by K. A. Berg
Brooke’s name flashed on my phone screen. I sat alone in my empty house the next day packing a bag to head out for a trip to meet with our new clients. Last night, my boss informed me that I was being promoted from consultant to senior consultant. We were heading to Florida for three days to meet with our new client, see their business plans, discuss policy options and rates.
Being bumped up to senior consultant and spear-heading this new client with Barry was a massive accomplishment for me.
One that could be overshadowed by the news of this call.
My heart hammered in my chest. I knew what this call was for. I’d anxiously been waiting for it. I just didn’t know if I could handle the results. Logically, my brain kept telling me I knew she was on the pill, she took the morning after pill, and it was just a week ago tonight. She couldn’t be pregnant with my child even if she was. Right?
I wanted nothing more than to turn to Natalie and confirm my thought process, but she wasn’t here. My teeth gnashed together remembering how alone I was in dealing with this. Anger rose up from my gut, but it was squashed back down when the phone vibrating in my hand took over my focus.
A buzzing filled my ears as I answered the call. “Hello?”
“Hi, Matteo.” Brooke’s voice was light and airy, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Thank god she was great throughout this whole thing. The situation could have been a thousand times worse with someone else.
I swallowed the lump in my throat down. “How are you?”
“I’m all right,” she replied. “I just wanted to let you know I started my period this morning. We don’t have anything to worry about.”
A numbness surged through my body. It was as though I was feeling so much leading up to that news that it all shut off as soon as I had my answer.
Relief was euphoric. The chains of uncertainty and purgatory released their hold on me. All I wanted to do was turn to my wife, tell her the good news, and pull her into my arms. As bizarre as it sounded, this was a moment I wanted to share with her. We could move forward without any tethering to our disastrous night.
Except she wasn’t here. I loved her unconditionally, and the longer I didn’t feel that in return, the angrier I got.
No. I wasn’t angry. I was downright furious with her. It was time she heard how I felt.
The next morning, I stomped up to Penelope’s door and knocked. I didn’t give any thought to the hour. It wasn’t early exactly, but if Penelope had just gotten home from work this morning, she was about to be woken up.
For a moment, I thought about coming over here last night, but I was mentally exhausted. I didn’t want to confront Natalie tired and angry. I had a lot to say and I didn’t want to do or say something I’d regret.
The hushed whispering behind the door brought all that fury right back to the surface.
“Tell him I’m not here. Tell him I already left for work.”
“I’m not lying to him.” Penelope hissed.
I cleared my throat. “I can hear you. Natalie, open this damn door.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Natalie
My heart sank as Matteo called out on the other side of the door. It was eight in the morning, and this early of a visit was the last thing I expected.
“What is wrong with you?” Pen chided as she looked from the door to me with disappointment painted across her face. “I’m not lying for you. Stop hiding here and fix your marriage. I would have killed to have Kevin care about fixing our relationship the way Matteo wants to work through your problems.”
She opened the door and revealed an agitated Matteo. “Come in.”
Her eyes bounced between us. “I’ll be in the kitchen.” She gave me a pointed look before leaving me standing in front of my irate husband.
Why did seeing him angry make me defensive?
My guard shot up, and I hated it. Matteo had always been my safe place, not somewhere full of unease and shame.
He cleared his throat. “I spoke to Brooke last night.”
Her name sent my stomach to the floor next to my feet.
“She started her period. We have no pregnancy to be concerned about.”
The anger in his voice was a contrast to the flood of emotions soaring through me. Relief. Exhaustion. Maybe a bit of anger, and something else I couldn’t quite identify. Incredulousness, perhaps.
“Why do you sound so angry about that?”
His fists clenched at his sides and his nostrils flared. “I’m pissed because when I could finally breathe again, when I could feel my shoulders relaxing, when I finally felt a fraction of anything positive in a week, the only person who matters wasn’t there with me. I sat there alone, again. When I really needed you.”
It didn’t matter whether or not he was right, my sensible side had taken leave and my mouth just started running. “And I’m still trying to figure out how the hell our perfect marriage got here—with my husband being relieved he didn’t get another woman pregnant.”
He grunted and stepped forward, forcing me toward the living room. “Jesus Christ, Natalie. How we got here doesn’t matter! You’re hurt. You’re upset. You’re angry. I get it. But there are two of us in this situation, in case you’ve forgotten. How I feel matters, too, damn it. Stop only thinking about yourself here and letting your feelings cloud your judgment. You’re starting to really piss me off.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but it was too late. Matteo stopped me. “You had your chance to talk. I’ve been begging you to speak to me for eight fucking days. I’ve always bent over backward to make you happy because I love you. I’ve listened to you say that you can’t. You can’t talk. You can’t be around me. Can’t look at me. All while you ignore the fact that, each time you say it, it cuts me open and I’m bleeding out over here. I’m barely holding it together, so now you are going to listen to me.”
His words were laced with pain and the guilt flickered in my heart a bit. “I need you to stop playing the victim and be my wife. Be my best friend. Be my support. From the moment you reminded me that we were careless, and a child was a possibility, you’ve placed all the blame on me. I was the one held responsible. I had to discuss birth control and STIs with a woman who I’d met when I was drunk the night before. You stuck your head in the sand and left me hanging out to dry.”
“I’ve been alone in this too.”
He took another step closer. His stubble had grown out, giving him a very rugged look even in his slacks and collared shirt. “That’s been your choice. Because you don’t want to admit your mistakes and accept the accountability. I’ve owned mine. You haven’t. You’re upset and mad about mixing our worlds, but you’re the one who did the mixing. I didn’t invite that woman home with us. I followed all of your cues, let things play out how you wanted them to. I didn’t hear any objections from you at any point. Yes, I forgot the condom, but so did you. There were three adults in that room, and no one thought about protection.”
I knew that. I’d run this through my head so many times. If I did this, that that wouldn’t have happened. If I’d made better choices. If I’d acted like a regular wife and mother, this wouldn’t have happened and my marriage wouldn’t be on the line with a love child potentially waiting in the wings.
Matt was right, but that didn’t mean I was wrong. I had the right to be hurt and sad. But there was no longer a chance of my nightmare coming true, so what happened next? “I don’t know where to go from here.”
“Where exactly is here, Natalie?”
The huff drew from my lungs involuntarily. “Here is feeling so far from my husband we might as well be on different continents instead of standing next to each other. Here is seeing images of my husband having sex with another woman whenever I close my eyes. Here is me staying with my friend because I don’t know if I can step foot in my bedroom without seeing it all again.”
There was a lot in that statement. Before I could even try to unpack it all, it was spilling from my lips. Matteo wasn�
��t going to let any of that go.
His arms stretched over his chest as he crossed them. “What if something like this had happened with Adam? How would you feel if the situation were reversed, and I left you to deal with that all on your own?”
I shook my head, trying to ignore that Pen, who was no doubt listening from the kitchen, had just been inadvertently told that I’d slept with Adam. “I don’t know.” I shrugged, not wanting to admit I wouldn’t like it. “But we didn’t have to worry about this with Adam.”
“And you’ll never have to think about it because I took care of it ahead of time,” he reminded me. “Adam and I discussed how the night would go. That night with Brooke wasn’t planned.”
Heat rose up my neck. My face felt flushed. “So, what you’re saying is that it’s all my fault because I was the one who said we didn’t have to plan everything out and we could go with the flow? Is that what you’re saying?”
He shook his head as my frustration reached an all-time high. “What I’m saying is that I don’t think there should be any blame at all. We should be working on learning a valuable lesson and putting it in the past.” He ran his hand through his hair. “At first, I was okay accepting your anger because I felt like I’d wronged you. But did I really? I made a mistake and was dealing with one of the most potentially life-altering situations I’d ever had to deal with, and I was doing it alone. Without my wife, without my best friend, without my partner. Did you ever stop to think about what I was coping with this week while you holed up at Penelope’s? No, you didn’t. I needed you to stand by my side, and you didn’t. You left. Where was my understanding and support when I needed it?”
My lips parted, my mouth opened, but nothing came out.
Matteo sighed, defeat overtaking his rigidness. “You need to work toward letting me down from the cross, Nat. I’ve owned my lapse in judgment. I’ve told you how I feel. It’s your turn to acknowledge those feelings instead of dismissing or invalidating them with your own shit. I know you were scared. I know that you think that our two worlds mixed, but there were never two different worlds. It’s all one life, and when you can finally see that, maybe you’ll see the destruction happening. Don’t ruin our marriage over one mistake.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. Matt’s hand twitched as if he wanted to wipe it away, but he didn’t come any closer to me. “We’re supposed to work as a team to find a solution. Let me know when you’re ready to do that. Maybe when I get back from Florida, you’ll be ready to be the woman I love again. ”
Wait, what? “You’re going to Florida?”
“Oh, yeah, by the way, I received a promotion to senior consultant two days ago.” His jaw clenched as I tried to digest his words. Promotion. “I head out in two hours to meet with a new client. Thanks for being there to celebrate with me. I’ve only been waiting for this for years.”
He was leaving town. He finally climbed his way to the position he’d wanted for two years. “Senior consultant?” I asked as he took a few steps back toward the front door. He just nodded, his back to me as he grabbed the knob. “How long will you be gone?”
“A couple of days,” he replied as he opened the door. When he turned backed to me, his eyes seemed haunted and despondent. “I’ll give you a call when I return. Maybe then we can start to act like we’re a married couple who loves each other again.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Natalie
I’d been trying to make sense of the kaleidoscope of random thoughts and dichotomous emotions swirling inside me since Matteo left that morning. Everything I thought and felt kept butting together, making a bigger mess.
My mind was a muddled sea of confusion, and I had no one to help me work through it. No one could work through this jungle of a mess but me.
Stress, anxiety, fear, panic, and anger. I’d felt them all for the last week. Mostly at the same time. But they had become amplified to a whole other degree.
I’d never seen Matt the way I did earlier. He was callous and enraged. All I wanted was to be overjoyed. He had a new, well-deserved title. There was no longer a threat with Brooke.
Except, I couldn’t process his words or rejoice in the baby that is no longer a possibility. Everything swan around in my head distorted and chaotically. I needed to make it all stop before I went insane. My job was the only thing keeping me grounded lately, so I threw myself into it. Work had become my safe haven, and that was where my attention needed to be today.
I didn’t even mind when Bastien lost his mind over his brushes or his wobbly easel or his paint colors being wrong. He spent an hour ranting about orange, and I was right there next to him, hanging on his every outlandish accusation about the supplier and sympathetically nodding my agreement when he decided it must be someone breaking in and switching his paints to sabotage his work. Focusing on someone else’s issues was far easier than dealing with my own.
The paranoia was new for Bastien, but I rolled with it until Annetta stepped in and started yelling at him in French.
He stopped complaining after that.
A text came through from Penelope.
Penelope: Bateau 7:00pm. Dinner isn’t optional. Norah and I will meet you there.
I knew immediately that they were staging an intervention of some kind. No way was Pen staying quiet after hearing everything that happened with Matt this morning.
My palms were sweaty when I parked at the curb and fed the meter. The day has started to catch up with me and I was exhausted. Even my hair hurt. Between Matteo, Bastien, the screaming in French, and my own subconscious, I felt as though I’d been through war. Battle after battle. I didn’t know if I had another one in me for Pen and Norah.
Norah was waiting for me in the lobby when I arrived. She linked her arm through mine and guided me to the table. “Pen already ordered us some wine.”
“Thank god.” I breathed a sigh of small relief.
Norah looked me over with sad eyes. She was never one to hold back the truth. “You look worn thin, babe.”
“I feel thin,” I said as we joined Pen in the booth. “I feel like I am living in this . . . this . . .” I struggled for a way to put it all into words. “Cloud? Fog? As if I’m running in place and can’t move.”
As Norah and I slid into the booth, the waiter arrived with three glasses of red wine. “Can you bring over a whole bottle?” I asked, knowing we were going to need it. Or at least I was. He nodded and walked away just as I realized that I couldn’t actually drink the entire bottle because my car was here and calling my husband for a ride wasn’t an option. I couldn’t ask him to come get me or have him bring me here in the morning. God, that was so symbolic of the current state of our marriage—in two totally different places, literally and metaphorically. That thought stung deep.
Sliding the one glass I’d be allowed to have closer, I began to ramble and couldn’t stop. “It’s taking so much energy for me to try to keep my shit together. I’m mad. I’m sad. I’m hurt. I’m lonely. I miss him, but I still can’t look at him the same.”
“It’s okay to feel all those things.” Norah comments as she passes me a menu. “You are allowed to be all those things. What isn’t okay is living in them. You need to move through them.”
“After this morning,” I tell her. “I think it’s clear that I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know why his anger pisses me off and makes my guard go up. I don’t know why he can’t see how hard this is for me. That I couldn’t just hold his hand and say that everything will be okay while we wait for word on his role of baby-daddy. I couldn’t.”
My chest heaved a bit when I finished. I didn’t mean to say all that, but it just came spilling out, and I couldn’t stop.
Our waitress arrived a minute later just as Penelope was about to say something. We ordered our meals and then Pen picked right back up. There were no pleasantries today. We dived headfirst right in.
“Have you spoken with Matteo since this morning?” she asked and leaned forward for a piec
e of bread from the basket on the table.
My teeth gritted together at her tone. “He texted to tell me he landed in Florida.”
She shook her head. “A lot happened this morning, and you guys leaving it like that, letting things fester seems like a really bad idea. You can’t ignore it and expect it to heal.”
“I’m not ignoring it. I wish I could. It’s all that I can think about.”
Pen took a bite of bread, so Norah jumped in. “You can take this however you want, but I’ve been biting my tongue for a few days and just can’t do it anymore.”
I drained my glass, knowing whatever she was going to say was going to piss me off. God, I didn’t think I was going to make it through dinner without another glass.
Norah slid her wine over to me. “We came together, I’ll drive your car home.”
Finally, something going my way. I grip the stem of her glass, bracing for her words. “Thank you.”
She nodded. “I don’t think the punishment fits the crime. I don’t even think there was a crime. Things got out of control, and I can’t really imagine how you felt that morning. I also can’t figure out why you keep shutting out Matteo as if he’d done something wrong.”
“He—”
She held her hand up. “No. I’m not done yet. I get being upset about the situation, but it wasn’t as if you walked in on him with his mistress. There was nothing nefarious going on. He didn’t get drunk and bring some random woman home alone. From what you’ve told me, it wasn’t even his idea. So, why have you iced him out?”