When he kissed me, I would pull away abruptly at the last second, just enough so he would feel my haste.
His silence in response to my little acts of war only increased the animosity that was beginning to grow inside me, a pot on the cusp of bubbling over that needed to be tamed. I hated the way we felt like roommates, milling around each other but never engaging. Suddenly it had become my fault, my doing that we had fallen into this loop of impassiveness. My one-sided games had turned on me. And yet I wanted to scream at him for doing this to us. He was the guilty party, yet here I was . . . the only one in pain.
He surprised me one night after dinner. We had another one of our nearly silent meals. I got up and took our plates to the sink when he spoke.
“You have to stop doing this, Isla.” His voice broke through, and I froze for a second.
“What do you mean?” I shook the plates into the garbage. A few peas spilled onto the floor.
“I don’t think I have to explain. You’ve been punishing me these last few months. And do I deserve it? Yes. But at some point, we’ve got to try to move on.”
I whirled around. “Why is it that I have to be the one to fix this? You’re the one who did this to us.”
My words instantly made me feel more childish than ever.
He put his head down and rubbed the sides of it.
“How many more times do I have to say I’m sorry? Because whatever the number is, I don’t think it will ever be enough.”
It suddenly dawned on me that I had perhaps pushed too far. That I had been too harsh for his actual actions.
Who am I trying to punish?
“Are you saying that you don’t want to move on?”
He stared at me blankly. “I’m saying . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what to do to make this right—”
“What do you want, Sawyer?” I asked loudly.
“What do I—”
“Yes. What is it that you want? Out of this. Us.” I motioned all around, as if the kitchen deserved a tour.
“I want . . .” He sighed. “I want for you to be happy.”
He got up and went outside, the front door shutting firmly.
I held the plate down at my side, my shoulder drooping from the weight of it. I left the kitchen just as we were. Dirty, messy, and lived in. I went to our room and slept, waking up the next day to find him already gone to work.
The bedroom felt as cold as my insides. I rubbed my arms and tried to remember the last time we had woken up without a dull, aching dread. Wondering how much longer we could go on like this before it set in permanently, a suction on our marriage that could never be lifted.
He came home that night later than usual. I had already gone upstairs to take a shower. I didn’t hear him come in or go up the stairs. When I stepped out of the shower, he startled me, but I made no noise. He stood straight on and stared at me. I had never felt so exposed, so unconditionally naked. The water dripped down my nose and I wiped at it and then instinctively covered my breasts.
“Don’t,” he said quietly.
I pulled my hands down. He looked over every inch of my bare body, as if it were the first time he was seeing it. I was almost thirty and had already begun to feel the differences from my twenty-year-old self. This body was now a little softer, a little worn. There was less tautness but more that curved. Did he see those changes? Was he taking note of it all?
He looked straight into my eyes, and it made sense, like a math equation that had finally been solved.
I was seen.
His hands went from the sides of my waist up to my neck and he pulled me in.
“It’s you. It will always be you,” he said, his lips moving against mine.
I gripped his shoulders and he held me up and hoisted me onto the counter. We breathed in and out together with such force, incensed with each other and loving each other all at once. He let go when he came, and I yelled out once. He was shaking and we stayed together, my wet hair cold, strands falling onto his back.
I wish I had never let go.
Four months later we bought an old farmhouse outside the Cities. The day the real estate agent showed it to us, the white paint faded and in shambles, the front porch swing halfway hanging, we looked at each other and knew.
This would not be another “for now” house. This was our house.
A tiny ocular window high up in the front, with blue and yellow panes of stained glass, shone with possibilities. We spent the next couple months pouring everything we had into restoring the house. The bones remained but so much had to be renewed. We stripped all the walls of the old wallpaper, dried out and peeling. We replaced it with a fresh coat of paint, put shiplap in the entryway, and added a thick marble slab for the kitchen counter. There was still so much to be done but we had all the time in the world to finish it . . . or so we thought. That’s what everyone always thinks, a little white lie that slips deeper and deeper into darkness.
Somehow, we had also restored ourselves. We weren’t the same Isla and Sawyer. That would never be possible. But we had come out together still clinging, still hoping for a life well lived.
One with each other.
CHAPTER 44
ISLA
1996
There was once a little girl who stole a knight.
The little boy learned her name and then dropped it in the grass. He ran away and she bent down to get a closer look. The grass was soft and dewy from the morning, her fingers nearly slipped picking it up, heavy in her small hand. A tiny knight that she would keep close.
