His mouth compresses. “Didn’t you?”
I can’t even respond. He knows better than anyone that foreplay doesn’t have to involve touching. He’s the one who taught me that.
A sudden sense of foreboding fills me, the precipice beginning to crumble beneath my feet.
Dean is silent for a long minute. The air between us stretches thin.
“All right, Liv.” He drags a hand through his hair, his breath expelling in a hard rush. “You can come home. I’ll move out for a while.”
I stare at him. “Wait… what?”
Some of the anger drains from him, but his jaw is tight with tension as he meets my eyes.
“Whatever I’m not giving you is fucking us up,” he says. “If we’re apart, maybe I can figure out what the hell it is.”
My stomach rolls with queasiness.
“We’re… separating?” I have to shove the word past the bile rising in my throat. Separating? Us? “Are you punishing me? Is that what this is about?”
“Why did you leave the other night?” he asks. “Were you punishing me for not telling you about Helen?”
Was I?
“What about counseling?” I ask.
“Would you have told a counselor about this?” He shoves the chef’s jacket with his foot.
I have no idea. The self-admission makes me sick.
Dean’s eyes harden. “We need to stop lying to each other before spilling our guts out to a goddamn counselor.”
“Why do you think separating will help anything?” My fingernails dig into my palms.
“You said it last month. Being together is lousy right now.”
“But we can’t work anything out if we’re not together,” I say. “I’m not… I won’t come home unless you’re there.”
Dean looks at me, his expression unreadable. Then he closes the distance between us. The familiar scent of him, soap and maleness and winter air, floods my senses in a wave. For a second, I think he’s going to touch me, but his hands stay shoved into his pockets. His eyes are shuttered.
“I don’t want to punish you, Liv. But you were right to leave. We need to be apart.”
I feel so brittle, so icy, that I can’t even let the tears fall. I watch through black-edged vision as Dean steps back, his gaze still on me. Then he turns to leave.
The front door clicks shut with a hollow echo. I can only stand there staring at the empty space my husband’s departure has left.
A torrent of memories chokes me. Before Dean, I was so alone, tight like a piece of paper crushed into a ball. With him, my entire being smoothed out, all the secrets cocooned in the pleats of my soul finally opening.
Now I can feel myself crumpling again. Shutting down.
The nausea surges. I make it to the bathroom before I throw up.
Christmas is less than two weeks away. I don’t return home. I can’t stand the thought of being there without Dean.
I send him an email telling him I’ll stay with Kelsey and that he doesn’t have to leave the apartment. He responds with a short “okay” and tells me he’s had snow tires put on my car and will leave it at Kelsey’s the following day.
A week passes, slow and sluggish. My heart aches. I try and ignore it by getting out as much as possible—the Historical Society is putting on holiday tours, so I help out with preparations and decorating. I volunteer at the library and have lunch with Allie a few times at Matilda’s Teapot, which is planning to close for good in February.
Dean and I don’t contact each other. Kelsey says she’s seen him at the university gym several times, but he doesn’t say much to her and declines her offers of racquetball. For once, she hasn’t pushed him to tell her anything else.
She also told me about their kiss, which was one of the few things in the past two weeks that has made me laugh. I could only imagine Dean’s shocked reaction.
I work every day at The Happy Booker, but don’t put all my hours on my time card because I don’t want Allie to think she has to pay me when I’m mostly trying to keep myself busy. During the day, interacting with people and working, I’m able to keep my emotions in check.
But lying in bed alone at night, my mind floods with thoughts and memories of Dean. Several times I find myself reaching for my cell phone, my finger poised over the speed-dial to call him. Somehow I manage to stop myself, even though I want nothing more than to hear his deep voice.
I miss him, of course. I want things to be the way they once were, when we couldn’t wait to touch each other, when our kisses were so warm and easy, when he’d press his mouth to my temple and pull me into the place by his side where I fit perfectly.