Bittersweet Surrender

by Q. B. Tyler

  I knew that wasn’t over.

  He ticks off another finger. “We don’t spend enough time together…because you know that fancy house you love? It requires money, and I work my ass off,” he snaps. “Anything else?”

  I lean forward, preparing to chastise him for his tantrum. “First off, a difference in opinion regarding children is pretty fucking important, and reason enough for a marriage to end. Secondly, you don’t give me any attention! ‘Enough’ implies that you’re giving me something! I barely exist between the hours of eight a.m. and five p.m. I think I would have to be on fire for you to even take time out of your busy day to check in with me. And then, when you get home? You go straight to your office and stay there, for HOURS. I can’t remember the last time we ate a meal together at home. I usually eat by myself the nights we’re home and then I go to bed. I feel you come to bed somewhere around midnight and you don’t even touch me! You used to spoon me, cuddle me, kiss me, and tell me you love me. You would wake me up in the middle of the night the few times you were working late and make love to me. And now there are times I don’t see you again until the following morning and that’s IF you even wake me up before you leave. And no, Matthew, we aren’t intimate enough. And don’t use some bullshit excuse about how last week I didn’t want to fuck you in the shower. This is after months and months of you turning me down. Telling me you’re too busy. Telling me you’re tired. Want to know the last time we had sex, Matt? Five and a half months ago. It’s September. The seasons have changed twice since then.”

  “It hasn’t been that long—” he interjects.

  “Uh uh,” I say putting up a finger. “April seventeenth. We had just gotten back from a dinner with your boss. We had too much to drink, and you were on top of the world when we got home. We had sex, you came, I didn’t. You fell asleep almost immediately after, I don’t blame you, you had just worked an eighty-hour week. But I took a shower and cried for forty-five minutes. That, Matthew, is the last time we had sex.” I blink a few times, trying to keep the tears threatening to fall at bay. I take another long sip of wine, desperate to feel something—anything other than the dull ache in my heart.

  He stares at me for a second before he looks to the basket of bread between us, as if the answers are hidden between the slices of carbohydrates. “That can’t be the last time,” he whispers.

  “It is,” I say plainly.

  “I remember that night.”

  “Do you?” I snort. “You were pretty drunk.”

  “I remember how hot you looked in that red dress. You were the most striking woman in the room. No one could take their eyes off of you. I was so proud to be your husband that night.” I guess he realizes his mistake as he corrects himself quickly. “But I’m always proud to be your husband, Charlotte.”

  I play with my hair, running the ends through my fingertips as I let his words wash over me. “That’s why you’re proud to be married to me? Because I looked good in front of your boss? Because I make you look good?” I feel the angry tears well in my eyes as I stand. “I need a minute. I’ll be back.”

  I don’t wait for a response before I rush to the bathroom, where I toss my purse to the side, and slam my hands down on the sink.

  I remember how beautiful you looked in that red dress. I was so proud to be your husband.

  I’m transported back to the last time someone said something similar.

  Will. Last week.

  I had just finished riding him for the past hour, the sweat clinging to our bodies as I collapsed onto his chest. We’d had time to kill before my session, so we had cuddled on his couch underneath a cashmere blanket as the room cooled. We were lazily kissing, our tongues moving slowly against each other when he had pulled away.

  “Do you know how amazing you are?” he’d asked. I shook my head, because to be honest, I didn’t.

  Despite Will’s constant reassurance, I still didn’t.

  “You are the most amazing person I’ve ever met,” he had told me as he pushed the still wet hair from my eyes. “I’m so lucky to know you, angel.”

  Angel. The name he reserved for certain times when baby didn’t feel right. When he needed something—more.

  I’d snorted and turned my head, laying it against his chest, but he’d moved my chin to meet his gaze.

  “I’m serious. Anyone would be proud to be your husband. It’s a shame that you aren’t appreciated or treated the way you deserve.” The way he’d looked at me, I almost said the words I’d been thinking for the past few weeks. The three words that would change everything… Or maybe nothing.

  I don’t know which scares me more.

  I wipe the tear that trickles down my face as I think about Will’s words in comparison to my husband’s. Will told me I was a “woman of ethereal beauty.” Matt used the word “hot.”

  I reach for my Blackberry and dial the number I’ve committed to memory. I don’t care that I was supposed to be waiting for his call or that in this moment I was the obsessive, clingy girlfriend, or that my husband is just beyond the four walls of this bathroom.

  “Answer the goddamn phone!” I grit to myself as it starts to ring. It goes to voicemail again and I want to scream.

  I’m about to press the call button again when the door opens. “Charley?”

  Bree Cunningham walks in, and I almost drop my phone. Bree Cunningham is no more than five feet tall, with intense green eyes and blonde hair styled into a sleek bob. “Bree, you scared the shit out of me,” I say before sliding my phone as discreetly as I can back into my bag.

  “Matt asked me to come check on you, honey, are you okay?” she asks and I nod. Bree and I became fast friends due to the long-standing friendship between our husbands. Matt and Nathan had been friends since childhood, going through adolescence and adulthood side by side.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  Bree doesn’t know all the details but she knows that Matt and I are having issues. We’d had more than a few “girls’ days” over the past year where she’d tried to get me to open up and talk to her, assuring me that she was there for me. I don’t doubt that she wanted to be there for me. Bree is kind-hearted and doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. Even though, she’s married to my husband’s best friend, I know she cares about me outside of being Matt’s wife. That being said, she would be horrified to know this secret I’m hiding. Bree Cunningham can never know what I’m doing behind my husband’s back.

  “I’m so happy to see you guys here,” she smiles, “and in your booth. You had therapy today, right? How did that go?”

  Of course, right on cue, I feel my phone start to buzz inside my purse. Shit. I desperately want to talk to Will but Bree is making that more than difficult. “It went well. Bree, can you give me a minute? Tell Matt I’ll be right out?”

  I see the look of hurt flash across her face when I brush her off. “Of course.” She smiles before she leaves, and the door has barely closed before the phone is pressed to my ear.

  “What’s wrong, Charlotte?” he asks as soon as the call connects. I wince, hearing the slight panic in his voice over my calling him.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “And yet you called me again. You made me think something was wrong.”

  “It surely took you long enough to check to see if there was!” I say back.

  “I was in the middle of a session, Charlotte. I couldn’t just take your call. It was bad enough I checked my phone while he was talking.”

  I’m silent for a second as I get my thoughts together. “What was that?” I ask referring to the earlier session with my husband.

  He sighs. “I don’t know, Charley. You tell me, he’s your husband.”

  I swallow, knowing that was meant to hurt me. Although it shouldn’t. It’s the truth, right?

  “Does it change anything?”

  “Like what?”

  I bite my bottom lip nervously as I prepare to speak the words. “Between you and me?”

  “I think I s
hould be asking you that.”

  I’m silent as I weigh my options. Do I make a valiant effort to fix my marriage? Or continue down this hedonistic path of destruction? One leaves me miserable, the other, happy.

  “Will—”

  “Charley, I think it would be best if we didn’t talk for a few days.”

  “What?” I say immediately, my body reacting to his words before my brain has even processed them fully. My palms start to sweat, my heart is races, and I begin to shake.

  Is he breaking up with me?

  “You need to take some time. This was a very intense session and you need to figure out if you can still rationalize these choices you’re making.”

  “Rationalize my choices? Don’t fucking shrink me right now, William Montgomery. So, help me, I will flip.” I didn’t want my shrink right now. I wanted the man that was inside me just an hour ago. The man I knew didn’t want to let me go for anything.

  “I just listened to the husband of the woman I’ve been sleeping with question her about the affair she’s having with me. I knew what I was doing getting involved with someone I’m counseling, but it doesn’t mean I’m ready for my life to go up in smoke. Everything I’ve worked for? If he figures out it’s me, we’re fucked.”

  “If he figures out it’s you, maybe he’ll just leave me.”

  “Why don’t you leave him, Charley?” I’m silent as I usually am when Will asks me this. We’ve gone over this numerous times and every time he brings it up I feel as chastised as I did when I first told him my reasoning.

  Well, part of the reason.

  My eyes flit to the rings on my finger, remembering how different things were on the day they were slid into place. I was young, my eyes wide and my heart full as I believed that this man who’d saved me from the unthinkable wanted to be with me forever.

  Apparently forever only extended five years.

  We thought we could make it work. We thought we could fix the issues with counseling, but then I started sleeping with another man. And now everything is a mess.

  I had told Will all of this. I’d outlined my thoughts as if they were bullet points, giving him thorough and concise reasons why I felt the need to stay in my marriage.

  I don’t have a job, and the five-year gap in my resume doesn’t exactly make me a hot commodity in the job market, especially at twenty-eight. There was a time about a year ago when I’d thought about leaving him, but where would I go? What would I do? The thought had felt scary, and maybe that makes me weak. Thinking I couldn’t do it on my own. That a part of me still needed Matthew, but clearly, he felt the same because he begged me to stay to work on things.

  I’d left out the biggest reason though.

  “Exactly,” I hear him say, my silence apparently giving him all of the answers he needs. “You don’t know what you want. You want me to make you feel good, to put you on this pedestal and worship at your feet because you don’t get that shit from your husband. But then you go back to him because he’s familiar and there’s the security and… I don’t know, complacency? I told you this when we first started, you and Wells have this weird sense of co-dependency and loyalty to each other. It’s not healthy. You’re not happy, Charley. What kind of life is that?”

  “Well, I don’t see you offering me a better option,” I bite out. It’s the first time either of us has ever alluded to being more. And I’m pissed at myself for bringing it up in a restaurant bathroom while my husband is sixty feet away and Will is sixty thousand feet away.

  He’s silent. “That’s not fair.”

  “Why isn’t it? You’re telling me I’m unhappy and I have this horrible life. Why don’t you advise me on how to make it better? That is what you’ve been doing for the last four months, right? Trying to make my life better?”

  “You have a lot of nerve, Charlotte. You can’t blame me for why your life is the way it isand where are you right now anyway?”

  “In the bathroom of The Grille.”

  He’s quiet for a moment. “Did you get those ridiculous drinks?” I know he’s referring to the drink named after me and my husband. I remember the first time I told him about The Wells Manhattan. He’d snorted and laughed it off but I know somewhere inside of him it stung. I could see the fleeting look of sadness cross his face. It was something so trivial but it reminded him that I belonged to someone else.

  “No, we got wine.”

  “Red or white?”

  “Red.”

  “Red makes you sleepy,” he says, and I smile that he knows this little fact about me.

  “So?”

  “So, you drove there. Are you going to be okay to drive home?”

  “After one glass? I think I’ll be okay.”

  “Let me know when you get home.”

  “I thought you said we shouldn’t talk for a few days,” I say sadly.

  “I still want to know that you’re safe.” His tone has softened significantly.

  “But we can’t talk about anything else?”

  “Charley…” My name hangs in the air, and I worry about his next words. “Let’s just talk Wednesday.”

  “But, Wednesday?”

  “Use tomorrow to think about…everything.”

  “What am I supposed to be thinking about?”

  “If what you’re doing is worth risking…”

  “Risking what?”

  “Everything, Charley! You are risking everything. We both are.”

  I am fully aware that this is risky, but it almost sounds like he isn’t willing to take those risks anymore. “Is it worth it to you?”

  He doesn’t say anything right away and my heart sinks. “If we were on the same page about everything, then yes, but we aren’t.”

  “Yes, we are!” I shout and chastise myself for the volume. Hopefully no one heard that.

  “No, Charlotte. We are not. You’re married. By definition, we are NOT on the same page.”

  My nostrils flare as I feel the unshed tears brimming under my lids. “Are you breaking up with me?” The words leave my mouth in a rush as the air leaves my lungs, making it harder to breathe.

  “I’m saying we should talk on Wednesday.”

  I let out another breath, trying my best to get control of my breathing, and nod, forgetting that he can’t see me. “Okay.”

  “Be safe, Charley.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek. This feels like goodbye and I’m praying I can keep the tears at bay until I get home. “You too.”

  We stay on the phone a good thirty seconds longer, neither of us saying anything when I hear the phone click and the call ends. I swallow hard as I slip the phone back into its hiding spot and stare at myself in the mirror. I look down at my diamond Cartier watch and realize I’ve been in the bathroom for nearly fifteen minutes.

  Not that I think Matt would even notice.

  “There you are, finally,” he says without looking up from his phone as I approach the table. “I have to go into the office.”

  “What?”

  “Something’s come up. Patterson doesn’t know which fucking way is up. I swear I am sick of putting out his fires,” he says. “Bree’s here. I figured she’d join you.”

  “Wait, you’re leaving now?”

  “Yeah, you’ve been gone for fifteen minutes. You didn’t seem too concerned with talking, and I have shit to do. I ordered your favorite, I figured you’d want it. I told them to box mine up and I’ll take it with me.” He nods at the waiter as he brings over his boxes.

  “Mr. Wells, here’s your food.”

  “Thanks, Sergio.” He hands him the usual large tip. “Take care of my girl, will you?” I resist the urge to snort. My girl. Right.

  “Of course, sir. As always.”

  “I’ll see you at home,” he says to me, and places a cold kiss on my cheek. Then he’s gone. The thought does not escape me that my husband of five years, unlike my lover of four months, wasn’t concerned with the red wine affecting my ability to get myself home safely.r />
  * * *

  BY THE TIME I OPEN my eyes Tuesday morning, Matthew has already left for work. The sheets beside me are already chilly, indicating his early departure. The weather is rainy and gloomy, a direct reflection of my mood, and it takes everything in me to pull myself out of this empty bed. I make my way down the spiral staircase to prepare my breakfast to eat alone, as usual. Our kitchen is sleek and modern, with stainless steel appliances and marble countertops that borders on the obscenely expensive.

  The past four months, Will and I have had our breakfast together most mornings. We talked about anything and everything from current events to movies to how much we miss each other. Sometimes, the conversations took a more sexual turn that always left me sated. But this morning, I sit in silence, forcing down my eggs, not even bothering to taste them, eating just for sustenance. I reach for my phone at least twice but stop myself each time.

  Give him some space.

  Give you some space.

  I’m fairly certain I’ve gone an entire day without talking to Matt and was unphased, but with Will I’m climbing the walls over not hearing from him within the first thirty minutes since I woke up.

  I wash my single plate before placing it in the dishwasher. I think about braving the elements and going to the mall. Maybe some new shoes would make me feel better? No, I’m supposed to be thinking about what I want. I move through the house toward Matt’s office, where he spends most of his time. The room is massive and even has a small offset den where Matt has been known to crash after working late. I sit down at his desk and pull out his memo pad, making a mental note to put this through the shredder as soon as I’m done. I write Will on one side and Matthew on the other drawing a line between their two names. Okay, start with Will. I don’t miss the shiver that runs through me as I think about it.