My heart fills in my chest at the memory of our sandwiches and cherry flavored drinks in paper cups, the best we could do. “You know,” I say, “I think that’s my favorite anniversary.”
“Mine, too,” he grins. “It was really simple then.”
“When did everything get so complicated, Ty?”
He shrugs, his face falling. “I don’t know. But it sure as shit did.”
The wedge that’s been between us starts to slice its way down, parting us in an invisible trench. Sometimes it makes me feel safe and I’m thankful for it. But now? I’m clamoring to make it go away.
“Ty?”
“Yeah?”
“What are we doing?”
His mouth falls, his eyes leaving mine and heading across the lake to some place, some memory, some thought I’m not privy to. He slips off the back of the truck and faces the lake for a long minute. When he turns to me, he’s resigned to a decision.
“I tell the boys on my team that we don’t quit,” he says, his tone steady. “I’m always reminding them that we set our eyes on a prize and we work our tails off until we get there. Regardless of how painful, even though it might hurt, we get to the finish line.”
“Sounds like good logic,” I say, swallowing a lump that’s suddenly lodged in my throat.
“It is. In theory. But I’m rethinking it now.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and squares his shoulders up to me. “Sometimes you have to let things go. Just because you start on a path, even if you’re balls-to-the-wall at first, doesn’t mean you should stay on it. It’s less quitting, I guess, and more adjusting. Moving on to the next thing you think you want.”
He knows I’m dying for him to expound, that I’m terrified that he means he’s decided my recent rhetoric is right. Even though that’s what I’ve asked him to do, I can’t bear to hear it come out of his mouth. He knows this, yet he doesn’t go on. He waits for me to respond.
With a voice shakier than I’d like, I give in. “What are you moving on from now?”
Slowly, inch-by-inch, the corner of his mouth upturns. With every movement, every flinch, my heartbeat picks up.
“I quit pretending like I don’t know what we’re doing,” he says. “I’ve tried to ease back into this because I think that’s what you want. I’ve slept on that fucking futon in Cord’s room with that stupid dog licking me in the face every morning long enough.” He smirks, cocking a brow. “Baby, I’m coming home. If you don’t like it, too damn bad.”
“Ty . . .”
“Don’t ‘Ty’ me,” he snickers, walking towards me. With each step, a flutter ripples through my belly. “All this shit will only make us stronger, like a scar that has healed over. That skin is stronger than the area around it. It’s been to war and won. That’s us.”
My heart skips a beat as he takes my hand.
“I won’t even bring this up five years from now and remind you how silly you were thinking you were going to divorce me. I’m yours, E. You’re mine. We are two people that get it right most of the time, but, on occasion, we fuck up. I’ll take full responsibility for causing this, but I’m also taking responsibility for ending it. Honesty, transparency from here on out, but there is a here on out, Elin, because I’m done living without you.”
Tears wet my eyes and I blink them back as quickly as they form. This is it—do or die. I either accept this and tell him my secret or I push back. And I know if I choose the latter, that might really be it.
“It’s not that simple,” I sniffle, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my shirt.
“Yeah, it is.”
I shake my head, my hair swishing around my shoulders. Looking into his face, his devilishly handsome features and silky hair, the face I love, I don’t know if I can tell him.
My heart shatters. The force of it shaking my body, my shoulders slumping forward. My lungs fill and empty of air more quickly than I mean to, and I suddenly can’t get enough oxygen despite the rate of my breathing.
Ty is touching me in a half a second, brushing my hair off my face and examining me for what’s wrong. He’ll never see it. You can’t see the scars I bear.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice tender. “Elin, you gotta talk to me.”
Lifting my chin, my teeth nearly chattering for fear or anticipation or a mixture of both, I can barely open my mouth to speak.
My words are going to slice him, tear him apart. And me all over again.
TY
My gut is a twisted, tense knot as I watch Elin come to grips with telling me whatever it is that’s been on her mind. I knew there was something. I could see it in her eyes when she’d start to laugh at something I said or find herself warming up to me before remembering whatever this is and scurrying away again.
I figured it was that she took another job or broke something of mine when I left—something small and stupid she thinks I’d be mad about. Right now, watching her go through the hoops of actually telling me makes me think this isn’t a broken fishing rod or misplaced playbook.
“Talk to me.”
“I can’t,” she says, the tears flowing steadily down her cheeks. She looks at me through the liquid filling her eyes. The sadness and fear is palpable.
“Hey,” I say, trying to soothe her. “You can talk to me about anything.”
“Not this.”
“Especially this,” I promise. “If something is bothering you this much, this is the thing you need to tell me. Trust me.”
She doesn’t move, doesn’t open her mouth, doesn’t attempt to spill the secret she’s holding safe.
I rest my hands on her knees, peering at her. “Regardless of what it is, we can work it out.”
Tears pool again as her eyes widen. “Ty . . .” she whispers, choking back a sob.
Pulling her head against my chest, I try to tell her with my body that I’m here. That I’m not going anywhere, despite what she has to say.
“We have to trust each other, lean on each other, communicate with each other. We’re no different than a team. We are a team,” I say. “If we don’t talk, if we sit the bench and refuse to play, we can’t win. And, Elin, baby,” I say, squeezing her for good measure, “if I don’t have you, there’s nothing to play for.”
Her cries soften, her back not shaking as badly as before. I hold her as the moon becomes bright above and the fireflies begin to light up around us.
“The fireflies are out,” I say. “Do you remember the time Jiggs caught a bunch and took off the glow part and put it in his hair?” I ask. The memory makes me chuckle and it’s not long before I can feel her ease too. “The fucker glowed all night. Your brother is such a weirdo.”
She pulls away and looks up at me in the way someone only can that knows you and your memories inside out.
“I believe you did that too,” she grins, drying her cheeks.
“I don’t remember that.”
“I’m sure you don’t, either from choice or from the whiskey,” she says, all out laughing now.
Stroking her cheek, I nearly beam at her turn-around. “There’s my girl.”
Her head rests against my palm and I place my other on the other side. Tilting her to look straight at me, I bend so we’re at eye-level. She tries to look away, but I won’t let her. Holding her head in place, I plant a gentle kiss to the middle of her lips. When I pull back, I see her wheels turning.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” she says, rubbing her eyes.
“Just open your mouth and say it and be done.”
When she pulls her hands away, the wateriness is back. Her gaze is heavy on mine, like she’s trying to tell me without words.
I can’t look away. Not that I want to, but if I did, I couldn’t.
“Ty,” she says before her voice breaks and the tears stream again. I don’t reach for her, not this time. I’m pinned in place, frozen to the spot on the ground just a foot or so in front of her. “I . . . I . . .” She presses her lips together, her face turning a warm shade
of pink. “I was pregnant. And I lost the baby.”
Everything stops.
Everything except the steady flow of tears down her beautiful, pink cheeks and the drop of my stomach into an abyss that’s more bottomless than I ever imagined.
I’m sure I misheard her, something about her miscarrying a baby? Does she mean the one we lost a few years ago?
Looking into her tear-stained face, I know that’s not the case.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“What?” I ask, taking a short step back in case I spew my dinner at her feet. “What did you say?”
She doesn’t answer me, but she doesn’t have to. The pained look on her face, the sadness that is smeared across her features, the devastation I can see plain as day written all over her tells me all I have to know. My hand shakes as I draw it over my eyes, trying to break the numbness settling over me.
“I . . .” Words are on the tip of my tongue, yet evade me. “When? How did I not know this?”
“I’m sorry,” she says before a full-blown sob breaks the night air.
Her cries are muffled as I press her against me, unable to do anything but hold her. Her agony rips from her body and into mine, shredding the fibers of my soul. It’s a slow, agonizing torture listening to her grieve for a child I didn’t know existed, a life I can’t yet bring myself to believe was real.
“I called to tell you . . .” she says into my shirt. “So many times. You didn’t answer.”
My mind spins like a top, trying to grab something to work from. “When did you find out?”
“A few days after you left. I went to the doctor because I thought I was having a nervous breakdown and found out that I had been pregnant.”
Coughing back the vomit that creeps up my throat, I squeeze my eyes shut.
“I’m sorry,” she cries again, her word as broken as my heart. “I’m so sorry, Ty.”
“My God, Elin. Don’t apologize,” I scoff, fighting back the first set of tears I’ve felt since my father passed away.
Her hands twist in my shirt, her knuckles pressing into my back. They shake as she unfurls the suffering she’s been holding in.
Kissing the top of her head, I take a deep breath and try to calm my nerves. “I don’t know what to say.”
She places a single kiss to my sternum before letting me go. Her face is streaked with mascara, her lips swollen. “There’s nothing for you to say, nothing you can say. I lost the baby. I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry!” I say gruffly, my throat clenching shut. “Damn it, Elin. This is not your fault.” I pace a circle, my sneakers stomping against the brown grass. “I just . . . I should’ve fucking been there for you. Damn it!”
“I needed you.”
My mouth opens in an attempt to respond, but nothing comes out. They say the truth hurts. That’s not true. The truth blisters, and I feel it in every cell in my body.
“There’s nothing I can say right now that will tell you how sorry I am,” I choke out. “I should’ve been there for you.” I look at her stomach.
Would it have been different had I stayed? Did I cause this? If so . . .
“I needed you so much, prayed so hard you’d come home and help me,” she whimpers. “I was so scared, and I just felt like I’d failed. First I couldn’t get pregnant, and then I couldn’t keep it. I was so scared.” Her words are cut with an agony I’ve never heard before, a sound I’d give anything to make go away.
“No,” I insist, shaking my head. “Don’t go there. Don’t even go there, Elin.”
Tugging at my hair, feeling the pull of my roots stinging as they rip away from my scalp, devastation hits me full-force.
“If I’d known, I would’ve been here. I swear to God I would’ve.” I bite back a surge of emotions I can’t explain. “Were you alone?”
“I had Lindsay,” she whispers. “I was just dealing with this, sitting on the bed with Lindsay and feeling . . . ripped apart, I guess. Destroyed. As time went on, I got madder at you for not being there. All the sadness just consumed me, Ty. I was so—I am so—angry. Bitter, even.”
My hand finds her shoulder and I pull her into me before she can fight it. “I can’t handle the idea that you experienced that without me.”
“Me either,” she breathes. “I don’t know if I ever will. It’s like this entire process is now stained, every piece of it just another terrible memory.”
“I get that,” I say softly, “I do. But it’s not a good enough reason to end us.”
She nuzzles into my chest, her arms clasping around my waist. “You had a right to know, and I was wrong for not telling you.”
“You should’ve given me a chance to come home. To help you. To . . . go through this with you.”
“I didn’t want you to come home because of a tragedy. I never want to be that girl, the one the guy stays with out of pity. If you didn’t want me . . .”
I grab her shoulders and look her squarely in the eye. “I have wanted you since the moment I saw you at your locker in eighth grade. From the moment I asked if you had any gum because I wanted to hear the voice of the girl that took my breath away. I’ve wanted you since that exact second, and I’ve never stopped.”
An image of what that must’ve looked like, what she must’ve felt like, what she must’ve gone through, rumbles through my mind. Abandoned by me, losing a child she didn’t even know she had.
If only I’d stayed.
A humiliation as deep as I’ve ever known swamps me. “I’m sorry,” I say as the unfamiliar feeling of tears dropping past my lashes begins. It’s like a dam—once it’s breached, it’s uncontrollable.
My body shakes against her as I cry for being a failure. I cry for the loss of a child I didn’t know existed, for not being there for my best friend at the one time of her life she needed me more than ever.
I cry for not paying attention at work, letting myself get lazy and not watching the beam that fell on me and smashing my leg. I cry for my weakness of needing the pills to feel better and not rehabbing it, working harder at it, and needing an easy way out.
I cry for all those things for a long time. Elin holds me, our roles reversed, as she, the victim, becomes the strong one. And that makes me feel even fucking worse.
When I look at her again, she smiles in a way that shows what she would’ve looked like as a mother. It’s the way she looks when she talks about her students, about Dustin when he got into trouble, the way she looked when she called 911 when she found a baby deer struck by a car on the side of the road as a teenager.
“Now you know,” she whispers, rubbing her thumb against my lips.
“This is why you’ve been pushing me away?”
She nods as we reach for each other, the only other person that feels the pain we do, the only other person that can heal us from that very hurt.
The chill in the air dances across my bare skin and I shiver as my body comes down from the adrenaline.
“You ready to go?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Ty?”
“Yeah?”
She reaches for me with a shaky hand. “Will you kiss me?”
In the midst of the fireflies, under the bright fall moon, I kiss my wife with everything I have.
TY
I take my eyes off the road just long enough to glance at her sleeping beside me, her head resting on my shoulder. I just look at her face and think back to what this little pit bull, as Cord calls her, has been through. Alone. It’s enough to break the strongest man.
My teeth ache from being ground against one another in order to keep from going crazy. I need to yell, need to vent, need to make something feel the pain I feel.
She stirs beside me as I pull into the driveway. Killing the engine, I sit and try to gather my thoughts.
The only sound is her faint breathing, and while I want to talk to her, apologize, try to find some comfort in her, I’m glad for the quiet. It’s like a bubble in the truck, she and
I insulated from the world.
Elin loves me. And for that, I’m the luckiest fucker on the face of the planet. And that she still loves me after all of this? It’s a blessing I can’t fathom, but one I won’t fail to acknowledge every day for the rest of my life.
Scooting my seat back to the farthest position, I pull her onto my lap. She curls up against me, her arms going around my neck and her head against my shoulder. I kiss her forehead before opening the door and carrying her towards the house.
“What’s going on?” she asks sleepily as I push the back door open, the squeaking waking her. “Where are we?”
“Home,” I say, kicking the door closed behind us.
“I can walk.”
“Shh,” I whisper, finding my way through the darkness like the back of my hand. “Let me carry you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t. I want to. Let me, please.”
“Okay,” she says softly, her cheek finding my chest again.
Padding down the hallway, I enter our bedroom. The moonlight streams through the window, giving me enough light to see our bed. The blue sheets are her favorite, the cream comforter in a messy heap at the bottom. She never makes the bed and seeing it like that, the same as always, makes me smile.
I lay her against the sheets. She smiles up at me, a soft, knowing smile, and kicks off her shoes and socks. “Grab your t-shirt off the dresser, please,” she asks, wiggling out of her jeans. I grab the shirt and turn back to face her and she’s sitting naked on the center of the bed.
I should say something—compliment her body or tell her how beautiful she looks, but with the truths of the night, it all seems wrong. I don’t know what to say. Maybe she’s right and there is nothing to say.
“Shirt?” she asks, holding out her hand.
Tossing her the shirt, she slips it over her head and slithers down in the blankets.
Her hair spilling against the sheets, she peers up at me. Propping herself up on her elbows, we stare at each other, a husband and a wife trying to find the steps to a dance that once came so naturally.
Written in the Scars Page 15