“I know. I know,” he says. “I need a cut. You didn’t give me much of a warning here ...”
I shake my head, indicating that his grooming is the least of my concerns, then burst out with it. “I met her last night. I called her,” I say. “I needed to see her.”
He furrows his brow and scratches his jaw. “I understand,” he says, and then stops short of asking any questions, which seems to require a certain measure of restraint.
“She was nice,” I say. “I didn’t hate her.”
“Tessa,” he says, his eyes begging me to stop.
“No. She was. . . She was honest, too. She didn’t try to deny anything, like I thought she would . . . In fact, she actually admitted that she’s in love with you,” I say, unsure of whether I’m baiting him, punishing him, or simply telling the truth. “Did you know that? I’m sure she told you, too . . .”
He shakes his head, rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands, and says, “She’s not in love with me.”
“She was.”
“No. She never was.”
“She told me she was, Nick,” I say, my anger ebbing and flowing by the second, with his every word, every fleeting expression.
“She thought she was,” he says. “But. . . she wasn’t. Love doesn’t work like that.”
“Oh?” I say. “How does it work, Nick?”
He stands and rotates to Frankie’s seat, now next to me, where he reaches for my hand. I shake my head in refusal but when he tries again, I reluctantly give it to him, my eyes welling with his touch.
“Love is sharing a life together,” he says, squeezing my hand. “Love is what we have.”
“And what did you have with her?”
“That was . . . something else.”
I stare at him, struggling to make sense of his words. “So you didn’t love her?”
He sighs, glances at the ceiling, and then looks at me again. I say a prayer that he doesn’t lie to me, that he doesn’t issue a flat-out denial when I know he loved her. Or at least thought he did.
“I don’t know, Tess,” he begins. “I really don’t... I wouldn’t have done what I did if I didn’t have strong feelings for her. If it wasn’t something at least approaching love, something that looked and felt like love . . . But those feelings—they don’t compare to my love for you. And the moment I came home and looked into your eyes and told you what I had done, I knew that. . . Tessa, I messed up so bad. I risked everything— our marriage, my job, this home. I still don’t know why I let it happen. I hate myself for letting it happen.”
“You didn’t let it happen, Nick,” I say, pulling my hand away from him. “You made it happen. It took two. It took both of you.”
As I say the words, though, I am struck by how much they apply to us, as well. That it took two to get us here. That it always takes two. For relationships to work, for them to break apart, for them to be fixed.
“I know,” he says. “You’re right. I’m not trying to shift the blame to anyone else . . . I’m just trying to tell you how much I love you.”
“Then how could you do it?” I say, my voice soft now. It is a question—not an accusation.
He looks at me, struggling for words. “I think . . . I think . . . I was looking for something I thought I needed.”
“And what was that? What was it that you weren’t getting here? From me?” I ask as I begin to answer the question for myself. I refuse to accept any blame for his infidelity, and yet I can’t deny that things have changed between us. That I’ve changed. And that, in many ways, I’m not the person he married. I think of Nick’s recent accusations, as well as my mother’s observations. That I am never happy; that I have lost some of my passion; that I focus on things that don’t matter, rather than our relationship, the bedrock of everything else. “What did she give you?”
He shakes his head. “It wasn’t like that . . . It was more . . .” He glances up at the ceiling, searching for words, then looks at me and says, “the way I felt when I was around her reminded me of the way I felt for you in the beginning.”
My heart breaks hearing the two of us compared, yet there is comfort in his honesty, in the pain on his face, how much he also wishes it weren’t true.
He continues, “And there were other things, too . . . I felt . . . I felt this need to fix things for that little boy—a need that got convoluted and somehow extended to his mother . . . Part of it was probably my ego . . . wanting that feeling—that feeling of being young . . . of being needed and wanted.” His voice trails off, as I remember how vulnerable I was on the subway the day we met.
“I needed you. I wanted you,” I say, using the past tense, even though a big part of me still needs him, still wants him. “But maybe you’re no longer . . . attracted to me?”