Page 69 of The Wife
With that he stormed out of the kitchen and I heard him go upstairs. I was so startled by it, it took me a few minutes to react. Except I knew what I had to do.
I followed him upstairs and made my way down the hall to his bedroom. The door was open. He was sitting on the bed, his elbows on his knees, his hands linked.
“I’m sorry,” I said from the doorway. “I know it’s not joke. It was a big deal and I was trying to… I’m scared, Jake. About today, about next week. All of it. I was trying to cover up for that.”
He glanced up at me and his eyes were intense.
“Would you believe me if I said I was scared too?”
“No. You’re Jake Talley. A badass cowboy, and you’re not afraid of anything.”
He nodded. “Are we doing the right thing?”
“Yes,” I said quickly before I could say anything else. Still, it was the best answer. I don’t know why, but I was certain of it in my gut. We needed to take this step, to get to whatever the next step was.
“We better get ready then,” he finally said.
“Okay. Let’s do this.”
* * *
Jake
Iwas supposedto do this. I was supposed to sit in this small conference room, as Howard called it, and do this. Ellie was sitting across from me in her graduation dress. The blue one with the small white flowers. It was too lightweight for the weather today, but it was her favorite and this was supposed to be some kind of event.
So I was supposed to sit here and not think about pulling her across the table, undoing the belt around her waist, ripping her panties off and giving Howard a show he would not soon forget.
No, I was not supposed to be doing that. Instead I was divorcing my wife.
“If you want to read through the documents, it’s everything I’ve already discussed,” Howard said.
I didn’t want to read the document. I didn’t want to be in this conference room.
I didn’t want to divorce my wife.
I wanted to fuck my wife.
Howard slid the divorce decree in front of me. He did the same with Ellie. All I had to do was take hers and mine and tear them up. Grab her hand, tell her she was coming home and that this was over.
I couldn’t. Because she would never believe it was what I truly wanted. And I would never believe it was what she truly wanted. We would always fall back on the circumstances. How we got here. Not why we were here.
This was our only option.
I wanted her to have this chance. I wanted her to go to college and meet new people and learn new things. I wanted her to have that opportunity to grow.
I didn’t want it at my expense. Which was incredibly selfish of me, I guess.
I took a deep breath. I had to be strong enough for the two of us. I hadn’t been last night. Last night I’d been weak. But when she gave me her little speech, offering her virginity as my last and best Christmas gift, she’d been right. We’d both known how this was going to end, so there were no surprises.
One time—well, two if you counted this morning (which I wasn’t going to rank, but what had been without a doubt the most amazing fucking blow job of my life. Mostly I think because it was Ellie), and that was it.
Now we went our separate ways.
Only I didn’t want to go anywhere she wasn’t going.
I looked at her across the table. She had the pen in her hand. She seemed to be reading the document. She was probably pretending like I was. Then she looked up at me. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but suddenly I felt like I was in a game of chicken. That whoever blinked first would lose.
I picked up the pen next to me and toyed with it. I could say no. I could make this not happen. I could convince her this was wrong. After last night I’m certain she would agree.
