Tear You Apart Read online

  Back in the bedroom, Will’s almost fully dressed. My heart pangs. I want to crawl back into bed with him and make the world fade away, but that’s not the way reality works.

  “Hey,” he says. “I have to get going. I have some stuff I need to do today.”

  “Of course. Sure. I should get home, too.” I pull on my dress and find a hair band in my purse to make some sort of order of my hair. He’s still standing there when I’m finished.

  “I can’t find my other sock,” he explains.

  I want to laugh and cry at the same time, mostly because his look of consternation is as charming as everything else I ever discover about him. “It has to be around here. Did you look under the bed?”

  He lifts the dust ruffle, but the bed’s the sort that sits on a platform, and nothing can be lost beneath it. He’s clearly annoyed, so I don’t laugh. I look under the desk, the chair. I look on the other side of the bed and, finally, peeking beyond the armoire, I discover his single sock and hold it up, triumphant.

  “How’d you do that?”

  “I just kept looking until I found it,” I tell him.

  This is what it would be like, I think suddenly. Me and Will. Sharing a bed, a bathroom, looking at his sleep-rumpled hair in the morning. Having to help him find his socks. Domestic and normal and everything you already know you kind of hate.

  But it doesn’t feel as if I’d hate it with him, it feels exactly the opposite, and even though I know it’s all fantasy, I am overcome with emotion strong enough to make me sit on the bed. I can’t look at him. I can’t leave with him, both of us sneaking out in the clothes we came in with, hailing separate cabs in the rising light of day.

  “I’m going to, um....you go on ahead,” I tell him. “I need to finish getting ready.”

  But I can’t let him go without saying goodbye, so I walk him to the door, where we stand and stare at each other as if we should be shaking hands instead of embracing. He does, in fact, try to leave that way, and at the last minute I refuse to let this be the way we part. He sees it on my face, that look, and he pulls me close to kiss me. Once, twice, passion beneath sweetness, and even though it’s brief, the kiss takes my breath away.

  I hold on to him longer than is necessary, but then I let him go. Of course I let him go; there’s no other choice. He has a life, and so do I. No matter what I want, the sun has come up and the world will not fade away.

  When the door closes behind him, I put that song on repeat and listen to it ten times in a row while I shake and cry, pressing my fingertips to my eyes until I see color bursts of red and green and gold. Until I can force myself to breathe.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  When I let myself in through the front door, I’m not expecting anything beyond the possible hum of Maria’s vacuum and the sanctity of my bed for another few hours of sleep. My eyes are grainy, throat raw. If I feel like shit, I can only imagine what I look like.

  “I didn’t think you’d be home until later.” Ross, his suit rumpled, is in front of the fridge with a carton of orange juice in one hand. No glass. He looks appropriately guilty.

  I’m so happy I took the time to shower and make some semblance of order to my hair and face before I came home.

  “You know how Naveen’s kids are. Up at the crack of dawn. I figured I’d duck out early and get home. Lots to do today.” The lie tastes like butter and is as smooth. “I didn’t think you’d be back until tomorrow.”

  “Finished early,” my husband says. “Got a different flight.”

  We stare at each other across the kitchen, and I can tell he’s waiting for me to say something. About the juice, about his schedule, I don’t know what. But the truth is, I have nothing to say.

  In our bedroom, I strip out of my clothes, taking one surreptitious minute to lift the fabric to my face and breathe in the scent of Will’s cologne. It’s faint and fading away, and I can’t get enough of it. I shove my panties and bra to the bottom of the pile and go naked into the bedroom, where I dress myself in plain white cotton underwear. Sweatpants. I pull my hair on top of my head. I don’t look in the mirror.

  “What are you up to today?” Ross comes up behind me and, unexpectedly, puts his arms around me. He juts his chin into my shoulder blade.

  Every part of me tenses. “Not much. I thought I’d organize my office a little bit. Get caught up on some paperwork. I need to get to the grocery store. Do you want anything special?”

  His hands are moving over me. Rough and possessive. He presses between my legs. “How about some of this?”

  I can’t.

  But I do.

  And I give it everything I have, every talent or skill I’ve ever learned about how to lick and suck and caress. I know this man, every part of him. How to make him squirm. How to make him explode.

  I try to take the same from him, because Ross knows my body, or at least he used to, and sex was one thing that was always good between us, even when the rest of it wasn’t. But no matter what he does, how he touches me, all I feel is a growing sickness in my guts that becomes an actual physical nausea by the time he’s collapsed on top of me, panting and sweaty. I’ve never once felt guilty about being unfaithful to my husband, but this feels like cheating is supposed to.

  In the bathroom, forcing myself to sip water, I clutch at the sink with one hand and try to keep myself from puking. Ross, typically, doesn’t notice as he gets in the shower, talking the entire time about his business trip and the golf game he picked up for later in the day, and oh, by the way, the girls are coming home for dinner tonight, so I might want to get something good for dinner when I hit the store later.

  “Wait, what?” I splash my face with water and try to imagine turning around and saying “I’m leaving you.”

  I’m leaving you.

  He leans out of the shower. “Yeah. Message on the machine from Kat. She and Jac are both coming home with what’s-his-face and the other one.”

  Their boyfriends, part of their lives for years, now. “Jeff and Rich.”

  “Yeah. They’re all coming home tonight for dinner.” Ross closes the shower door. “How about your lasagna, Bethie? You haven’t made that in a long time. You make the best damn lasagna.”

  I’m leaving you.

  But I can’t say it, just like that. Not mere minutes after I had him inside me and he was saying my name over and over again like a prayer when he came. Not with our children on their way toward us right this minute for some unexpected reason.

  “Sure,” I say aloud. “Lasagna. That sounds great.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I haven’t been able to say it, but I have decided to do it. Leave him. And with that, everything is brighter. Somehow sharper. I’m looking at the world through a new filter, and feel off-kilter. Giddy, my stomach sick, and yet so much lighter I find it hard to believe I could ever have been anchored to the ground.

  I’m not happy, not exactly. But I am hopeful. Relieved. And, eventually, as the kitchen fills with all the delicious smells of the lasagna that’s Ross’s favorite, and chocolate chip cookie pie that Jac loves, and the special garlic bread with cheese Kat always requests, I’m at last calm.

  When Ross comes in to snag a sliver of pie the way he always does just before we sit down to eat, I don’t shoo him away as I’ve always done. I take a knife and cut him a piece, put it on a plate. Hand him a fork.

  “Life’s short,” I tell him when he looks surprised. “Eat dessert first.”

  I do not hate my husband, but I am going to be so, so glad to leave him.

  Dinner is cacophony. Jac and Kat, their boyfriends. Me and Ross. His parents, surprise guests who won’t stay more than an hour after dinner’s finished, even though Jac asks them to, specially.

  That’s a little suspicious, but I don’t think about it as I’m