Hindsight

by Leddy Harper

  His lips went back to my neck and began to trail warmth along my collarbone and down toward my chest. I knew what he was doing, and I was appreciative that it wasn’t forced, but it didn’t keep the fear of what would happen next from surfacing.

  I gently placed my hands on the sides of his head and held him still. His eyes met mine, giving me a questioning stare. His almost black eyes, void of evil for the moment, studied my face as I tried to find the words, hoping this wouldn’t be the first Christmas he decided to be violent with me.

  “I’m on my period, Tony.” It was the truth.

  Tony hated to have sex while I was on my period. But that never stopped him from getting something from me. That was what I was worried about. I didn’t want that. It would have ruined my entire day. It would have blanketed my one good day with a sense of grief. I just wanted my one good day. I deserved that much!

  He looked up at me and gave me a small smile that was reminiscent of the old Tony… the one when he was courting me before we married. It calmed me slightly, but there was still the reminder in the back of my head that told me his smiles meant nothing.

  “That’s okay. I’m too excited to give you your gifts anyway. Come on; let’s get ready and head downstairs. My taste buds are dying for some eggnog.” He kissed me once more before jumping up from the bed and heading to the bathroom.

  This was when things became cloudy in my brain. I knew personally what a monster he was. I knew firsthand the things his fists and words could do to me. I didn’t have to remind myself of those things very often, he was good at reminding me himself. But then there were times like these. The moments that were so full of tender touches and loving words. They made me question everything I had come to believe about him. They were enough to convince me that maybe the man I had fallen in love with in that bread aisle so long ago hadn’t truly disappeared.

  I was at war with myself. One side screamed that he was evil, reminded me what he was capable of; not letting me forget about the information I had found out about the insurance and what that had meant. But then the other side told me a heart-wrenching story of a broken man, who underneath it all, loves me in the only way he knows how. And that man was Tony. I wanted to hate him, and honestly, most of the time I did. When he’d strike me, curse at me, belittle me, break me… those were the easiest times to hate him. But when he’d be soft, gentle, loving even… those were the times I doubted my hatred toward him. Those were the times I’d find myself battling with my own feelings.

  Christmas was that one day a year I was guaranteed to go into battle with my own feelings. It was always a good day, free from the fear of abuse. But it was also filled with turmoil because I knew it would only lead me to let my guard down, vulnerable to the next day’s offerings, when it was no longer Christmas.

  Tony was very tight-lipped when it came to his growing up years, but he had shared with me that he loved Christmas because his stepfather would leave to spend the holidays with his parents. This allowed Tony and his mother peace for one day out of the year. Tony and his mother were never invited and I never questioned why. I took that nugget of information and enjoyed the holiday, too. Just as Tony had been gifted the break from his abusive stepfather when he was young, I was now given the same gift.

  I followed him downstairs, poured us each a mug of eggnog from the fridge, and accompanied him on the loveseat across from the tree. The fireplace was roaring with life in the corner, filling the room with warmth and a sense of peace. It always took me a moment to adjust to the change. It wasn’t easy to go from fearing the man to loving him as quickly as it was for him to go from hating me to loving me. He never seemed to need any time to adjust. But for me, it took a good portion of the morning, spending most of the time faking it.

  I looked over at him when he took my hand in his, holding it in the warmth of his palm on top of his thigh. His dark eyes glistened with serenity—the complete opposite of the stormy swirls of anger that were usually present in them. He smiled and it reminded me of a boy, worried that his smile wouldn’t be returned by someone he loved. On Christmas, Tony was nothing but a boy, and I was nothing but the one he loved, the one he feared wouldn’t return his affection.

  So I did. I smiled back at him and watched his chest drop in relief. His breathing turned into short pants, as if the fear had been so heavy that the relief left him with the need to catch his breath. It softened me even more. I knew it would only take a few more moments like those to soften me enough to give him what he wanted. I also knew that my softness would only last a day before his hands would make me hard all over again. But I couldn’t think about that. I had to give him what he wanted. It was the only way I could have what I wanted.

  “Would you like your present now?” I asked, breaking the silence in the air.

  He shook his head, which surprised me. It wasn’t just his mannerisms on Christmas that mimicked those of a child, it was also his eagerness for what was wrapped beneath the tree.

  “I just want to sit here for a moment with you.”

  I must’ve given him a confused look because his grip on my hand tightened and his worried expression turned into one of concern. He let out a long sigh and turned his gaze to the fireplace.

  “We never know what the future holds. There’s a chance I won’t have this next year. I won’t have you next to me on Christmas morning next year.”

  I became even more confused. Did he know something? And if he did, was he admitting without so many words that he would let me go? Question after question filled my brain before they slipped off my tongue into the warm air that curled around us.

  “What are you saying, Tony? What is going to happen between now and then?”

  He looked back at me, staring contently at my lips. “That’s just it, Charlotte. We don’t know what will happen. There are bad people in this world, and I’ve defended a lot of them. I’ve seen the pictures of the victims, the ones of them after their lives have been taken in some of the worst ways imaginable. I’ve seen what some of the men I’ve defended can do. I worry all the time that one of them will come after you. It’s not like we’ve never had them knock down our front door. It’s happened before; what if it happens again?”

  “Is that what you fear?” I don’t know where the question came from or why I felt the need to ask, but the words rolled off my tongue before I had time to catch it. Before I had time to take it back. I didn’t want to know his answer.

  He only nodded slowly with the most solemn look on his face. I had never seen it before and it swallowed me whole. “I know I’m not a perfect man. I’m far from it. And I know I don’t deserve you. But my biggest fear in life is living without you. My second biggest fear is how that would happen. I fear I’ll come home one day and find you, looking like those pictures I’ve seen in court. I’m also just as scared that I’ll come home and you won’t be here, leaving behind nothing but a note explaining why you left. I know what I said. I know I told you I would give you a divorce after the trial, but I don’t want that, Char. I don’t want to live without you. I take it all back. Everything. Every pain I’ve caused you, every word I said out of anger, and the promise of letting you go. I don’t want that anymore.”

  Again, the battle raged on inside my head. One side argued that it was nothing more than another game. That it was an omen, an incomplete thought of his guilt. He had plans for me, and maybe the reality was hard for him to face, but he had plans nonetheless. And then the other side desperately wanted to believe and cried that he was genuine. The look in his eyes, the stillness of his body, and the warmth of his hand in mine proved that it was nothing more than an admission of fear. A valid fear at that. But it was a pointless war. Neither side would win until the truth came out.

  I had no words for him. There was nothing for me to say. It certainly wasn’t the time or place for me to admit my own fears. How they were similar to his, yet vastly different at the same time.

  “Let’s not do this, Tony. Not this morning. No
t today. It’s Christmas; let’s celebrate that instead. Let’s celebrate that you have me now, today.” The words that I thought would taste like acid on my tongue, flowed out and, to my surprise, felt as if they came from my heart. I knew that topic wouldn’t be revisited, but I couldn’t discuss it that morning.

  He reached his free hand up to my cheek and lightly grazed my jaw with his fingertips. His eyes never left mine until his eyelids closed, ever so softly, and he brought his lips to mine. It wasn’t a forceful or demanding kiss. It wasn’t even a passionate kiss. It was a kiss that seemed full of all the words he was incapable of saying to me for whatever reason. It told me of his love, even though it had been forever since he had actually uttered those words to me. It told me of his guilt, his remorse, his pain. But again, those are all things he’s never sincerely told me himself.

  I pulled away but kept my face close to his. “Want your present now?”

  Again, he shook his head. With a smile, he said, “No. I want you to have yours first.” And with that, he pulled away to gather my gift from beneath the tree. It was a smaller box wrapped in shiny gold paper. It was in the shape of a book and it made me wonder what he had gotten me. He usually bought me really nice presents for Christmas.

  I held it in my hands, weighing it as I mentally guessed what it could be. I wanted to drag it out, knowing I was only given a set amount of hours of peace. I didn’t want to rush it along. I wanted to bask in the tenderness and unspoken love Tony showed me.

  Tony had his hands on my knees as he waited for me to unwrap it, urging me with his intense stare. I could tell it was something he was excited for me to have. And because of that, I knew it wasn’t jewelry. He always gave me jewelry, and although they were nice pieces, they never meant much to me. I always tied it to the pieces he used to give me as apologies.

  I looked up into his black eyes and began to tear the paper at the edges of the box. I kept my gaze on him as he watched in childlike excitement as I opened the gift he was so eager for me to have.

  Once all the paper was removed from the box, I finally looked down to take the lid off. What was inside had stolen my breath from my lungs. It also quieted the negative voices in my head that screamed what a monster he was. Every voice in my head was sighing at the gesture that was undeniably the sweetest thing he had ever done.

  In a gold frame etched with swirls was a picture of him and me from our very first date. The day he found me in the grocery store and asked me to have lunch with him. I had followed him to a nearby park where we sat in the grass under a shade tree. We had two loaves of bread, one we used for sandwiches and one we used to feed the ducks.

  I remembered not wanting to leave but didn’t voice it. Tony, on the other hand, admitted it bravely aloud. I didn’t want to be too easy for him to catch, so I told him to take a picture to hold him over until the next time he saw me. I thought it would be of just me, but instead, he pulled my back to his chest and took a picture of the two of us.

  It had been so long since I last saw that picture. I wasn’t even aware that he had kept a copy of it. But there, in my hands, sat the glossy picture encased in a gorgeous gold frame. My heart soared. Then it flew even higher when I looked up into Tony’s eyes for the first time since seeing my gift.

  His eyes sparkled and he wore an insecure smile on his face. I had never seen that kind of smile playing on his lips before. I had seen the kind of smile from laughter, malice, and irony… but never one that left him looking so vulnerable and bare.

  “Do you like it?” he asked, lacking all the confidence I knew he possessed.

  I touched his face, feeling the prickly hairs beneath my palm that only served to enhance his looks. “I love it, Tony. It’s beautiful and unexpected. I didn’t know you still had this picture.” I wanted to lean in and kiss his lips. That yearning had shocked me since I couldn’t remember the last time I wanted to kiss him.

  “I’ve always had it. It reminds me of how we used to be. I swear that once this trial is over, I’m going to be him again. The man in the picture that was in love with you after just one glance in a grocery store, but couldn’t admit it to himself. I never believed in love at first sight until I saw you,” he confessed and it made my heart ache in my chest.

  “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  He didn’t answer me. Instead, he gave me that sad smile again and swept the shoulder-length hair tenderly away from my face, tucking it behind my ear. I leaned forward with my hand still caressing his cheek and laid the softest kiss on his dry lips.

  He never did say the words. With everything he confessed to me, not once did he tell me that he still loved me. I couldn’t argue, though. It was a step. At least in some way, it was a confession of love. And maybe with Tony, that was all I would get.

  “Now it’s my turn,” he said excitedly with a glint in his eyes. He was such a child and didn’t even wait until I grabbed the gift for him. He found it beneath the tree and tore into it immediately.

  He stared at it for a long time without saying a single word before looking back to me. There was no smile to his face, no twinkle in his eyes, and it worried me that the Christmas Tony was gone. That was until he lowered himself to his knees on the floor and crawled the few feet to me. He moved my gift out of my lap and positioned himself between my legs, reaching up to my face with both hands before capturing my mouth in a searing kiss that I felt in my toes. “Where it all began,” he whispered on my lips.

  My mind was seriously fucked up.

  After the gifts, we cleaned up the room and I began to prepare dinner. I was surprised to see him hanging around in the kitchen while I cooked. He normally sat in front of the television and watched the sports channel. But instead of leaving me to the food, he kept me company and assisted with various things.

  At around eight o’clock that night, after we ate, after we watched a few Christmas movies together in front of the fire, he got dressed and left the house. He told me he would be right back and kissed me on the lips before leaving. I knew where he was going. He was on his way to see Laurie. I wasn’t an idiot. Even with all of his sweet gestures and loving words, his attention and affection, he couldn’t ignore his mistress.

  The thought almost made me cry. But then I remembered Sean, feeling like a horrible person for forgetting about him until that moment. Tony had me so dizzy from his actions that I hadn’t thought about Sean at all. Sean, the only one that truly loved me. He loved me every day, not just on December twenty-fifth.

  I made a call and agreed to meet him at our place. We called it our place because it was where we’d meet up for a quick visit, when all we needed to do was see each other for a few minutes.

  I pulled into the parking lot of the office building several miles from my home that was abandoned on weekends and evenings. I panned the parking lot for Sean as I turned off my lights. Sean was already there, waiting for me. He climbed in the passenger seat of my car. His lips were immediately on mine and I recognized the difference between kisses instantly.

  Sean’s kisses were passionate, heated, fusing our lips together as if neither one could live without the breath of the other. They weren’t full of regret or remorse. They were full of promises of the future and undying love.

  We both knew that we couldn’t exchange gifts due to Tony. But that didn’t stop him. He placed a box in my lap and smiled deviously at me. I looked at him, wondering why he had gotten me something after we had agreed not to buy each other anything.

  “You won’t have to worry about explaining anything. Just tell him you bought it for yourself. Wait a few days and tell him you went shopping,” he explained.

  I opened it with caution, worried about what was inside. I worried more about how I would explain it to Tony than what it actually was. But once I saw it, I knew I had nothing to worry about. Sean had bought me a Kindle Fire. It wouldn’t be hard to explain that to Tony. He knew how much I loved to read and wouldn’t doubt it for a second if I told him I had gotten it for m
yself.

  “Thank you so much, Sean. But I don’t have anything for you.”

  “Leave Tony. That’s the only gift I want from you.”

  I huffed out a breath, exhausted from the same conversation with him. It was Christmas and I was having a good day. I didn’t want it muddled with the topic of leaving my husband. I only wanted to see him for a few minutes, kiss his lips, and tell him I love him. That’s all I wanted, not this conversation.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m not trying to start this again. I’m just letting you know what I want for Christmas. I want to start 2015 off with you. I want us to go into the new year together… just me and you. That’s all I want.”

  I touched his face and leaned forward, silencing his pleas with my lips, my tongue, and my love. I needed more time. I needed his patience. And I worried I wouldn’t get that from him. I had no words to comfort him since I couldn’t make that kind of promise. After the day Tony and I had, I felt more confident that I would be able to go into the new year with Sean, but nothing with Tony was guaranteed. Nothing.

  A few minutes had quickly turned in to forty. I didn’t want to watch him go but I knew I needed to get back home. When Tony left to meet Laurie, I could expect him to be gone anywhere from two to four hours. But with the way he was acting, I figured it would be closer to two hours. I knew I still had some time to spare but didn’t want to push my luck.

  I said goodbye to Sean and headed home. The very last thing I expected to see was Tony’s car parked in the driveway. So when I pulled in and saw his car sitting there, my anxiety reached an all-time high. How would I explain where I was on Christmas night? Nothing was open and I had no reason to go anywhere. Not to mention, all I had with me was my new tablet. He would know there wasn’t a single place I could have gone to buy it.

  I walked around the front of his car, touching my hand gently on the hood. Cold. That meant he had been home for a while. If I told him I had just left, there was a big chance he would know it was a lie. If I told him I had left just after he did, which was the truth, he would wonder where I had been for almost an hour. I didn’t have an answer for him.