Page 10 of Falling Again
“Go take a seat in your office,” Ginny ordered, marching to the front door and locking it. “I’ll be right back.” Ginny disappeared into her office. By the time Natalie was seated at her desk, Ginny was back with a bottle of wine and bag of old Halloween candy. She sprinkled the candy on the desk and twisted off the top of the wine.
“Do I even want to know why you have this stash?” Natalie asked, although she wasn’t upset about it.
“Back when I lived in New York, I made a point of having rations on hand for when the you-know-what hit the fan. It could be personal or professional, but I knew I needed something to dull the pain.” Pouring a splash of pinot noir into a coffee mug, Ginny slid the cup toward Natalie. “Drink, then talk.”
Natalie opened her third chocolate in as many minutes and barely chewed it. Her stomach was churning, and she knew she needed to get herself together. A mental tally of all the things she needed to do reordered itself in her brain...
Start running again...maybe pick up Pilates?
Failing that, limit to 5 pounds of chocolate a day—not counting any chocolate from syrup fights.
Only drink two glasses of wine a day—for heart health, naturally.
Reignite spark with Anthony.
Raise two future Nobel Prize winners—or at least not serial killers.
Find ten extra hours in the day to accomplish all of the above.
Natalie fell back into her chair and let out a breath. She hadn’t realized her breathing was erratic until after Trudy left. Yet she wouldn’t allow herself to be cross with the older woman; she was only the messenger. Natalie knew she needed to be angry with herself and Anthony for letting things get to this point.
Pulling herself back to the moment, and Ginny’s waiting gaze, she said, “I just realized our ten-year wedding anniversary is around the corner.”
“And you didn’t make dinner reservations?” Ginny asked, her own mug hovering mid-air.
“No, I needed my husband’s assistant to come and tell me. Shouldn’t I know that it’s coming? Shouldn’t I be excited to celebrate?”
Ginny studied her friend a moment before answering. “First, give yourself some slack. You are the busiest person I know, and you would have remembered eventually.” Natalie shrugged. “Second, you started N&G, like, barely a year ago. And last, but certainly not least, you have two kids under five. You have a lot on your plate.”
“But shouldn’t my husband be on my plate?” she asked, blinking past a surge of tears she wasn’t expecting.
Choosing her words, Ginny continued. “Yes. But give yourself some grace, Nat. I know you didn’t forget about Anthony. What’s going on?”
“Anthony saw me topless, and vice versa, for the first time inagesyesterday.”
Ginny raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
“It would be if we’d done anything about it. Both times we were cleaning up after the kids and didn’t even acknowledge it happened. Or I guess that it didn’t happen.”
Ginny paused, clearly unsure how to continue. “Has it been a while since you two—” she swirled her mug in the air, gesturing for Natalie to finish the sentence. Apparently, her friend wasn’t going easy on her this morning.
“Had sex? Yes. It’s been a while. It’s been so long that I don’t even remember the basic mechanics of the deed. And don’t even ask me when it was. Sometime between Otis’s conception and last Thursday.” Natalie sank back in her chair and groaned. “This is bad.”
“It’s not bad. Sex isn’t everything. Have you talked with Anthony about it?”
Focusing on her desk, Natalie shook her head. “No. And before you say anything, give me the dirt on you and Max. If you two can find a way back together, there’s hope for us.”
Ginny fidgeted with her hands, a tell that she was deep in thought. “I think it’s different.”
“How so?” Natalie asked, hoping against hope that Ginny had the magic potion to her marriage woes. Perhaps this was a special vintage pinot noir?
Shrugging, Ginny sipped from her mug until she realized it was empty. She placed it back on the desk and let out a little sigh. “It’s just that all relationships are different. And no one really knows what’s going on, except for the two people on the inside. My advice is to talk to Anthony. When I finally started talking to Max again it made all the difference. We never communicated before the divorce. He didn’t know how I felt, and I didn’t know how he felt.”
Natalie nodded, her heart burning with Ginny’s advice. She knew marriages––and all relationships––required work from both sides. She hoped her other half would be willing to put forth the effort. Lately she wasn’t sure what to expect from Anthony. And it scared Natalie more than she wanted to admit.
*
“Let me get this straight,” Anthony said to his father. His old man reclined back in a chair in Anthony’s office, clearly at home. The man had sat in Anthony’s seat for decades, and he was known to pop in for surprise visits when he got bored at home. Retirement wasn’t something Steven Snyder enjoyed. He missed the action, the gossip, the purpose. “You want me to take a week off during our busiest summer month?”
