Page 112 of Made for You

I am not drunk. But I got my answer.

Thunking the bottle of wine down on the dining room table as I pass through the space, I walk into the living room and grab my phone from the side table where I left it. Sinking onto the couch, I open up a text to Andy.

Josh is leaving on a hiking trip tonight. I know you’re busy with the conference, but...any chance you’re free to drive down and have dinner with me?

I hit Send, then I stare at the message. Yes, I could use a friend right now. But as my feet graze rock bottom, what I most need is to ask Andy a question that only he can answer: What does it really mean that I was made for Josh? Was that just our starting point? Have we wandered too far off course?

I don’t notice Josh until he’s standing over me, reading the message upside down.

“The fuck?” He grabs my phone. “Unbelievable. The second I leave, you’re shacking up with Andy?”

“No!” I stand to face him, shaking not with fear but anger. “You didn’t tell me you were going hiking, Josh! And I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be alone tonight. So I asked my friend to come over—”

“Do you take me for an absolute moron? A fucking fool?” He’s shaking, too, like we’re caught in the same earthquake.

In spite of the intensity, I have to laugh, because his jealousy is so misplaced, and this conversation is so ridiculous, and I’m realizing more and more that the fool is me. Me, for believing that his desire to protect me included protecting me from himself. Me, for believing that this relationship could ever be better. Me, for not standing up for myself a hell of a lot sooner.

Me for fucking lying to myself. Twice.

I take a deep breath. My anger washes out in one whoosh, like the crazy ride we’ve been on has finally, mercifully, come to a stop. All that’s left is sadness. With the sadness is also a strange lightness.

Camila was right. There is a big world out there. Bigger than this prison cell of misery we’ve built.

“Josh? Baby?” I shake my head. “This isn’t working.”

He says nothing.

“Did you hear me?” My voice is gentle now. Resigned...but free. I see it now. We have to let each other go, because holding on this tight is breaking both of us. “You and me? This isn’t working.”

He raises his hand. I feel everything slow down, down, down. The back of his hand meets my face. It’s almost dance-like, the way my body arches before careening across the living room. I crash into the couch, my head hitting the corner of the side table. One of Rita’s things, a stylized brass figurine of a mother holding a baby, probably the only thing of hers I ever liked, falls to the carpet with a muted thud.

Pain bursts through my head like a hundred thousand tiny exploding stars as Josh’s face twists with the shock of what he’s just done.

There must be some truth to the saying third time’s the charm, because it’s taken three for me to face the truth that lies like a dark treasure at the bottom of the well where I’ve poured all my hope and choice and effort and love.

Josh will keep hurting me.

And though tonight Annaleigh is sleeping peacefully in her crib, oblivious to the drama playing out between the two adults she loves best, tomorrow she might not be so oblivious. She’ll be a girl of five, six, ten, twelve. Eventually, she will see. Whether it’s a direct strike or just a bruise. A cry in the night, a whimper in the day. And though I sincerely believe Josh would never, ever harm our daughter, she will be harmed. Through me, letting this happen.

I can never leave Josh unless he lets me, because I’ll never win custody. And Annaleigh will learn that the broken stay. And then maybe one day, she will stay with some man who hits her, and that is the thought that breaks me.

Not the pain shimmering in my head like the cruel dream of an oasis. Not the feeling of being so small under Josh’s towering rage.

This future Annaleigh, sitting as I am. Taking it.

Because that’s what her mother did.

NOW

“I found your trophy in the car. I know what you did,” I say.

My eyes have adjusted enough to make out his features in the dark as he moves toward me. Scruffy as always. “Julia! Jesus, I’ve been so worried! Listen, my lawyers are—”

“Don’t come closer.” I hold up a hand. He stops, startled, on the other side of the long metal table that divides the space, and divides us.

I knew that seeing Andy would be emotional for me. But this is a tidal wave, pulling at the fragile edges of my control, rising, rushing between the first moment that I saw him and thought kind, and this moment when I know it’s actually cruel. The chasm between that deception and this truth is sixteen months. My entire life, folded into Andy’s fantasy. Andy’s lie.

“Wait—trophy?” A flash of concern crosses his features.

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