Page 14 of A World Without You
“Jesus! Olivia, it must have gotten down to twenty-five degrees last night.” He holds me tighter. My bones ache and not from the cold of the night. “Did you take an edible last night? How could you sleep like that? You hate being cold.”
I let out a low laugh. “Why does everyone think I took an edible last night?”
I bite my lip realizing it was only Colin. In my dream. Telling me not to mix edibles and wine together. I run a hand down my tired face, stepping out of his arms slowly and walking over to the Christmas tree to plug it in.
“Who’s everyone?” Graham asks, following my footsteps. “Who were you with?”
“No one.” I shake my head. It’s a wonder, though. How did I not freeze to death in my car last night? My joints don’t even hurt from the cold of the night.
“You probably need a hot bath. I could make you some coffee or something,” he offers. His hovering and rambling make me uncomfortable.
“I’m okay,” I say instead.
“Olivia,” he says, his deep and warm voice rushes over me like a memory. “We need to talk.”
I turn to face him. “I think we’ve said all there is to say. I’m going to shower and head to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. Also, please just sign the papers before I leave, and I’ll mail them in.”
“I’m not ready to lose you,” he says—a breath with an ache strangling the backend of his words.
For a split second, I want to apologize. I want to make this better—make this right. Maybe it would be easier to just stay together. But I wonder for how long. I wonder when we’ll fall back into our incompatibility.
“You already have,” I answer, remembering my courage. “I’m not going to convince you to love me well. You should just want to.”
“So, what? You’re just going to run back to the city to a bunch of mucky men in suits who don’t even know how to change the oil in their cars?”
I step forward, my gaze blazing. “It doesn’t matter because I know how to change my own fucking oil!”
He laughs, low and condescending. “Not when you turn back into a city girl and abandon everything you know.”
“No, that was what I did for you.” I wipe the tear on my cheek and fling it from my fingers.
He licks his lips and presses them together.
“You said you wanted to share your life with me. But you didn’t share it. You just expected me to mold myself into it.”
He pauses with the pain of my words. “What happens now?” his voice breaks as he looks around the room.
The pine floors. The leather couch. The stone fireplace. The fake Christmas tree.
“We call it even,” I say. My chin trembles. Adrenaline surges through me as my mind prepares my heart for my next words. “We let the last five years be a memory. And you sign the papers.”
Everything about him is silent. His face is expressionless, his movements nonexistent. His breathing stills.
I gently rub the scar on my left arm, waiting for him to respond. I glance at the papers still on the kitchen island. “I’m not asking for anything. You get the house. I don’t want alimony. Nothing. Seriously, Graham, sign the papers.”
He raises his gaze from the floor to me. “I loved you, Olivia. You know that, right? We could still make this work—”
I shake my head, cutting him off. “Sign the papers.”
“Why?”
“Because one, I’m asking you to let me go. And two, you just referred to loving me in the past tense.” I swallow as emotion continues to climb up my throat, scraping and burning as I realize how this is ending. “And maybe that’s where I should stay.”
His jaw goes slack and his eyes look lost. In a memory. A dream. An idea he once had of how falling in love with me would go.
I don’t wait for another response. I slip down the hallway and into the bedroom. I find jeans and a sweater along with a clean bra and panties and take them with me to the bathroom to shower and change. It’s so different from the shower in my dream. A rich, dark mahogany vanity. Concrete floors. A giant walk-in shower with river rock on the floor and slate covering the walls. I helped pick each material out for this shower when he built it, and yet, I don’t see myself in any of it. And not just here in the bathroom. The bedroom. The living room. The kitchen. I realize the majority of my input in the design elements derived from my trying to fill a role. A role I failed miserably at.
I couldn’t just be the wife.
