Page 28 of Say Something
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I was back in the hardware store Wednesday afternoon, frustrated and sweaty; my clothes streaked with two shades of paint.
I’d managed to finish painting my small bathroom that morning, and then I made it halfway through the bedroom before the wooden extension pole for the paint roller Michael and I had just purchased snapped right in half. Yeah, I might have been applying a little too much pressure, but I was getting tired. Painting was no joke. Thank goodness I’d agreed to let Michael and Dean paint the ceilings with their fancy spray machine because there was no way I would have been able to hold the roller over my head to do that job. I rubbed my poor, sore arms. I needed to find a gym, stat.
I picked out a metal pole, smacking my hand against its length for good measure. I smiled at the inanimate object—it passed my silly little inspection—and turned away from the shelf to head to the cash register, almost running right into Danny.
“Whoa,” he said, placing his hands on my arms to steady me. “Easy there, killer.”
I found myself smiling at the odd endearment. He’d called me “killer” in the past often, when referring to my feisty side—in the most loving way, of course. Danny didn’t know how to be anything but loving. I hadn’t seen that feisty girl in a long, long time. Neither had he.
“You’re not going to hit me with that, are you?” he asked, gesturing to the pole in my hands.
I looked down at it and absently shook my head. “Painting,” I told him.
“Me, too,” he said, holding up a pack of paint brushes.
I nodded. This was awkward. I didn’t want it to be awkward. I didn’t know what I did want it to be but awkward definitely wasn’t it. We had too much history for it to be awkward, then again, it wasbecausewe had so much history that itwasawkward.
I sighed, frustrated, but I made no move to leave. Being in his presence calmed my constantly racing thoughts. It wasn’t like this when we ran into each other at the diner or even when I’d seen him at the bar. But something changed...at the park...the barrier I’d erected, the Danny deterrent, it was gone.
He lifted his hand and touched a lock of hair that had came loose from my ponytail. “I like the color,” he noted.
I looked at the strand in his hand, my eyes widening at the whiskey paint streak.
Shit. He wasn’t supposed to see that.
“It’s my favorite color,” I told him.It’s the color of your eyes,I thought to myself. I didn’t say my thoughts aloud, but he knew. It’s what I said when I chose the same color for the bedroom of our townhouse all those years ago.
Those whiskey eyes were brighter than they’d been the last few times I saw him. Less sad. It was as though my confession had given him a hope he hadn’t had before. I felt guilty for that, but I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to be feeling, or why I was supposed to be feeling it. I was so confused.
“Do you need any help?” he asked, surprising me. He looked like saying the words physically hurt, like acid on his tongue. Which is probably why I didn’t shoot him down. I think I surprised him as much as I surprised myself when the next four words came out of my mouth.
“I’d love some help.”
***
“Shit.”Shit, shit, SHIT!What in the hell had I just gotten myself into? I just invited my ex-husband to my new home to help me paint my bedroom the same whiskey brown color as our marital bedroom...the same color as his eyes!
“Ohmygod. Ohmygod.” I bopped my forehead against the steering wheel one, two, three times as I sat at the one stop-light in Oak River.
Why did I say he could help? What was I thinking?
I wasn’t thinking. That was the problem.
No, that wasn’t true. Iwasthinking. I was thinking that I couldn’t bear to see rejection on his face one more time. I couldn’t bear to see the pain behind his eyes. The moment he’d offered to help, I saw it. Quick like a camera shutter, that pain of his. It was there, like he’d forgotten who he was talking to for a moment and just offered some neighborly assistance, then he remembered and snap.
When I agreed...his eyes turned a shade of greenish-brown I’d never seen before. Well, that’s not entirely true either. I had seen them that color before. On our first date. When we’d had our first kiss. Said “I love you” for the first time. Our first time making love. Our wedding day…
The fact that a tiny, insignificant moment of me accepting his help ranked up there with those once in a lifetime relationship milestones for him really said something about the way things had become between us. At the end of our marriage, I wouldn’t have accepted Danny’s help with the car door, so this really was something. A breakthrough of sorts.
But what did it mean?
Did it have to mean something?
I wished I could get out of my head. Just for one day.
I pulled into my driveway. Danny gracefully bought me some time, saying he needed to run home to change into appropriate painting gear. He’d been wearing ragged clothes at the hardware store, but I think he knew I needed a minute to process. Always considerate, always intuitive. They were two of the many reasons I fell so head over heels in love with him all those years ago.
