Page 106 of Someone to Watch Over Me

“Yes, it was.” I hate how my voice shakes and tears fill my eyes. I want to be strong in my fury, but his words have devastated me.

He puts his arms around me from behind. “I’m not going anywhere as long as I’ve got you to love.”

“That’s what Jim thought, too.”

“I know, sweetheart, and in light of recent events, I never should’ve been flippant about dying.”

“Don’t ever be flippant about that with me again.”

He drops his head to my shoulder. “I won’t. I promise. I’m sorry I ruined our perfect night.”

I start to relax a bit thanks to his sincere regret.

“Come back to bed.”

I let him guide me back to the side of his bed that’s become mine. He helps me out of the robe and tucks me in, leaning over to kiss me before he goes around to his side and snuggles up to me. “I want to tell you something that I hope will make you understand my gallows humor a bit better.”

He slides an arm around me and rests his head on my shoulder. “After my dad died so suddenly, I didn’t believe it for a long time. Even seeing him laid out in the funeral home didn’t convince me that it’d really happened. So I started to make jokes about it with my friends, who laughed like the fools they were. Until one of them repeated some of my jokes in front of my mother, who was horrified by me. She immediately got me into counseling, where I was forced to talk about why I found my father’s death so incredibly funny. Needless to say, it didn’t take long with the counselor before I was sobbing my head off. It took me months to acknowledge what’d happened, and that could be the case now, too. If you joke about it, maybe you can pretend it never happened, you know?”

“I guess…”

“I know it probably sounds batshit crazy to joke about something so traumatic, and maybe it is, but everyone copes differently. Teenage Tom did not cope well with his father’s sudden death. Despite that flimsy excuse for bad humor, it’s something I never should’ve said to you.”

“I know you meant it as a compliment.”

“I truly did. Making love to you was like coming home to the place I’ve always been meant to end up.”

“If only you’d said that instead of the other thing.”

“Let’s erase the other thing and go with that as the first words I said to you after the best thing to ever happen to me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’d also add, I love you, Lexi.”

“I love you, too.”

After I say that, he seems to breathe a sigh of relief that the crisis has passed. I can’t recall the last time I’ve been that pissed off about anything, and I suppose it’s a healthy thing that he can make me mad like that and we can work it out.

Jim used to make me so mad sometimes, and he sucked at working it out. He’d walk away until I “got over it” or was tired of being mad. It was one of the things we really struggled with, especially as newlyweds.

Tom’s approach in immediately acknowledging his error and profusely apologizing is vastly superior to what I’m accustomed to. I’d like to think that Jim would’ve evolved into that sort of husband if he’d lived long enough, but I’m not sure he would have.

I don’t like to compare them because that’s not fair to either of them, but I want Tom to know that I appreciate his immediate ownership of the situation.

“Thank you for what you did when that happened.”

“You mean after I put my foot firmly in my mouth?”

“Yeah,” I say, smiling, “that. You owned it, and you apologized right away, and that means a lot to me.”

“I never want to say or do anything to upset you or add to your grief. I hate that I did.”

“It’s okay. I suppose we were bound to hit a snag at some point.”

“I wish it hadn’t happened after the best thing ever.”

I squeeze the hand he’s placed on my belly. “It doesn’t take anything away from that.”

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