Because You're the Love of My Life

by Sarah Kleck

  I frowned as I closely observed the spectacle.

  “Annie,” Holden coughed red-faced. “Do you remember me telling you about Monica?”

  “Monica?” I asked, but at that very same moment it dawned on me. It was her! His ex, who spent most of her time with her tongue down his throat at the party where I’d first noticed Holden.

  “Monicaaa,” I said stretching her name. “Nice to finally meet you.”

  “You must be Annie.” She gave me a brief smile, then turned back to my husband. “I thought you were working late tonight.”

  Um . . . did I just hear this right?! What did he still have to do with that skank? And how the hell did she know how late he was working?

  “Um, I was planning to,” he began to explain, seeming completely uneasy. “But then I thought I’d take my wife out for a dinner.” He smiled awkwardly, then placed his hand on mine.

  I jerked my hand back. “I think you need to explain something,” I said darkly.

  “He has to have the construction plans for the Tirion Industries client presentation done by Monday,” dear Monica explained on Holden’s behalf. “By the way, that’s Mr. Tirion,” she pointed back to her table where a middle-aged suit waited impatiently for her return. “Business dinner,” she added with a wink.

  “Unfortunately, that doesn’t answer my question.” My eyes drilled into Holden, who was still wrestling for words with his red face. “Are you two working together?”

  “Um . . .yes,” he stammered. “Monica is the key account manager with responsibility for sales and care of our major clients.”

  I leaned back and crossed my arms. “You never mentioned that,” I said with a smile, but only an idiot would have missed the warning in my words.

  “I haven’t?” Holden asked in a far too high-pitched voice.

  “No,” I answered stoically.

  “I have to get back,” Monica said. “Catch you tomorrow morning, Holdie. Delighted, Annie.” She extended her hand to me, but my look was firmly fixed on my husband. When it became clear to her that I wasn’t reacting, she slipped me an affected smile and pulled back her hand. Finally, the slut turned around and headed back to her table.

  “Is something going on between the two of you?” I asked directly.

  “Have you got a screw loose? No. Of course not!”

  “Then what reason do you have for keeping secret that you are working with your old girlfriend?”

  “I didn’t keep it a secret.” He scratched the back of his head. “It just slipped my mind.”

  “Slipped your mind?”

  “Yes.”

  I snorted derisively. “Try to think of something better, Holdie.”

  Suddenly, the meal seemed indigestible. I would have preferred to throw up. The warm feeling of his embrace suddenly felt fake.

  “Nothing’s going on,” he pleaded. “Don’t get all worked up.”

  I felt my eye twitching. I exploded. “I’m getting all worked up? You’re working with your ex, keeping it from me, and then are brazen enough to claim you’ve forgotten it?” I hissed so I wouldn’t shout.

  “I didn’t want you to get jealous and bent out of shape for no reason, OK?!” he hissed back.

  “You’re shitting me!”

  “Please stop it now, Annie. I put so such work into surprising you,” he reproached me as if what had just happened was my fault.

  “You wanted to surprise me?” I asked as tears stung in my eyes. “Then remind me how it feels to be loved. Remind me of what it’s like to feel happy.”

  I got up and left. The car keys were in my purse. Let him figure out how to get home on his own.

  “I can’t imagine he’d cheat on you,” Grace said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “He’s just not the type. Or—not now. Not since he’s been with you.”

  I snorted dismissively. It was the first time in ages that I’d felt anything when he embraced me—the first time in ages that I’d felt anything at all. And now this. I hated myself for opening up to him. It made me vulnerable, and he’d hurt me. More than that. Because now I had to worry he was cheating on me.

  Grace bit her lower lip. “Things aren’t going too well between the two of you lately, right?”

  I slowly shook my head.

  “But you still love each other, don’t you?”

  “Love isn’t our problem.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She took my hand. “You’re Annie and Holden—the perfect couple.”

  Yes, that’s how people saw us. Annie and Holden, the perfect couple.

  “Oh Grace,” My voice trailed off. “You know, I think I’ve been we for so long I’ve forgotten how it feels to be me.”

  She looked at me skeptically. “You never told me you’re thinking like that.”

  “I can barely admit it to myself.”

  “So . . . are you thinking about separating?” she finally asked.

  “At times,” I answered, and the second I said it aloud I regretted turning down the Seattle job. Even though Parker told me that if something changed, the offer would stand, I’d made a decision, and now I had to deal with it.

  “Oh.”

  “Yes,” I exhaled with a sigh. “And then I walk out like this morning and see that he’s scraped my car windows off—and I’m ashamed of ever having thought about leaving him.”

  “Oh,” Grace said again. “Have you talked to him about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “You ought to.”

  “I’m just not sure he’s the reason I feel this way. Maybe I just haven’t gotten over losing the baby. Or the thing with my mother. What if I need some time to myself to gain clarity? Duties, responsibility, being sensible—I’m just so sick of it all.”

  “Yes, I get what you mean,” Grace said.

  “You know, sometimes I just think back to when I was seventeen and in love with Seth. Everything was so simple.”

  I was frightened by my honesty. Seth and I hadn’t seen each other for ten years, and now I spoke of him as if we were still in love. What if he had changed? What if he no longer was the Seth I’d known?

  “Your old high-school boyfriend Seth?”

  I nodded.

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Are you still in touch?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “What do you mean not really? Are you in touch or not?”

  “No, we aren’t in touch.”

  But only because he doesn’t write back.

  Chapter 20

  I’d gotten up at eight. Now it was ten, and I’d already cried once today. It couldn’t really be stopped. Holden and I argued over every single shitty little detail. Because he left his shoes lying around, because he didn’t like how often I took a bath, because . . . oh, any damn thing seemed to do. Weekends were the worst. On Friday evening, I’d start dreading Saturday morning because he’d get up cranky, looking for a reason to find fault with me even before his first coffee.

  I used to consider these situations to be tests of strength, little power games, to see who had the pants on in the relationship. Now I know that if an argument with your partner is about winning, you’ve already lost.

  Over the holidays we did our best to pull ourselves together. Things between us even felt like they had years ago, and Christmas Eve was a tender and passionate night—but right after the holidays things got worse than ever.

  “I’m under the gun the entire fucking week,” he’d mutter so often I was sick of hearing it. “But then I’m not even allowed a little peace and quiet on the weekend.”

  “Do you think you’re the only one who goes to work all week?!” I shot back. “What do you think I do every day? Drink coffee and read gossip magazines? I have a career also, in case you haven’t noticed. Do you always hear me complain how tough my job is? No!”

  “You don’t have delivery deadlines to keep!”

  Great—now he’s raising his v
oice.

  “Don’t fucking yell at me! All I asked you to do was to vacuum while I do the laundry.” Housework had never been a problem, and both of us did our part, but like everything else between us, this, too, had changed in the last months. Had Angela’s jabbering about a man not doing so much housework given him permission to slack off now?

  “If vacuuming is too much for you because you’ve had such a tough week, maybe you need to think about getting another job.”

  That got Holden to blow up—but I simply said it because it was the truth. He’d started his job right after graduating and had never done anything else. I was of the opinion that he should look around for something different. Just to get insight into another company or, at least, another division and gain a bit more experience. To him, though, it was unthinkable. He probably believed his division would collapse if he ever left. He didn’t even stay home when he was sick. That’s how freaking indispensable he thought he was. He put all his energy into his work—there simply wasn’t anything left for me or our marriage. Anything above and beyond his work overtaxed him so much he immediately turned aggressive. To pile more on top, he had the charming characteristic of always finding the fault in someone else. Me especially. As if I were required to worship him 24/7 for his daily hard work. Recognition for my effort—fail! So what if I earned as much as he did?

  The doorbell rang.

  “Hello, my son. How are you?”

  My mother-in-law. I groaned—that was all I needed.

  “Hi, Angela,” I greeted her, enduring her affected hug. Holden briefly talked to his mother and—I couldn’t believe my eyes—got the vacuum cleaner from the closet and began to vacuum as if he’d meant to all day. Angela, having lost her conversation partner, joined me in the kitchen. I was about to empty the dishwasher when she traipsed in.

  “That never used to happen,” she commented, leaving a faint accusation hang in the air.

  “What?” I strained to be polite, but because I knew exactly where this was going, my stomach contracted into a hard lump. At that moment Holden finished vacuuming and joined us in the kitchen.

  “That a man would do so much housework.” She looked at her offspring with a mixture of pride and pity.

  I stared at her, straining to keep calm. I can’t count the times I’d told her that I had a job and often put in longer hours than her son. Never mind that we were living in the twenty-first century. Never mind that women had good careers like men. Never mind that men cleaned, too. I had explained it to her dozens of times in hundreds of different ways—and still I got this line from her.

  I looked at Holden, who showed no sign of supporting me. It just burst out of me. “You know, it’s not done these days either. He just does it because I’m so pig lazy.”

  Holden cast me an admonishing glance. My mother-in-law looked upset.

  “What?” I asked again. “Isn’t that what you want to hear? That’s why you keep repeating it. Now you’ve got it: I’m a stinking, lazy pig, which is why your son has to run the entire household while I get a pedicure!”

  “You were totally out of line talking to my mother like that,” he reproached me as soon as he’d closed the door behind Angela.

  “Really. Was I?” I said, though I already felt the sadness spreading inside me.

  “Yes. I was totally embarrassed. She didn’t mean harm, but you went on the attack right away. She’s probably crying now.”

  “You were embarrassed?” I repeated, my voice quavering. “Because of me?” I knew he didn’t approve of my reaction, but what he said hit me harder than I expected. Couldn’t he take my side even once? Stand up for me just once? I struggled against my tears. No. I wasn’t going to cry this time. At least not in front of him.

  “I have no idea what kind of issues you have with my mother, but this is going too far. You make her feel with every word that you can’t stand her.”

  “That’s funny,” I countered in my attempt to keep a steady voice. “My impression is that she won’t miss an opportunity to show me how little she likes me.”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke? She adores you.”

  “Haven’t you heard her say for the umpteenth time that men never used to . . .”

  “She doesn’t mean any harm,” he interrupted me. “Why do you always take it so seriously. You know her.”

  I looked him straight in the eyes. The situation was totally miserable. Angela could do with Holden as she pleased—he loved her. I was used to that. But at that moment something else became clear to me. As far as he was concerned, she could also do with me as she pleased.

  Was there no one in the world to whom I meant anything? Who loved me wholeheartedly, who protected and defended me?

  Holden looked confounded. “Why are you crying now?” he asked outraged.

  I wiped the tears from my face, choked back new ones, then looked into his uncomprehending eyes.

  “The only thing I want from life is someone who loves me and stands up for me. But no one does. My own mother isn’t even capable of loving me. So, how could you?”

  Holden grasped his hair. “What does this have to do with your mother?” he asked irritated.

  I took a deep breath. “Nothing,” I said resigned. “Plain nothing.”

  “Do you want me to tell my mother to leave us alone and never come back again?” He took his cell phone off the charger. “Come on, say it! I’ll call her and tell her to never show her damn face here again.”

  I frowned as I looked at him. “Are you totally losing it or something?”

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it!” he yelled. “Well, say it.” He shoved his phone in my face, daring me. “I’ll call her and tell her to stay the hell out of our lives.”

  I looked at him again with furrowed forehead. “What are you trying to achieve?”

  “Come on! Say it,” he repeated.

  It dawned on me that instant: he was trying to trap me! Like hell I’d let him. I crossed my arms and leaned back. “OK, do it! Tell her to never again show her face here again.”

  He turned rigid for a moment. How long did he think I was going to play along with his game? Suddenly, he clenched his teeth, snorting with flared nostrils. Then his fist tightened around the phone, and he flung it against the wall, where it shattered into a thousand pieces. One of the rebounding plastic pieces whizzed by so closely, I could feel it go by, barely missing my face. That could have been my eye, I thought. But Holden charged in a fury at a small cabinet and beat it like a madman with his fist. My mosaic lamp fell and broke. I was horrified and wondering how much abuse a cabinet could take when he headed for the bathroom and punched a hole in one of the door panels. I shrank into a corner and waited. I was filled with a mixture of fear and anger. He turned like a raging bull and came toward me. Would he hit me? Let him try! I straightened my shoulders and back, stepped toward him, and said, “If you hit me, you’ll never see me again.”

  His eyes widened. Only then did he seem to understand what he’d done—or, possibly, what he was about to do. I stared him straight in the eye. Suddenly, he turned away, grabbed his keys, threw open the front door, stepped into the hallway, and slammed the door behind him.

  Numbness followed. I sat on the couch and buried my face in my hands. I suppressed the tears welling up. I acted like nothing had happened. Make light of it, play it down, twist, whitewash, bury it—his usual way of justifying things to himself. He’d pretend until he had convinced himself that it all wasn’t so bad. He’d often tried to excuse himself that way.

  Over time I developed the impression it was a survival strategy from his childhood. Back when his mother left the family and remarried, if he’d let all that pain, loss, sadness, and loneliness bear down on him unmitigated, the weight of his emotions would have crushed him. I think back then he began to twist things after the fact, sugarcoat them or just bury them in silence. I could understand that, really.

  But Holden was an adult now. An adult still using his childhood stra
tegies to avoid bearing full responsibility for his actions. But not this time. I wouldn’t let him get away with it. I walked around, surveying everything he had done. The wreckage that had been his phone. The scratches in the wall and the wood floor where the phone hit them. The cabinet and the broken lamp. Finally, the fist-sized hole in the bathroom door.

  Fifteen minutes later I heard the key in the door. He didn’t so much as look at me. Without a word, he got the toolbox and patched the hole with pieces of wood, glue, and a clamp. Once that was done, he carefully swept up the remains of the phone and the mosaic lamp and wiped down the cabinet. Finally, he sat down on the couch, looking at me ruefully. But I could see in his eyes that his anger still lingered.

  “Leave me alone,” I said. “Just go away.”

  He stood up and left, putting on his victim act, as if to tell me how mean and heartless I was to send him away now. To be honest, just then I wouldn’t have cared if he never came back.

  Later that evening he slinked in the door. Two boxes under his arms. One had a picture of a cell phone, the other of a mosaic lamp. Oh, man. When Holden wasn’t going berserk, he was so predictable. While he was programming the phone, I went over to him. It was time to tell him how much he’d hurt me, how much I’d lost faith in our relationship, and that something had to be done.

  “This can’t go on,” I started.

  “Oh yeah?” he answered angrily.

  The constriction in my chest turned into pain that quickly overcame me. I began to cry, then something came to the surface from a feeling of deepest despair. “Sometimes I can’t tell if I still love you.”

  “Sometimes I can’t tell if I still love you either,” he answered coldly.

  I raised my eyes and looked at him. He didn’t bother to turn and face me.

  I stood for a moment as if I’d turned to stone. Then I went upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom. I let water run into the bathtub, so he wouldn’t hear me crying. I couldn’t remember when I’d ever felt so unhappy. Back when I tried to win my mother’s love again every day? When my dead child was pulled from my body? Or was this the unhappiest I’d ever been? Now that I was losing the man I’d thought I’d grow old with?