“Thanks, mom.”
She clicked off and I dropped my phone on the cushion beside me. That was the most bizarre conversation I had ever had with my mother.
It beat the birds and the bees talk she tried to have with me when I was fourteen.
It had been too late by that point. I went to public school and there was this thing called TV.
I knew everything I needed to know.
I figured the logistics out later. As God and my sanity intended.
I felt oddly at peace then. Everything wasn’t quite so dismal. My mom believed Nick still loved me, so that had to mean something, right?
That peace carried me through the rest of the day and eventually I was able to get up off the couch and at least change clothes.
I stripped off my pencil skirt and blouse and replaced it with yoga pants and a racerback tank. They were workout clothes, but I was not planning on working out.
Unless one considered inhaling a couple gallons of ice cream working out.
But mostly I needed the clothes for their stretchiness.
I walked down the stairs, anxious to get started on my ice cream marathon when I saw him. The sight of him there, in the entryway, standing so tall and looking so beautiful, nearly made me face plant down the remaining four stairs.
I caught myself on the railing, but my stomach took the tumble anyway.
“What are you doing here?”
He stood there out of breath with his shoulders heaving, as if he’d run all the way here. His mouth was set with determined lines. His eyes were so intent, so intimately focused… but maybe a little lost too. Or maybe it was something deeper than lost. Something profound and permanent that reflected in my eyes too. Something like finally being found. “You still don’t know?”
I shook my head and tried to swallow. “No.”
“You, Kate. I’m here for you.”
I carefully made my way down the rest of the stairs and took a step toward him. It was strange being in this place. I felt like my emotions had taken steroids. There were too many of them. And they were at war with each other.
The man that I wanted, the marriage that I wanted, stood right in front of me and still I had to fight my pride and swallow humility. I had to choose to let go of our past and hold onto the hope that we had a future. I had so many things I wanted to say to him, but I needed to choose the best things… the things that would move us forward and give us healing.
It wasn’t easy. It was the opposite. It was traumatizing and against my nature. I knew I was stubborn. I knew I was a control freak. I knew I had a thousand faults that only this man could love.
We were so broken. I was so broken.
Yet I wanted this more than anything in the world. More than I had ever wanted anything else in my entire life.
And I knew, without any doubts or misgivings, that if I let him go… if I gave up on our marriage and walked away, I would regret it every single day for the rest of my life.
More than that, I would be giving up a quality of life. I would be letting the best thing in my life go. I would have to resign myself to a secondhand citizenship in my own life and I could not do that.
I didn’t deserve it.
He didn’t deserve it.
We didn’t deserve it.
Before I could create words and explanations and apologies out of all of that, he stepped forward again, closing the distance between us and said, “I’m sorry, Katie. I’m sorry for everything.” When I saw real tears reflected in his deep blue eyes, I immediately burst into tears. I couldn’t help it. I had never seen him like this before.