Page 59 of Merlot Marriage

The silence at my confession is so tense I can hear my neighbor’s car door slam outside. Do I break it? Why isn’t hetalking? I depend on him to know what to say to fill the quiet. I have no practice at being the yapper.

Finally, he breaks. “Are you going to take it?”

I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but the blunt question was not it. Startled, I say the only thing that pops into my mind. “Should I?”

“Why are you asking me now, if my opinion didn’t matter before the interview?” He pushes off the couch, pacing to the window and back. His back is to me, but the tension in his shoulders is clear.

The highs and lows of this conversation are coming faster and faster. And I’ve always hated roller coasters.

My next words come out small, the guilt at his hurt weighing them down in my throat. “Are you upset? You didn’t tell me about the job in Australia.” I pull the fuzzy pillow from behind me and hold it to my stomach, curling over it, holding myself together while Philip paces the room, looking anywhere but at me.

Finally, he stops, rounding on me. “A job I wasn’t actually going to take. Because I didn’t want to leaveyou.” He throws his hands up in the air, then resumes pacing. “I just. I thought we told each other everything. What other secrets have you been keeping from me? Anything else Cassie knows that I don’t?”

“I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret.”

If the hurt wasn’t written all over his face, I’d giggle at how his curls are standing up all over from the way he’s been pulling at them. Instead, I bite back tears as he speaks again, my heart being pulled apart at his reaction. He’s so upset, more than I would expect from the situation, and I can’t understand why.

I’ve seen him upset before—seen the thunderclouds build on his face and then dissipate again faster than I could react. But thisisdifferent. Bigger. A hurricane compared to his usual tempests.

“You did a rather good job of it, though.” He sits down on the couch, leaving a gap that might as well be the Grand Canyon between us. “I can’t believe you didn’t say anything after the other night. I thought we were on the same page.”

“We are on the same page, Philip.”

He doesn’t resist when I take his hand, but he doesn’t lace his fingers through mine like I hoped. Instead, he looks at me like I’m a stranger, sending a dagger through me.

“Are we?”

Another painful silence smothers us. One that I think I have to be the one to break. Only I don’t know how. I don’t know what to say to make it better when I don’t know what’s broken in the first place. How did everything fall apart so fast?

The silence stretches on longer and longer, until I drop his hand and snap. “Tell me how to fix this. What are you thinking?”

He doesn’t answer. Hands dangling between his knees and head bowed, my husband shakes his head, before pushing back up to his feet. “I need a minute.”

I swipe for his hand but miss, grasping empty air instead. “Wait, please. I don’t—” I choke on my words as I follow him to the front door. “What happened? Tell me what’s wrong, please. I don’t understand how we got here. I thought everything was fine, was good, between us?”

Philip doesn’t turn around, but he stops in the doorway, his hands braced on either side, heat hitting me full in the chest, adding to my burning confusion and pain. “What else don’t I know? What else haven’t we discussed? A day ago, I would have said I know everything about you. Now I’m realizing that I don’t. Do you want kids? A dog? A cat?”

When I don’t answer immediately, too shocked by the turn this conversation has taken, he turns, eyes glassy as he stares me down. “Would you have left me behind and moved? Moved on?”

“No, I…” I barely get the words out before he steps back. “You do know me. You know me better than anyone else, I promise.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

My heart matches each step he takes, beating as slowly as an executioner’s march. When he walks away, I don’t follow.

Philip

It takes me exactlyone hundred and ninety-two steps to realize that I’m an ass.

That’s how long it takes before Jono answers his phone with a worried, “Flip? Is this about the job? Because I just heard there’s a new hire joining next week, and if that’s you and you haven’t told me, I’m going to be right pissed. And if it’s not you, that’s good news because the poor sap is going to be working under George, and he’s a knob head.”

“I think I’ve made a mistake.” My confession is out before I stop my feet. Blinded by my angst, I’d wandered away from Ophie’s house, following the sidewalk through the complex. Finding myself on a greenbelt, I keep going while I sort out my thoughts.

The cloud of confusion and hurt that had made it impossible to stay inside and keep talking to Ophie dissipated the second the sun warmed my skin. Once again, the mood swings I’ve tried sohard to control got the better of me. Now I have a mess to clean up. But first, I need some sense smacked into me, courtesy of my brother.

“Well, that’s not news. What have you done now?” Jono asks, the tapping of his keyboard barely audible.

There’s an unoccupied bench just to my right. Changing directions, I head for it. “Ophie and I got into a bit of a row, and I think it’s my fault.”

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