Page 66 of Marlowe Banks, Redesigned
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Don’t pass off your comments as ‘nothing’ so if I get upset I look like I’m overreacting. I’m reacting. And I have every right to do it.” She caught herself slouching down in her chair. She straightened up, determined not to get small. “I said I thought we should cut ties for a while. You showed up on my doorstep. Don’t expect a thank-you.”
Kelvin shoved back his chair and stepped over to the counter. He was probably trying to pace, but her kitchen wasn’t big enough. All he could do was anchor himself to the peeling laminate counter and watch her from slightly further away.
“I only wanted to talk to you,” he said. “Not through a screen.”
“I don’t have anything to say that I haven’t already said.”
“A text isn’t a conversation.” He raked a hand through his hair. When his bangs fell forward, he swept them sideways, twisting at the strands while his eyes darted around the kitchen before settling on her face. They held there, as blue as summer skies and still achingly beautiful. “You know what this weekend is.”
“I do.”
“But you don’t care.”
“I didn’t say that.” Marlowe locked her arms more tightly against her chest so she wouldn’t play with her ring finger. She also wouldn’t tell Kelvin she’d recently fainted in a wedding shop, unable to fully let go of the alternate life she might’ve led. She couldn’t blame him for thinking about it, too, but this wasn’t the way to deal with those thoughts.
While she fought the urge to fidget, he let out another sigh over by the counter.
“You took me by surprise when you gave back the ring,” he said. “I didn’t know what to say. Half of me wanted to beg you to reconsider and the other half was so pissed off, I wanted you to hurt as much as you’d hurt me. It wasn’t fair. You dropped the bomb and left. You gave me no chance to respond in any kind of meaningful way.”
Marlowe forced her jaw to loosen and her shoulders to drop, though she suspected everything would tense up again any second. Kelvin sounded so reasonable but he always did at first, and if he was truly reasonable, he would’ve proposed a visit they could both plan for. He wouldn’t have ambushed her like this.
“All right,” she said as gently as she could. “Go ahead. Respond.”
He tapped his thumbs against the counter where he gripped it with both hands.
“This isn’t a debate tournament,” he said. “It’s meant to be a dialogue.”
She unfolded her arms and lowered her hands into her lap. She tried to sit still but she jabbed at her cuticles, forcing her thumbnail against her skin until it stung.
“At least help me understand,” Kelvin continued, still in position by the counter. “Everything was great for three years and then all of a sudden you threw it away.”
“I didn’t throw anything away. I made a choice I’d been considering for a while, one I thought would be best for both of us.” Blood beaded on her index finger. She sucked it off. “And everything wasn’t great for three years.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
“Actually, I did. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and blaming myself for not being clearer, but I’ve replayed our conversations over and over. Nothing happened ‘all of a sudden.’ I raised my concerns. Many times. You never listened.”
“Are youkiddingme?” Kelvin let out a huff before launching into an emphatic rebuttal, one that made Marlowe feel like she really was in a debate tournament, though her opponent relied on few facts and spoke with far more vitriol than the average debater. She let him rant without interruption until he finally sat down and agreed to let her speak.
While he frowned at her from across the table, she reminded him of several issues she’d raised while they were still together. The parties where he quickly vanished but allowed her no authority to make her own choices about when she came and went. The hijacked dates. The always-public gifts. This constant criticism and insidious little messages that her choices weren’t as valid as his. She’d brought all of this to his attention during the relationship. He’d dismissed her every time. If she was a different person—bolder, louder, more confident, more clear-headed, or simply less fallibly human—maybe she would’ve realized the gravity of the problems sooner. She might’ve articulated her points in a more definitive tone or language, but she wasn’t a different person. She’d done her best. When he rejected her concerns, she backed off. She deferred. She let him be right. Sometimes she even believed he was right, always willing to at least consider his viewpoint even though he was so quick to shut hers down. Going quiet had often seemed like her best option. Arguing didn’t do much good. She’d only get accused of nagging or being needy and irrational. Better to swallow her concerns and move on.
When she finished explaining, no doubt leaving out a hundred things she’d think to say later, she reached for her now-cold tea. Kelvin hadn’t touched his yet, either. He’d probably only set out the mugs so they each had something to do with their hands. For all of his faults, he was good about stuff like that, deeply perceptiveabout human behavior. It was one of the reasons she’d never fully trusted his supposed blindness to their relationship problems. He knew something wasn’t working. He’d chosen to bury it, too.
“If it was all so awful, then why did you agree to marry me?” he asked.
“Because I loved you. And our relationship wasn’t awful. So much of what we had was good. Great, even. I didn’t want to lose any of that. Sometimes I didn’t speak up when I was hurt or frustrated simply so we could hold on to whatever was going well. I wanted to snuggle in front of a movie, not fight again. But we got into some really bad patterns early on and nothing ever changed.” She gulped back her tea and got up to put her mug in the sink. She decided to scrub it out right away. It gave her something to do.
“You’re wrong,” Kelvin said behind her.
Marlowe stiffened without turning around. “About what?”
“If you’d told me all that, I would’ve heard it.”
She stifled a sigh. Then she faced Kelvin as she sagged against the counter.
