Unspoken

by Kelly Rimmer

  I find Paul sound asleep on the sun chair, the one on the left—the one he always took when we were here together. He is such a man of habit—always taking the left side when we sat or slept. Left side of the sofa, left side of the bed, left side if we were seated side by side on the subway. Left side when we walked or jogged together? No...actually, that’s maybe the one exception to the rule, he’d always shift so that he walked on whichever side was closest to the traffic. Was that a protective thing? I barely noticed at the time, so I never thought to ask him.

  Were there other things I didn’t appreciate about Paul? By the end, I didn’t really appreciate much at all. He was just the stranger who slept in my bed.

  He’s sitting in the very sun chair he was sitting in when he asked me to move in with him. We’d only been together for a couple of months, but we’d barely spent a night apart since we met. After an afternoon of making love, drinking wine and napping, we’d come out here for the sunset and he looked over at me and he said ever so casually, “You know, you may as well move in with me,” and I thought my heart was going to beat its way out of my chest.

  He proposed like that, too, without pomp or ceremony, throwing the words out as a statement, not a question. None of that mattered to me. I simply couldn’t wait to say yes.

  These are the kinds of memories I haven’t let myself dwell on this year. It hurts too much to remember us back then. It hurts far too much to remember how optimistic I once was about our future. Paul was forever telling me that things at work were going to settle down for him soon. One more sprint. One more retreat. One more release. A few more weeks. We fell into a pattern where I was always chasing after him trying to connect, and he was always putting up barriers between us through his business.

  The sunset would have been magnificent out here an hour or so ago, but now darkness is falling and there’s a definite chill in the breeze—the days have warmed up early this year, but it will still be weeks before the nights catch up.

  Paul has one arm over his eyes and the other is curled over his torso. Other than the throw blanket tangled at his feet, Paul is still naked and he must be uncomfortably cold now that the sun is going. I don’t feel sorry for him. I have a sneaking suspicion the only reason he’s still naked after all of these hours is to irritate me.

  And if that was his goal, he’s succeeded. The sight of all of that bare skin right now is maddening, and that’s my damn throw blanket around his ankles. It’s a chunky knit and soft and so lovely, and I could have been cuddled under it on the sofa in front of the huge TV in the living room if Paul wasn’t here. But if he’s been lying under it at some point, it’s going to smell like him, and that’s not exactly going to comfort me, is it?

  I have half a mind to snatch it off him and run back to wash the damn thing and keep it for myself, but then my eyes sneak just a little past it, to Paul’s calves, and then I’m on a roll as my gaze travels across that expanse of bare skin. I survey the landscape of Paul’s body, and forget all about my throw-blanket rage.

  Paul was never a guy with corded biceps or prominent hip flexors or well-defined pecs. Now he’s walking around in the kind of body that only comes from long hours at the weight bench.

  “Are you just going to stand there staring at me? The least you could do is pull the blanket up.” His voice is rough, and there’s a thick slur to the words. “Surely you owe me that. At least that. I let you keep this house, and you know that made no sense at all.”

  These are the ramblings of a man who’s clearly very drunk, but I can’t deny there’s some truth to that last statement. I knew right from the outset of our settlement negotiations that I had no legal claim to this place. Paul owned it when we met, and New York is an equitable distribution state—property purchased before marriage is technically off-limits in a divorce. He’d made a lot of money during the years we were together, much more than I did, but I didn’t want alimony or to accept even what I was due. My original plan was to accept a small, one-off cash settlement—just enough to set myself up again, given I left most of our furniture and belongings with him.

  It’s just that when I sat down with my attorney to talk assets and I mentioned this place in passing, I started to wonder. Paul does love our brownstone in Chelsea, and I suspect that house is actually more to his tastes. It’s plush, modernized and stylish.

  This Greenport house has water frontage, but it’s simple and a little dated. It really needs to be remodeled but we just never found the time. On paper, at least in its current condition, location is about all this house has going for it. And whenever we came out here during our marriage, it was generally my idea.

  I know Paul bought it with an inheritance that matured when he turned twenty-one, but I never understood why it was this house in this village. It’s hardly the kind of beachfront bachelor pad the average twenty-one-year-old might dream of. Once I really sat down and thought about it, I decided there were only two possibilities: either Paul no longer liked the Greenport house, and thus would be quite happy to give it to me, or that there was some appeal to him...one he was never willing to explain. I had asked him why he bought it over the years, but he always brushed the question off or changed the subject.

  My attorney told me I could ask for the house but that Paul might simply say no and I’d have to accept that. My plan in the beginning was to do just that. So we sent off the proposed settlement via my attorney to Paul’s, and my phone rang later that afternoon—the first direct contact between Paul and me in weeks. He was almost speechless with rage—the call punctuated by fierce half sentences and long periods of angry silence.

  I’d never actually seen him so passionate about anything. I’d certainly never seen him so moved.

  I guess that once I realized how desperately he wanted this place, all I could think about was winning it myself. My attitude of “let’s go our separate ways but we’ll keep this polite” became “I’m going to be completely unreasonable and refuse to give up my hold on the one asset we all know I have no right to.”

  In the end, we bickered and squabbled our way through seven mediation sessions before the mediator informed us that he had reached the conclusion that we’d never agree on the terms of our divorce, and he was referring us to a judge.

  I knew that meant I wouldn’t get the house. After all, my attorney had told me, time and time again, that the law was clear. I wiped my eyes, blew my nose and was about to withdraw my request for it to save us going to court, but Paul beat me to it.

  “She can have it,” he said flatly, while our attorneys and the mediator gasped and stared at us in shock. I’ve had six long months to think about this since then and I still don’t understand why he changed his mind at the very last second.

  “Wake up,” I say impatiently. “We need to talk.”

  “Talking is overrated,” he says, but his eyes remain stubbornly closed. He’s clearly awake enough to hear me, so I nudge him again.

  “Are you drunk?” I ask, and the arm over his eyes flops back to rest behind his head. He stares up at me in the semidarkness, then gives a slow blink and a subtle shake of his head, as if he can’t quite focus—or maybe he can’t believe what he’s seeing. I don’t blame him if it’s the latter. I still feel a little like that myself. This afternoon has been a bit ridiculous.

  “Maybe I am drunk,” he says after a while. “It’s a bit hard to tell just at the moment. Ask me again in a few minutes when the ground stops spinning.”

  I walk briskly to his feet and pick up the throw blanket, then dump it unceremoniously over his body as I sink down to sit on the chair beside him.

  “Better?”

  “Much. Thanks. That was so kind of you. That’s the Isabel I knew and loved,” he says. He’s really slurring now, and then he closes his eyes and it looks like he’s fallen asleep again. Great. I reach across and push his bicep to try to rouse him. This is definitely not an excuse to tou
ch him, and I am definitely not at all impressed by the strength and the bulk he’s added there. Also, even if his arm does feel absolutely fantastic beneath my fingers, I need to stop touching him and keep my damn hands to myself.

  I snatch my fingers back and tuck them under my thigh, as if that will aid my self-control.

  “Paul...ah...” I have to tell him about the laptop, but he does seem pretty out of it, and I’m not really sure how to convince him this really was an accident. Plus, what if I tell him, and he forgets, and I just have to tell him again tomorrow when he’s hungover and even grumpier than usual? I slump a little, flopping back into a reclining position on the sun chair. Well, I’m here now, so I may as well try to get something out of this awkward encounter. “Did you change the Wi-Fi password?”

  “It took you all day to notice?”

  “That was incredibly childish of you.”

  He snorts. “That’s pretty funny coming from the woman who had a full-blown tantrum earlier.”

  “I didn’t have a—”

  He pries his eyes open with visible difficulty, but just so he can quirk an eyebrow at me.

  “Fine. But can I have the new password please? You’ve had your fun.”

  He snorts again, as if I’ve just asked him for the moon.

  “I’ll bother you less if I have Netflix to entertain myself. Unless you’ve decided to go home?”

  “It is incredibly annoying that you’re here, but you know what would be worse?”

  “What?” I ask.

  Our gazes lock, and there’s something oddly intense about the way he’s staring at me...so much so that I actually think he’s going to say something profound until he snaps me back to reality with a sardonic half grin and a drawled “if I passed up the last chance I’ll ever have to mess with you.”

  I break the eye contact, then reach for his beer and take a healthy swig from the bottle. It’s warm and flat, but it’s alcohol, and right at this moment that’s enough.

  “You didn’t even like beer when we met,” Paul says suddenly. “Remember? You only drank wine, and organic wine at that.”

  I lower the bottle to scowl at him. “And you looked like a stick figure. People change.”

  “I should probably thank you for introducing me to a healthier lifestyle. It’s much easier being single this time around.”

  I barely hear him. I’m still thinking about how determined he is to stay this weekend and how frustrating and bewildering that is. Our marriage didn’t end because he was cruel or mean, it ended because he disconnected from me and retreated into his own world. But this year since I left, he’s been harder...fiercer. I set the now-empty bottle back onto the table between us. “When did you get so nasty, Paul?”

  I don’t expect him to respond, so I’m surprised when he sighs, the sound heavy with regret. Glancing at him, I find his eyes have drifted closed again.

  “And you, right? I mean, you aren’t nasty. You were all the good things. But you aren’t now. And I was, and you wasn’t. Weren’t,” he mumbles, then he opens one eye, then the other. We make startling, shocking eye contact as he asks, “But weren’t you just?”

  An unexpected laugh bursts from somewhere deep inside me. Paul squints, then he shakes his head and finally seems to wake up the rest of the way. He sits up clumsily in the chair as he mumbles, “I’m just trying to say that I wasn’t always like this. Was I? I feel like this divorce has really made me someone else.”

  Those words hit like a sucker punch right to my gut.

  “This year has changed you,” I whisper. “It really has made you someone else.”

  I’m so touched by this moment that I almost reach to console him, until he adds, “Well, if I’m someone else, you are, too, you know. And New Isabel is kind of a bitch.”

  I don’t even try to defend myself against that accusation. We both know he’s right.

  “How is this even going to work? If we both stay here, we’re just going to fight,” I whisper miserably. “You have to leave.”

  He’s still for a long moment, then he rubs his eyes. After a minute, he looks right at me and his gaze is clearing. It seems he’s sobering by the second, or possibly, just shaking the last of the sleep from his mind.

  “My plans for this weekend include drinking some beer and maybe catching up on some sleep. I’ll do as much of that as I can in the master bedroom, but I’m not going to promise you I won’t come out, and if that’s going to make life awkward for you, you should probably just leave and come back next weekend.”

  “No chance of that,” I say bitterly.

  “So we agree, then.”

  “What exactly did we agree to?”

  “I’ll stay drunk, and you’ll try harder to be nice to me.”

  I think about his bulked-up frame and the vulnerability in his tone that he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to hide and I’m so confused that I’m starting to feel drunk. None of this makes any sense.

  Paul Winton is not a man who says things like be nicer to me. Paul uses unnecessarily big words and cold tones of voice and he doesn’t often have discernable emotions, let alone openly express a desire for someone to be nice to him.

  I look down at the beer again. There’s an unopened bottle, the bottle I just finished, and five other empties. He’s been up here all afternoon. I think about the nights we shared with our friends in Manhattan, parties on Jess’s rooftop patio where we’d devour cocktails and laugh at Paul as he sipped her crazy pink creations even as he complained about the sugar content. I also reminisce about dinners at Marcus and Abby’s apartment, where Marcus would buy a case of expensive wines and we’d all pretend we knew what a top note was...

  And how rarely Paul ever seemed drunk. He always handled alcohol well...and that was before he added so many pounds of muscle this year.

  “Why are you so drunk? I’ve seen you drink a lot more and stay fairly lucid, compared to this...”

  Paul frowns, again. He ponders this for a moment, wearing that thinking face I know all too well. Suddenly, his expression clears, and I know he’s solved the problem.

  “I didn’t eat today, and I didn’t really sleep last night. Probably not the smartest time to drink, but there you have it.” His gaze travels up and down my body, and he frowns a little. “But you’re the last person who should be judging me right now. Clearly you know all about forgetting to eat, Bel.”

  The barb about my body isn’t anything new—this year, I feel like every person in my life thinks they have a right to comment on how I look. Some people stress-eat, but when I’m stressed, my appetite disappears. I’ve always been slight, but at the moment, I’m looking and feeling a little gaunt. I’ve been working on it—making an effort to look after myself more, to treat my body and soul with a little more kindness. I’m not self-conscious about the way I look, and while this is none of Paul’s business, I’m not even offended that he commented.

  No, what gets me about that statement is the nickname. Bel. No one else has ever called me that—not even Paul in this last year that’s passed. It was like the moment I left he lost his last shred of affection for me, and that fond, special nickname he’d granted me was suddenly revoked. I was no longer Bel—no longer his wife, no longer his lover. Instead, I became Izzy to him—still a nickname, still familiar—but somehow so much more distant because that’s what everyone else calls me, too. I’m still not sure why that hurt so much, but I also know I don’t at all like the sudden revision to the way things once were.

  “Don’t call me that,” I say abruptly.

  He looks at me blankly and he’s not playing dumb. He’s slipped back into the nickname purely out of habit. “Call you what?”

  I swallow. Hard. “Bel,” I say. “My name is Isabel.”

  “I can’t help it, I hate calling you Isabel. And your friends call you Izzy,” he says, then he closes his eyes. �
��Nuts.”

  “What’s nuts?” I’m resisting the urge to grab him by his shoulders and shake him awake again.

  Or maybe that urge is just about grabbing his shoulders.

  Bad Isabel. No touching the awful ex-husband, even if his biceps are pretty much the perfect size and shape.

  “No...not nuts,” he corrects me. “Nuts. Nuts are a high-nutrient and high-calorie food. You like macadamias.”

  Good God. The man is positively delirious.

  “I have a personal policy to never take nutrition advice from drunk computer nerds.”

  “But are you okay?” Paul asks me, and there’s a sudden, shocking concern in his voice. It’s out of place, just as the remorse was. Paul is not an empathetic person and I’m starting to feel dizzy from these uncharacteristic displays of emotion. I knew he was angry. But remorseful? Concerned? Worried? Upset? These are not words I associate with Paul Winton.

  Now, our gazes lock, and my stomach sinks all the way to my toes. There’s no denying the misery in his gaze as he adds, “This is bad. All of it is bad, and I hate everything about this...but I can handle it as long as you’re okay. Tell me you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay,” I whisper, and he gives a satisfied sigh and shuts his eyes again. “Paul,” I blurt. “Why are you here?”

  “Same as you, I guess,” he says, and he opens his eyes again. “I’m licking my wounds and hoping and praying that after next Wednesday they’ll finally start to heal. That’s why you’re here, too, right?”

  “That’s exactly why I’m here,” I whisper.

  Just as my tears start to rise, he shrugs and says easily, “See? This arrangement represents an exact symmetry. We should be here together.”

  I laugh weakly. “That’s completely fucked up, Paul.”

  “Maybe,” he concedes, then he adds, “I really am hungry, now that you’ve got me thinking about food, and Vanessa didn’t get the email I didn’t send so there’s no food in the fridge.” Before I can even untangle that, he perks up and says, “We should go out for dinner.”