“I love Ruby’s,” I said around a mouthful of lumpia. They were the perfect combination of crispy outside and spicy inside, like a spring roll only Filipino style. “Nick and I used to go on the weekends when we were first married because we could get so much food for so little.”
Eli waited a beat before he responded. I realized I put him in an awkward conversation spot, but with his usual directness, he rolled with it. “Why did you guys stop?”
I glanced at Kara on the floor, but she seemed completely out of it. I didn’t know why I didn’t want her knowing I opened up to Eli about my divorce. It still felt weird to me and I didn’t think I wanted Kara to look at it like a good thing.
I wasn’t sure it was a good thing.
“Probably for the same reason we stopped doing most other things.” I reached down to fiddle with one of the sauce containers, making my fingertips sticky. That wasn’t exactly fair. “I don’t know, actually. We always had fun at Ruby’s. We just stopped going. Maybe we got too busy.”
“Or maybe you stopped wanting to spend time with each other?”
I swallowed a large bite of rice and spiced meat and tried not to choke. Was he right? Instead of feeling the pain that I should or the insecurity in the truth of his words, I felt irritated.
My first thought was, “What did he know about me?”
What gave him the right to make judgments on my marriage?
But I swallowed again and tried to push those thoughts away. He was just being my friend. And he probably was right.
“Maybe,” I said noncommittally. “Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out the majority of reasons our marriage didn’t work out.”
He leaned in and I felt the warmth of his body as his arm grazed mine. “You know, you don’t have to torture yourself with all the whys and why nots. This is hard enough on you.”
I looked up at him, noticing the shaved line of his jaw and the smooth skin over high cheekbones. He was wearing his glasses today and the fluorescent classroom lights glinted off his lenses, hiding his eyes from me.
“Does that work?” I asked quietly. “If I tell myself to stop analyzing everything, will I listen?”
His smile was filled with sorrow from his own past pain. “No,” he said with a gruff rasp. “But you can try. Maybe you’ll do better than me.”
We finished up our lunches over small, easy talk. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t lose my appetite. I ate as much of my lunch as I could until my stomach felt distended and I knew I would have to fight through a food coma to teach my afternoon classes.
We woke Kara up and Eli offered to walk her to her classroom since she still looked on the verge of puking her guts and every ounce of alcohol from last night up.
Once they were gone, I had about five minutes until the bell rang, so I dug out my phone from my locked drawer and stared at the screen for two minutes. I clicked my nails against the back of it as I cradled it in my palm. Curiosity and a masochistic sense of self-analysis buzzed through me in a way I couldn’t ignore.
Finally, I texted Nick, asking, I just had Ruby’s for lunch today. It was so good. Why did we stop going there?
A minute later he texted back, They had an Ebola outbreak last year.
Shut up!!!
He sent back a smiley face and for another minute I thought that was the end of it. The bell rang, but I couldn’t bring myself to stand up and greet my class. I kept staring at my phone, waiting for more.
Just as students started to filter into the room, my cell vibrated in my hand and I caught his one last text before I needed to put it away for the rest of the afternoon.
I wish we wouldn’t have stopped.
Chapter Eight
15. We can never agree on anything.
“I can’t believe you guys are getting a divorce.” The high-pitched whine shrilled through the phone. I wanted to chuck it against the sidewalk.
“Fi, believe it.”
I stepped out of my car and stumbled back a step when the force of the late afternoon wind smacked me in the face. For a minute, I couldn’t hear anything on Fiona’s end because of the static and interruption from the wind.