t text. Honeybee, my trust in you has an expiration date now. So do whatever the hell it is you think you have to do to make this right.” He let out a resigned breath. “God, I can’t believe this.”
“I’ll miss you so bad.”
“Sometimes it feels like I started missing you the moment we met. I hate this.”
He didn’t say anything for a little while. I listened as his breathing slowed and I think he made his peace with my plan, at least enough to agree to it. Then he said, “Hurry back to me,” and hung up.
I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Maybe that was his intention.
Days passed.
Weeks fell away.
I made good on my word. When Grant worked late, I told him what I thought about it. Or what I should have thought about it if I wasn’t hell bent on getting out of our marriage.
I’d confided in my father again on Thanksgiving while he was having a cigar, frying a turkey, and quite frankly ruining a beautiful bird.
He got me good and drunk, too. I thought that maybe he knew I needed to talk and it was no secret that a little hooch was good way to go about it.
Grant went to his parents, but I didn’t, choosing to spend our first Thanksgiving with my folks and apart from my husband. Yeah, that might have been a flag for my old man.
He was understanding, but surprisingly sided with both Casey and me. Telling me that I was dumb for putting him through all of that again, but he commended me for not running away simply because I wanted to.
He told me I was a smart girl and that he had my back.
I slept on their couch and flipped my mom off when she tried to wake me up at two in the morning to go shopping with her. Shane, who still lived there, wasn’t so lucky.
It had been almost a month without him. Something that, sadly, I’d been through before. Too many times.
I’d spoke to Micah a lot, I told her the truth, too. She was supportive, but pretty much warned me that if I didn’t get my shit together, and in so, that if I hurt Casey again, she would be the one whooping my ass.
I thought that was fair.
Micah and Cory decided to get married, which was kind of like an engagement, but in their own weird way, and they’d set the date for New Year’s Eve. Only about a month away.
I tried not to ask her about Casey, I didn’t want her to think that the only reason I called was to get the latest on my Godson and my year-plus-long one-night stand.
Even still, she always made a point to mention what he’d been doing. I was grateful to have a friend like her.
Reggie called me every day.
“You know you can come visit me anytime you want to get away, Blake. It would be nice to have you here. I could use a distraction myself,” he’d said during one of our evening chats. He sounded stressed and I hoped everything was okay. I hoped Nora was there for him.
“You’re busy, you don’t need your mess of a sister there cramping your style, but I love you for inviting me,” I told him. Honestly, being in Chicago would only remind me of Casey, not that I could escape him anyway.
I’d been spending more time in the office, not travelling because I felt like that was just avoiding my home situation and ultimately my goal. Micah had told me that Casey had been travelling almost nonstop, but that he called to check in every few days no matter where he was.
Time passed in black and white.
I spent more time with Shane than probably ever. His mood suited me. It probably wasn’t healthy feeding his depression with my shitty vibes, but I did it anyway.
We went to movies and barely talked. Sometimes we’d finish the night in a bar, while my husband worked.
Christmas came, but I wasn’t into it. Instead of buying presents for family and friends, I gave them all gift cards. I only bought actual presents for Foster, and sent them to California in a big brown box.
I probably would have tried to ship myself if UPS would have had one big enough.
I was miserable and certain Grant could feel it. He wasn’t a prick, or a bad husband. I often felt bad for him. Consequently, I wasn’t being cruel or mean, but showing him me and how I was really feeling was starting to register with him.
I was counting down the days.
Grant wasn’t really showing an ounce of concern for our demise, and only validated that I’d made the wrong decision by marrying him. It was like Reggie was right. Had I married a robot? Was he not upset that our marriage was a sham? He he ever have extreme emotions about anything?
My body was there same as always.
But I was finally able to admit that my heart and mind was with Casey.