Page 13 of I'm Not Done with You Yet

“Oh, I just went to Safeway. Just wanted to get some...” Some what? “Stuff. Some Swedish Fish.” I hate Swedish Fish. I don’t know why that popped into my head.

“I thought you don’t like Swedish Fish.” It comes out as an accusation, which immediately makes me bristle, because if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s my husband using that tone of voice with me.

“I just had a sudden craving for them.” How many times can I say the word “just”?

Ted looks at me, and for a second, I wonder what made me agree to marry this man. We never had the same chemistry that Thalia and I had. I never wanted to carve my name into the curves of his heart the way I fantasized doing with Thalia. I never had the need to leave an imprint of myself on him. I think back to five years ago, when I met him at the most basic of all places—a Starbucks.

Someone had taken my drink, and Ted had seen my confused, about-to-be-enraged expression and bought me another latte. And I remember thinking then that here’s a nice, safeperson. I’ve had enough of my own un-niceness, of the disaster I had left Oxford in. I was only in my twenties, but already my life had been a series of mishaps and tragedies. I was ready for nice and safe, and if ever there were two words to describe Ted, they’re “nice” and “safe.” Of course, over time the veneer of niceness became abraded, whether by natural wear and tear or maybe he’d rubbed against my sharp edges one too many times. Now, as I look at him, I realize that those two qualities that had attracted me to him have turned into the bars of my jail cell. He’s still nice, but in a very conscious, calculating way that serves to highlight my own lack of niceness. And he’s still safe, but it comes in the form of this cumbersome house, which we will only manage to pay off seventeen years later, its presence holding us back from making any brash financial choices. I’m in a prison made out of polite words and a steady mortgage, and the bars had descended so gently that I hadn’t felt them coming.

I know what he’s about to say before he says it, and there’s a moment where I see myself lunging at him with something sharp—maybe the letter opener that ended my time at Oxford prematurely. I see the glinting point of it pressing into his skin, making a small indentation at first, and then finally breaking through, its tip parting the skin silkily, so smoothly that not a sound is made as it goes past skin and fat and into flesh and bone. Not a single sound.

Then he says it and breaks the spell.

“Can I have some?”

He doesn’t like Swedish Fish either; nobody likes Swedish Fish, and he’s only asking me this because he knows that I haven’t, in fact, been to Safeway, and I haven’t, in fact, bought any Swedish Fish.

“They were out.” And if he drives to the store to check, then I will know our marriage is truly over.

“Aw, that’s a shame. Okay.” He stays there for a second too long, still watching me with those watery blue eyes of his—who would’ve known that blue eyes could look unattractive—then he turns, scratching his belly, and slouches out of the room. The wooden boards sing as he treads on them. Just like that, he’s once again magically lost the ability to walk without making noise.

I wait until he’s out of earshot before releasing my breath. Jesus, that was close. I open up my underwear drawer, then shut it again. Too obvious. I go into the bathroom and open up cabinets and drawers before finally spotting the boxes of tampons that I buy in bulk at Costco. Perfect. Ted is the kind of guy who winces every time the subject of menstruation comes up, as though it’s hurting his delicate senses. He’d never look in here. I open one of the giant boxes, stuff the wad of cash in it, and tuck the box in the farthest reaches of the cabinet.

Later, I wait until after dinner (massaman curry; nothing as basic as pasta, though Ted complains that I have put too many cloves in) before I skulk off to the bathroom and then come hurrying back with a somewhat excited smile on my face. Not too excited, mind, because we don’t want Ted to get suspicious.

“Hey, guess what?” I hate the way my voice sounds—so artificial, so conscious of itself.

Ted glances up from the TV. He’s watching a food travel show on YouTube where some white guy is in rural Vietnam eating bugs. We’ve never been to Vietnam, but the other day, I heard Ted saying to his friends over Fortnite that he loves authentic pho, the kind you could only get at alleyways in Saigon.How the hell would you even know what authentic pho from thealleyways of Saigon tastes like, I wanted to scream, but I restrained myself, because that’s what marriage is about. Restraint, control, folding myself up into as tiny a square as possible. “Look what they’re eating, babe,” he says, turning back to the TV. “Look how huge those water bugs are. Revolting. I mean, no disrespect, of course.” Of course not. Never any disrespect from Ted, the woke white man.

I lick my lips and swallow. Try again. “So I just got a sort of exciting email from Toni. You know, my agent.”

“Oh?” Ted brightens up and finally gives me his full attention. “Did your last book earn out?”

The knife in my gut twists. He knows my sales have been lackluster. The idea of earning out my measly advance is laughable, given how little publicity my publisher has given my books. He’s only making that his guess to set the bar impossibly high, so that when I inevitably fail to meet it, we’ll both know what a disappointment my writing career is. What a disappointment I am. It’s his way of putting me back in my place.

Normally, this would enrage me enough to pick a fight with him, bicker over stupid shit like him leaving his crap everywhere, but tonight, I won’t be distracted from my goal. Not when the goal is Thalia. So I force a smile and say, “No, I haven’t earned out.”

He sighs, but before he can turn back to the TV, I quickly say, “But I emailed Toni about the possibility of going to SusPens Con, and she thought it was a really great idea.”

“Hmm,” he grunts, already getting swallowed up by the video, in which the Woke White Guy is explaining to us that bugs have a ton of protein and are really good for you, so we should get over our fear of them and start crunching down on their hard little bodies.

This is good, actually. Since he’s not really paying attention, I don’t have so much heat on me. I let the words out in a rush. “Anyway, she emailed my publisher and they agreed and said they’re going to pay for my trip and my tickets to the con.”

“Wait, what?” Now I’ve got his attention. He actually presses the Mute button, plunging us into sudden deafening silence. There’s nothing acting as a buffer, and I find it disconcerting, like, sorry, Ted, I know I asked for your attention but I don’t actually want it, or rather I don’t want a hundred percent of it, maybe just sixty percent so your bullshit radar doesn’t ever ping. “Did I hear you right? Harvest Publishing is sending you to a con? On their dime?”

I’m trying hard to get a read on his emotions, picking apart his words and his tone frantically to gauge just what he’s thinking. Is that sarcasm I detect? No, I think he’s genuinely surprised, and why wouldn’t he be? It is surprising. Harvest is a small independent publisher, not even one of the big indies but a small one whose advances average low four figures. That’s not the kind of house that can afford to send its midlist authors to cons, especially cons that are on the other side of the country.

I don’t know if Ted’s aware of all these semantics, and my whole body is taut, waiting to see if he’ll spot it, if he’ll smell the whiff of bullshit. And what he might do if he were to detect it.

Slowly, dreadfully, my head inches forward. Then back. A nod.

And then suddenly he’s up from the couch, this big bear of a man coming at me, and everything inside me shrieks. If I had a knife in my hand I would have stabbed him with it and called it self-defense, and I wouldn’t have been lying.

But I only stand there, rooted, because the saying “flight or fight”? It’s wrong. It’s flight or fight or fucking freeze and that’sme; that’s what I’ve always done. I freeze and my husband comes at me and he—

Hugs

Me.

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