by Emily Nealis
“I distinctly remember waking up early one day, sitting on my couch with a cup of coffee, and thinking to myself, this is not my life. This is not where I want to be. I don’t want this. So, after I found out I wasn’t pregnant, I decided that I wasn’t going to waste my time anymore. I lost a lot of my friends there when I ended things and left so abruptly. A lot of people thought I was this horrible, selfish bitch who deserted him without so much as a word. But no one knows what goes on behind closed doors. We stopped speaking the same language a long time ago.”
“Did you ever want to go back or wonder if you made the right decision?” From the way he asked this question, I felt like Adam was sizing me up. I got the feeling he wasn’t used to dealing with people who made major decisions based on hard logic. But this was normal to me. I wasn’t and still am not the kind of person who can only pretend to be happy. Adam would come to realize this unwavering fact about me later in our relationship.
“No.” I shook my head, “That’s why I let him tell people his side of what happened, which I’m sure was very different from mine. I didn’t fight with him or try to convince anyone who was right or wrong. My friends were still my friends afterward and those who weren’t…just weren’t.” I rubbed my fingers together, brushing crumbs onto an empty plate, “I try not to judge other people’s relationships for the same reason—there are a lot of things other people never see and things no one talks about outside of their home. But it’s over and I have a new life now.” After I stopped speaking, Adam sat back in his chair, tapping his fingertips lightly on the table top.
“People always think they know what a relationship is like. But like you said, no one knows the whole story. After a while, you either grow together or grow apart.”
“But you and Haley seem to have grown together, after this long.” I placed my silverware on the empty plate in front of me and scooted it to the far side of the table. Adam paused, nodding slowly, the corners of his mouth curling.
“Haley and I have definitely been through a lot. We only reconnected after I got out of the Army and moved back here. But it was complicated at first. Her parents straight up hated my guts—they had ever since we were in high school. She ended up not speaking to them until our first daughter was born.”
“Oh?”
“Even after being away in the Army, they were convinced I’d end up in jail because of how wild I was when we were younger. They thought I was a bad influence, taking away their goody-two-shoes daughter and ruining her life. She came home from college one weekend and got in a huge fight with her parents. They told her I wasn’t welcome in their house and they didn’t want her seeing me anymore. I got this phone call from Haley telling me to come over because she needed help moving out. I didn’t know until I got there that she was moving in with me.” He laughed, “The next day, we decided if we were moving in together, then we should just get married.”
“Wow,” I stared at him for a few moments, “You sound like a damn romance novel.” Adam laughed, clasping his hands over his face. I rested my head in my palm, chuckling at the obvious cliché of his and Haley’s wedding story—ripe with forbidden love, an explosive argument, and dramatic escape to run off and get married. Adam gazed back at me, shaking his head, “Yeah, I deserved that one.”
“It seems to have worked out though. Looks like you have a pretty good setup now.”
“It can still be complicated.” Adam hesitated, as if he was deciding to continue, “After we got married, Haley quit school and didn’t go back. She’s never actually said she wished she’d gone back, but I feel responsible for her in a way because I’m the reason she didn’t finish. When I was in school and beginning my career, I used to get so frustrated that she couldn’t find something she liked to do. There was no plan for her future. It was more of a problem before, when we just started having babies and didn’t have a lot of money.”
“I assume things improved with time, though?”
Adam shrugged in response.
“Overall, yes. But there were a couple of times we almost split up. Haley holds grudges. She’s just like her mom. You know when Haley told her she was pregnant with June, her mom asked her if she was going to keep it? And that’s a devout Catholic who asked her daughter if she was going to abort her baby just because it was mine.”
I raised my eyebrows and sat back, not speaking. These were people I could not relate to, so in a sense, I understood Adam’s disdain for his wife’s family in the early days of their marriage. Adam took another drink of water before continuing.
“But Haley pulls that shit too. Before our second daughter was born, we were fighting all the time. Ugly fights too—saying terrible things to each other. She’d miscarried a couple of times before she finally got pregnant with Vivian. One night we were going at it and finally she said she was glad she lost those babies because she hated me so much.”
I sat in silence for a moment. Right then, I learned something about Adam. He recalled these events with ease, willing to show how he had traversed the dark side of his marriage. However, I couldn’t claim to possess the same kind of pride that made him stay and work through his problems with his wife.
“That’s dirty.” I finally said, after considering his recollection of these events.
“Like I said, she’s just like her mom, but she would never admit that. I wouldn’t have cared otherwise because we’ve had a million arguments about a million different things, but don’t bring our kids into it. They don’t deserve that.” Adam shook his head, squinting his eyes in frustration. I squeezed another lemon wedge into my water, dropping the rind in with the ice. After a few moments, Adam’s face relaxed and he gazed off to the side in contemplation.
“One time, I guess it was a few months after that, we had another fight. I don’t even remember what it was about,” He continued, “I was so mad, I had to leave the house to get some air. I walked about a mile and ended up at my old middle school. Granted, it wasn’t the best part of town, but I’d lived in that area all my life. I walked back to the soccer fields behind the school and while I was walking the perimeter, I ran into some guy. He looked my age, maybe younger, and he acted like he was going to mug me. But he sounded kind of off, like he was on drugs or something—acting paranoid, twitching, and talking a mile a minute. I told him to get out of my way because I wasn’t in the mood to deal with him. He grabbed me when I tried to walk past him, and I just lost it. I completely snapped and swung at him just to get him away from me. We ended up in an all-out brawl. Suddenly, he was on top of me and pulled a knife. I was trying to get it away from him, but he got me a couple of times through my shirt, enough to make me bleed like hell. I started grabbing for whatever I could and ended up finding a rock and smashing him across the head with it. It finally stunned him enough to let me go and I hit him a couple more times and knocked him out before making a run for it. I don’t know what ever happened to him, though. That really messed me up—not knowing if I killed someone or not. I went back home, covered in blood, and decided to change. I got help, went to anger management, all that. By that time, I was a dad, so I had to put all that behind me and figure out another way to deal with my anger.”
I should have been put off that we were discussing assault and possible manslaughter over lunch at a Chinese restaurant, but I listened to him as a therapist would. I nodded and considered his words. I’d never been in such a terrifying situation, so who was I to pass judgement? If it helped him to sit across from me at that table and process his feelings from years and years ago, then so be it.
“I can’t imagine,” I stared across the table, “That’s intense.”
Adam nodded with a shrug.
“Something good came out of it, I guess. Finally dealing with all my issues improved every aspect of my life,” He smiled, “It also helped that we ended up moving out to the farm. Haley was so excited when I told her I wanted to move everyone out to the farm. Even though it was just the next county over, we were essentially movi
ng out of town, so it didn’t make sense for her to stay at her job anyway. I’d always been the primary provider, but I think she interpreted the move as a reason for her to stop working indefinitely. Now, she doesn’t do shit.”
“It didn’t sound like you minded it. You seem like the kind of person who would take pride in that—providing for your family and whatnot.”
“No, you’re right.” Adam paused and glanced down at the table, a grin creeping across his face, “Holidays and birthdays are a riot, though—I get gifts and I’m basically surprising myself with things bought with my own money.” He laughed, “But like I said, I feel responsible for her. She’s a hard worker in general, but I don’t think she’s ever found anything that motivates her in the professional sense. I really want to help her get sustainable so that she’s not just relying on my income.”
“What do you mean by sustainable?” I chewed my straw between sips of water.
“I want her to have her own income so she can support herself.”
“Does she need to support herself?” I wasn’t sure where he was going with that statement. It sounded like he was veering off into a new topic—one which had much more significant implications than family budgets and birthday presents.
“Not at the moment.” Adam paused, gazing out the window into the fields across the road, sliding his water glass back at forth with his palm, “Sometimes I think the only reason I’ve stayed with her is so I wouldn’t feel guilty if I left. If I did, she’d still need my income to survive. She couldn’t take care of our kids without it.”
“You stay because, if not, you would still be financially responsible for Haley anyway?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Do you want to leave her?”
“I have at times. She hasn’t done anything wrong—she’s a great wife and mother. That’s why I feel guilty about it, there’s no reason to leave her. But a few months ago, things started going south again. Last fall, I didn’t sleep in our bedroom for weeks. We just started to fight all the time again. After a while, I told her I didn’t know if I loved her anymore. We were just living together and raising our kids. At the beginning of the year, I decided to cut back on work. I was working almost 80 hours a week and stressed all the time, which probably made things worse. I decided I needed to pay more attention to my family and that we needed to spend more time with the girls. We used to go camping a lot, things like that, so we decided to start doing things like that again. It was perfect.”
“But it doesn’t sound so perfect anymore.”
“The place is still perfect, and things between Haley and I are good. I love spending time with her and the girls, but it’s different.” Adam paused, glancing away, in thought, “I would never blame my girls for our problems or anything else. They’re the two most important people in the world. But if Haley and I hadn’t had kids, her stuff would’ve been out on the lawn a long time ago.” We sat in silence for a few moments, as though Adam were reflecting on what he’d just said. He said his relationship was good, but in the next sentence, directly contradicted his first. I sat back, looking at him, waiting for something to happen.
Had I been speaking to anyone else and they made the same confessions, I might have quickly exited and avoided seeing them ever again. But I let Adam vent, oddly fascinated with the strange dichotomy of his marriage. Having lunch with Adam Hunt was anything but normal. He discussed his life with me in the most rational of ways, stating opinions and recalling facts with the utmost tranquility. Adam spoke of inflammatory circumstances with nonchalance. For a moment, I felt sympathy for him as he guided me through the emotional rollercoaster of his life. This didn’t feel like a friendship, it felt much deeper. I had become someone he confided in, someone who kept his secrets.
“Well, clearly, you’re still here.”
“Yeah,” Adam gazed around the room, before letting his eyes settle on me, “I’m still here.” I realized the alternate interpretation of my words too late, but I didn’t bother clarifying. I can’t lie, I liked sitting at that table with him just as much as I liked the way he looked at me and the way he spoke to me, as if we’d known each other for much longer than just a couple of days. I respected his straight-forward nature, which so many other people lacked. I dug my wallet out of my bag, but before I could open it, Adam reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled a twenty and a ten out of his wallet.
“I appreciate that you’re not a judgmental person,” He tossed the bills onto the check that had been sitting on the edge of the table for nearly an hour, “I’ve enjoyed talking to you more than anyone else I’ve ever met.”
“Why are you so interested, anyway? You hardly know me.” This wasn’t a question of my own character, but rather an attempt to understand the catalyst that created our relationship. Adam’s sudden and unexpected presence in my life was unlike anything else I’d experienced, and my curiosity as to why it existed was consuming me.
Suddenly, the table vibrated as the screen of Adam’s phone lit up, notifying him of a new message. He picked up the phone, looked at it for a moment, and set it back down on the table.
“I don’t know,” He responded the first of many times I asked in the future, “There’s just something about you I can’t get enough of. And that’s not true—I know a lot about you. You love your job, like I do, but you’re not a workaholic. You love old horror movies and you’re the first person I’ve met who loves books about disease. We both have family from the same county in eastern Kentucky. Just from talking to you about your job, you’re one of the smartest people I know. You don’t judge people because you’ve also been through tough situations, so I don’t think you’re afraid of much.” I accepted his response because I had no other explanation to argue. I shrugged, dropping my wallet back into my bag.
“I don’t have any room to judge anyone else. Everyone has their own reasons for doing what they do. I realize there are two sides to every story, so I try to be objective. Everyone has a past.”
At that, Adam stood up and extended his hand to me to help me up. I took his hand briefly, letting go as I moved around the table and stepped in front of him to walk through the empty restaurant. He walked behind me, his hand resting on the middle of my back, the same way he did while walking to my vehicle on Friday night.
We left Golden Dragon three hours after we’d arrived. We walked side by side toward our vehicles, the last ones in the parking lot after the lunch rush. I squinted as we emerged from the double wood doors after spending the last few hours tucked away in the dim lighting and dark cherry accents of the restaurant. The clouds cleared while we were inside to reveal a blinding blue sky. Adam followed me to my driver’s side door. He reached for the handle as I unlocked the door. Before he could open it, I turned around to face him.
“You know—I almost drove home and didn’t come here.” He smiled as though it was a compliment. By that time, I started to notice how any indication of doubt on my part entertained him—just like the first night I met him and just like on Friday when I questioned his assertion that he wanted to see me again.
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t.” He tugged on the door handle and opened my vehicle door. “When do I get to see you again?” He asked yet again. And yet again, I had no response, having only thought as far ahead as lunch that day. In a way, I felt like I was in a perpetual state of evaluating our affiliation to one another. I tossed my bag over the console into the passenger seat, considering how to respond. At that moment, I decided to stop evaluating.
“Do you drink coffee?”
“Always.”
“What time do you go to work?”
“I’m usually there by seven.”
“Me too. Do you want to meet at the Starbucks at Exit 9 tomorrow morning at six?” I asked, referring to the beltway around the city. I knew the coffee shop fell between our places of work and had a feeling he wouldn’t object.
“I’ll be there.” Adam nodded and raised an arm, stepping toward m
e. I wrapped my arms around his midsection, enveloped beneath his arm. I let go of him and stepped into my vehicle. He shut my door and smiled as I started the ignition.
“Thank you for lunch.” I pushed my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose and shifted into reverse. “Bye, Adam.”
“Bye, Diana.” He leaned against the passenger door of his truck, hands in his pockets, as though he had nowhere else to be but in that parking lot.
Driving down the highway toward home, it occurred to me that maintaining a relationship with Adam Hunt—friendship or otherwise—carried certain ethical and moral implications. Contrary to popular belief, I did question the ethics of interacting with Adam. I hesitate to mention any moral reservations because I didn’t have any. An ethical dilemma was navigating the grey area associated with me, a single woman, accepting invitations to spend time with Adam, a married man. I accepted that this was ethically questionable. However, I was not morally opposed to spending time with Adam Hunt. I was not romantically attached to anyone else and, at that point, I had no expectations regarding our association with one another.
That day, after lunch, I felt that there was more to him than the arrogant man I first met eight months ago, and I was going to find out who Adam Hunt was. I couldn’t have anticipated what I would find, but I had already compartmentalized our relationship to an acceptable degree. I couldn’t control him, and I didn’t want to. I lived my life and he lived his, whatever that entailed, and whatever he decided to do was his business. At the moment, I was a single woman coasting down the highway, windows down, jamming to Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. I glanced down at my phone as the text notification went off. Adam’s name flashed across the screen. Unsurprisingly, he was unable to stay away.
Haley
Every day, there is a list of things that need to be done, whether it’s the laundry or grocery shopping or tilling soil for the garden. Today was no different. The girls were at school, I completed my list ahead of schedule, and found myself able to relax on the porch, eating a leisurely lunch. Adam would have come home for lunch if his job site was nearby, but on this day he had a business meeting and couldn’t come home. It was a normal day, with a normal routine, and I relished the structure and predictability of each day. Some people can live in utter chaos, with no plan whatsoever. I’m not one of those people, even while raising children. I found this exceptionally difficult after Adam and I were first married. Then, of course, I made the uncharacteristic decision to abruptly leave school and immediately start a life with Adam—without a plan and without the rest of my family.