“Hadley?” I say her name in a questioning tone, though I know the answer to my unspoken question.
I’ve never felt a complete shutdown. I’ve never had my breath suspended or my heart skip a beat. People talk about it, the symptoms of falling in love, but this isn’t love. This awful feeling—it’s pure, unadulterated fear. It occupies every corner of my body.
Hadley is leaving me. For good.
She turns and her face is wary but blank, somehow. Her posture is both delicate and firm.
“I’m going to Beth’s.”
It takes me a second to hear her with the absolute silence pervading my body. “What?”
“I’ll be back Wednesday.”
“You’ll be back.”
The frown that drew me to her for the very first time makes an appearance. Strangely, I don’t have the urge to ease it off her forehead.
“I need some time to myself,” she says. Her soft voice screeches at my skin, like claws dragging across my body.
“What about Nicky?”
I’ve asked this before. We’ve had this conversation before. The night Layla saw me through the window was the night Hadley and I argued about this very thing. I wanted her to stay, and she wanted to take off for a few days.
Hadley shakes her head. “He doesn’t need me.”
What about me? I need you.
“Are you saying your son doesn’t need you?”
She swallows as an odd look enters her eyes. “He has you, and Susan can stay here for a few days. I just… need to get away.”
“From what, exactly? What do you want to get away from?”
“I don’t want to argue, Thomas. I just…I want to go.”
“Is that why you’re sneaking out at night? Because you didn’t want to argue?” I don’t give her a chance to talk. “Guess what, you can’t escape the argument. You can’t fucking escape me.”
I know I should control myself. I should. It’s not her fault she wants to get away. It’s me. I’m the one who ruined everything.
But dammit! Can’t she see how much I love her? How her leaving would fucking destroy me? And if she loves me, how can she do this to me?
She doesn’t love you.
“Thomas, I don’t—”
I take a step forward. “What is it that I’m doing wrong? Tell me. What do you want from me? What do I need to do to get you to stay? Because I’ll do anything.” I reach her and before I can talk myself out of it, I grab her bicep. She flinches at my touch and my gut burns with anger and resentment and fear.
She can’t leave me. She can’t. I can’t be alone.
“I’ve been a fucking asshole to you in the past, but I’ve changed. Tell me what you want from me and I’ll give it to you in a heartbeat. Just…don’t leave.”
My words are right, I know it, but my voice is all wrong. The emotions inside me are wrong. Everything about this feels wrong. The darkness, the silence, the fact that I’m wearing a towel, begging my wife to stay. The fact that she’s still unmoved. The look in her eyes is that of being trapped.
Hadley feels trapped with me.
“I want you to let go,” she whispers.
My frightened fingers grip her even tighter. “No. No, I won’t. I’m going to fight for us. I’m going to keep my promise because I love you.”
I say it like an accusation. It lashes out of my mouth as an attempt to make her understand, make her stay.
“I don’t want you to. Just let me go,” she says again, and this time, her plea holds all the power in the world. My fingers loosen and then drop to my side, limp and useless.
She’s leaving me.
She’s. Leaving. Me.
A burn makes a home in my eyes and I swallow thickly. Hadley notices it, raises her hand, and caresses my cheek. I shudder and latch onto it, as though I could physically keep her here.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she says with flickers of emotions in her voice.
“Then don’t go,” I whisper raggedly. “I need you.”
She shakes her head with sadness. “I just need a little bit of time. Please.”
I gave up everything for her. Everything that mattered to me is gone. I kept my end of the bargain. I put her first.
So why can’t she do the same? Why can’t she love me back?
My bigger hand clenches around her smaller one. For a brief moment, I want to keep going, keep squeezing until I crush her tiny fingers. Maybe that physical pain will tell her how I’m burning inside. Maybe then she’ll stay.
But I let go and step back.
“How were you planning on getting there?” I ask with a ticking jaw.
She studies my face silently. I show her all of my anger, my pain. I hope she sees the devastation she’s going to leave in her wake. I hope she sees this in her nightmares like I’ll see her indifference in mine.
“I called a cab. It’s outside,” she tells me.
“Give me a second to put on some clothes. I’ll walk with you.”
“You don’t have to.”
I shoot her a look and she quiets down. If she wants to leave, I’ll escort her out myself. A few minutes later, we’re standing at the door of the cab. Hadley puts her bag inside and then slides in herself. Without looking at her, I shut the door and tap on the roof, alerting the cabbie to pull out. I feel Hadley watching me through the window but I don’t return her look. I simply turn around and walk to the house—the pile of bricks I want to take apart with my own bare hands.
________________
Last time Hadley left, it took me two days to notice she was gone. I’m not proud of it. In fact, I’m downright ashamed that I never noticed her absence. My sole focus was the collection of poems I was working on. I had a deadline and I didn’t see anything beyond that. I can’t remember if I ate or even moved from my desk, although of course I must have.
I can’t remember anything of those frenzied forty-eight hours until the knock that came at my office, jarring me awake from my dreamy, fugue-like state. After that, I remember everything clearly. I remember Hadley entering the room. I remember wondering about how clean everything looked, despite the fact that I practically lived in there for hours on end. The trash was in the trashcan. The papers were organized on the desk. I felt a momentary happiness, a momentary pride at how different I was from what I’ve known, from my father.
I was a real poet. I had published poems, won awards, and I was organized and neat. As I looked at Hadley, I remember thinking I had a family. It was a moment of sheer arrogance for myself and pity for the man who’d failed in every aspect of his life. It was a moment of sheer anger at him.
But with Hadley’s next words, my world cracked and then crumbled. She told me she wanted a divorce, and like a fucking moron, I stilled, became speechless. She told me she had been gone for the past two days. She’d needed the time to think. She said our love had died and it was better to part ways, that it was no one’s fault. It was just something that happened.
We’re in awe of each other, Thomas. We admire each other, but we don’t love.
What the fuck did that mean? Of course I was in fucking awe of her. She was my wife.