Page 117 of The Cost of Forgetting You

Her finger plucks the cord of my exposed collarbone. “She’s not our friend. Her son is Delilah’s friend. She is our neighbor.” She shrugs, and it shifts her breasts over my skin. I fight against the warring voices in my brain. One that wants so badly to take what his wife is offering, the other who knows she’s only doing so out of misplaced jealousy. Or something worse, like an actual disdain for Lucy’s well-being. “Since when are you so attuned to Lucy Parker’s body language that you would know if she’s lying? If she said it was a calf, it was a calf.”

Jealousy it is, then.

“I just have this feeling.” I shake my head. “I can’t explain it.”

“How come you never have these kinds of feelings about me?”

Now I’m frustrated and confused. “What are you talking about?”

She steps into me, and I move backward. We repeat this until my back is flush against the cold porcelain tile, and her body is aligned with mine. “You’re never this concerned about me. Never give a shit that I’m upset or I’m unhappy or I’m stuck in this miserably redundant life, but you’re all up in arms over Lucy Parker’s imagined abusive husband.” Her hips retreat from mine, and her hand closes around my dick, squeezing one long stroke as she locks eyes with me. “If you care so much, why don’t you fuck her then?”

The fight leaves me. I slump against the tile, muscles screaming at the cold seeping into them, and shake my head. Her eyes are dark and turbulent, like the river after a heavy rain. I thread one hand into her hair and hold her there, gentle in every way that her touch is not.

“Miserably redundant life, huh? Is that all we are to you?”

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t react. The fire goes on burning beneath her skin even as it dies out in mine. I go limp in her closed fist, and she drops me like I’ve insulted her.

I press on, finding my voice for once after so many years of letting her speak to me like this. I can’t stand it. Can’t stand the idea that on the other side of the pasture, Lucy is taking the same treatment from Waylon. Telling herself that because she chose him, she deserves what she gets.

It’s what I’ve been telling myself for too long.

“You say these things to me like there will be no consequences, Kimberly. You tear me down. You tear our daughter down.” I place my hands lightly on her shoulders and push her back, giving myself space to breathe. “How long am I supposed to take that until I break? How long do you expect me to pay penance to you for what happened when we were kids? For upending both of our lives, mind you. You’re not the only one who had to give up everything. Who lost something. But we gained our daughter, and while that has always been worth it to me, you’ve made it more than clear that it’s not to you.”

Her eyes widen and her jaw clenches. “How dare you?—”

“Do you think she doesn’t notice?” I keep my gaze level with hers, even when she tries to look anywhere but at me. “How do you think she felt tonight, when she looked up and her mom wasn’t there to see her finally serve the ball over the net? When her team won and she saw all their moms cheering them on, but hers was nowhere to be seen? All because you couldn’t stand a little noise.”

Her lips part and then close. The vein in her forehead pulses. Her cheeks are hollow, jaw working, as she decides which bullet to fire my way.

I’m surprised, I’ll admit, when it comes out as a whisper.

“If it wasn’t for Delilah, do you honestly think we’d be married?” Her eyes dart between mine as she sucks in a tight breath and squares her shoulders. “Do you think in a million years we’d have chosen one another if we hadn’t been forced to do so?”

I blink. My stomach knots itself, sending acid stinging up my throat. She doesn’t waver even as I do. Doesn’t back down when all I want to do is cower from a truth so obvious, so heartbreaking that I’ve never allowed myself to think it, let alone say it aloud.

“I didn’t think so.” She cuts off the water, not bothering to ask if I’m done. She is, and that’s all that matters. She rips open the curtain, snatches her towel from the rack, and covers her body quickly like this is a locker room and I’m a stranger rather than her husband. When she turns to look at me, a droplet of water spills over her cheek. I could almost convince myself it was a tear if I couldn’t see its track all the way from her hairline glistening in the dull bathroom light.

“Delilah is the reason we’re together. And I’ll stay with you as long as she’s here. But when she’s not? When she goes off to college to start her life?” She jams a finger into her breastbone, right where her heart should be. “I get to start mine, too. Do you understand?”

I expect the heartbreak, and it does come. Fear and sickness turn over in my gut. Anxiety, too. An overwhelming sense of failure. It all crests over me like waves, crashing and building and crashing again.

What I don’t expect is the buoy of relief, floating on the surface when the tide slows. It’s out in the distance, too far to swim to right now, but I see it. I cling to the knowledge that it’s there.

My nod is a jittery, broken thing. “I understand completely.”

Surprisingly, the words are clear, even when nothing else is.

Chapter Thirty-One

Delilah

Working from my dad’s office was meant to be an improvement. More desk space for my extra monitor. A large picture window allowing buttery sunlight to filter in and brighten my days. Yet lately I find myself zoning out from the task at hand, letting my gaze wander the spines on the far wall of bookshelves or study the way the light glistens on the brass surface of some of his instruments. They’re beginning to gather dust, aside from the guitar and keyboard, which he still uses often enough. It’s the sight of that thin layer dulling their glow that squeezes my heart.

I want to be a good employee. And I do try my best. But some days real life gets to be so overwhelming that the idea of logging into a meeting and dragging a group of strangers through a tutorial they’ll forget the details of in mere hours gets to be a bit much. It all feels so meaningless. Why waste my breath on some corporate bullshit when what I really want to say is: My father is suffering from dementia, and even the good days aren’t easy because I spend them dreading the bad days to come.

Or, My mother might actually be a horrible person, and yet I love her, so what does that make me?

And finally, The last man in the world I should want is the only one I do. And I’m still grappling with the fact that he wants me, too.

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