Page 1 of Unrealistic Expectations

CHAPTER ONE

Communication is key. Without open lines of communication—the real, vulnerable kind that you have when you’re asking for your needs to be met—any relationship is doomed.

—Jessica Gallagher, PhD, licensed clinical therapist

When Jessica Gallagher returned to her condo the day before the release of her first book, there were movers hauling out furniture and boxing up things in closets. She checked to make sure she hadn’t gotten off the elevator on the wrong floor before entering the condo she shared with her boyfriend, Luke. Maybe there’d been some sort of plumbing emergency while she’d been gone, and they had to temporarily move some of their things? She checked her phone. Luke would have told her about any domestic disasters. No texts. No voice mails. Not even a missed call.

And it looked like the movers were only hauling out Luke’s furniture. Her heart kicked up speed as she dodged a guy carrying the massage chair. Maybe Luke had finally listened to her about how ugly it was and was getting rid of it?

Something in her gut told her that Luke had not just decided to redecorate. “Luke?” She walked further into the apartment, stubbed her toe on a box, and almost tripped. “Son of a bitch.” She looked down into the box to find that it contained medical textbooks.

She limped into their bedroom and found Luke standing in their walk-in closet, tossing his shoes into boxes. He was in scrubs, so he must have just come off call. He should be asleep, not packing. She stood there, bewildered, for a long beat.

It took Luke a second to realize that she was standing behind him. He’d always been absentminded, but Jessica had convinced herself that it was just because he was a brilliant medical mind who didn’t have the brain space to keep track of his keys or the laundry that needed to be done or take-out orders he was supposed to pick up. But, right now, it infuriated her.

“What the fuck is going on?”

That startled Luke out of his furious packing. He turned, and his normally pale skin was tomato red. Probably because Jessica rarely yelled, but she was yelling now. “I... uh... I was going to tell you—”

“Tell. Me. What?” She’d managed to quiet her voice, but she knew there was still rage in her tone. “Because it looks like you are moving out of our home. And that seems weird to me, because you haven’t said anything about us moving somewhere new together. So this must mean that you are moving someplace else on your own. Which is also weird, because you haven’t mentioned anything about wanting to break up. But of course this means we’re breaking up. People don’t just live together for a decade and then not live together but remain romantically involved. Especially when they’ve been talking about having a baby.” Jessica took a step toward Luke, and he wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Do they?”

Everything below her neck was cold and numb, and she couldn’t hear anything but her own thoughts screaming at her.

“Listen—”

“That’s all I do, all day. I listen to people.” For some reason, him telling her to listen to him, when she’d been his steady confidant for the majority of his adult life, made her want to scream. She’d often felt a little superior, despite herself, during sessions with clients who talked about having screaming arguments with their partners.

She and Luke had never had a screaming argument. They had discussions and made agreements. They—well, she—expressed feelings and needs, and Luke tried to meet them. They’d never been the kind of couple to make rash decisions or even the kind of couple who went to bed angry. Because they never made each other angry. Irritated—yes. So angry that she wanted to drag him out of the closet by his receding hairline and demand answers—no.

“I was going to tell you last night, at dinner.”

“You were going to tell me that you were moving out and abandoning our relationship last night, at dinner? The special dinner that we were having to celebrate the release of my book?”

Luke flinched. “You just seemed so excited about your little book, and I couldn’t stand to see you upset.” He made a lame hand motion at her. “Like this.”

“I’m not upset right now that you’re moving out. I’m glad you’re moving out. If you weren’t moving out right now, I would be tempted to kill you and then retile the bathroom with your rotting bones behind the new tile.”

“That would really start to stink after a while... the decomposition.”

“I would dissolve your flesh with lye.” This was probably not the time to make jokes about murdering him, but that had always lightened the mood before. He’d joke about giving her an air embolism in her sleep. She’d imply that she could deadlift his body easily enough to hide it—all the while knowing that they were adults, and they’d made a commitment to one another.

“You really do watch too much true crime.”

“You mean that I watch too much television, when I’m at home, waiting for you.” The only reason that she’d ended up writing the book was that she had most of her evenings and weekends on her hands and shows about murder had started to give her nightmares.

Luke put his hands on his hips and looked down at his feet. They’d had this conversation before, but the stakes had never been this high. Even though she’d had her moments of feeling lonely with him, their relationship had never been about their passion for each other—she’d thought that they were both passionate about the life they’d built together. He might have chosen her because she was convenient, but she’d chosen him because he’d never once made her worried that he would abandon her. He’d never given any indication that he wasn’t ready to stick around for the long haul—not until now.

But here she was, standing in her half-empty closet, looking at a man that she’d spent almost her entire adult life with become someone she didn’t recognize—someone who would leave her without warning. She’d been grateful at the beginning of their relationship that he’d been kind and friendly and it seemed to come from a place of wanting to get to know her, not from any compulsion to see what he could get from her.

“Is this because we haven’t been having sex?” Their sex life had never been bad, but it also hadn’t rocked her world at the very beginning—or the very end, it seemed. Over the last fifteen years, they’d gotten into a good rhythm. And most long-term couples didn’t have much sex. That aspect of their relationship had never been the most important thing to Jessica, and she hadn’t thought it was that important to Luke, either. But the way his skin flushed, when she asked him that, told her that she’d been making assumptions about their sex life, too.

Luke finally met her gaze again. “I care about you, and I want you to be happy.”

“So, you were planning to disappear without telling me?” Jessica was shrieking again, and Luke looked a little befuddled. But that didn’t stop him from pulling the few articles of clothing he hadn’t packed off the rack. “You think I’d be happy about you leaving without a word? Without a discussion? Without even trying to work out whatever is making you unhappy?”

“I knew that if we had a discussion, you’d get me to go to couples counseling, and we’d talk things out like logical adults. And I’d never really leave, but neither of us would ever be happy.” Luke sounded so defeated, and Jessica started shaking. Her body literally could not hold on to the shock.

“It almost sounds like you feel like a prisoner... in our life.”

---