Page 49 of Cruel Summer

TWENTY-NINE

This was heartbreak. And it really hurt. It hurt all the way back to Oregon. It hurt as she took a ride service to her house from the airport. It hurt as she got into bed and went to sleep without texting anybody.

Two days. In two days she was meeting with Will. In that time, she was going to have to try to stand there looking a little bit less broken. Or maybe not. She wasn’t interested in anything fake. Not anymore.

She suddenly remembered her wedding ring. That it had literally been in her purse in a pouch for the last few months. She took it out and held it up.

It looked strange. Like it belonged to another woman.

In many ways, it did. She felt so much compassion for that woman.

That woman who had wanted her comfort beyond anything else.

Who had wanted what she knew. Who had wanted to be safe. Who had been ready to sit in her marriage, in her life, forever. She never would’ve questioned it. Never would’ve tested it. Not ever.

Now she had done more than just tested. She had shattered it.

She had taken that ring off her finger nearly four months ago with the full intention of putting it back on. She smiled through her tears as she realized that would never happen.

She swallowed hard and put it back in her purse.

She might keep it. She might give it back to Will. She didn’t know.

Two days.

Elysia and Whitney texted her to make sure she was okay, and that she was ready for everything to come with Will.

She texted them reassurance, but she still needed to sit in her own feelings.

She wasn’t quite ready for her girls’ night.

Someday. Someday maybe this would all be one of those stories that she told while laughing and drinking a mojito.

Except she barely ever drank, and she couldn’t imagine laughing about this.

She would love it if she could. If she could talk about her crazy sexcapades with Logan, about how big he was, and how many orgasms he could give her in a night. But it wasn’t about that.

It was too much hers to give to anyone else.

Especially now that she had no guarantee she would ever be with him like that again.

Everything hurt.

She hadn’t even considered the fallout for their daily life. How could she have?

But there was Chloe…

She wouldn’t let this hurt her relationship with Chloe.

Finally, it was time. Time for her to get in her lame-ass SUV and make her very last road trip.

From this town house she was renting to the place she had lived with Will for all those years.

The place where they had raised their children.

She drove slowly, taking in the familiar sites, consciously looking at everything through new eyes.

She drove slowly down their street. She hadn’t been on the street in four months.

The street that had been part of her every day. It felt weird to be here.

Slowly, very slowly, she turned into the driveway. Then she got out of her car, walked to the front door and unlocked it. She laughed when she walked in and saw it looked like they’d never left.

Like nothing had changed.

Everything had changed.

It was a good house.

It had been a good life.

But it wasn’t hers. Not anymore.

It had only taken one cruel summer to unravel all of it.

One cruel, devastating, necessary summer to make her see that what she’d thought was happiness had been her own stubbornness. Had been denial. Had been fear.

She was standing there in the center of this room that had been her life, when the light suddenly flicked on, and she turned to see Will standing in the doorway.

She waited. For a kick of excitement. For attraction. Something.

It was just Will. One thing that was strange was it was almost like it was just a Monday after a weekend away, not a whole summer. He was that familiar.

They hadn’t talked. Hadn’t texted. Not once, through this whole summer. She had no idea what he had done. What he had lived.

She looked down and noticed that on his left hand, he was wearing his wedding ring.

“Sam,” he said.

“Hi,” she returned.

“This is weird,” he said, stepping deeper into the living room.

“Yeah. It is.” She looked down at her own hand, which now felt resolutely bare.

Then she looked back up at him. “How was it?”

“It’s been kind of a long summer,” he said.

Not long enough.

She thought of Logan. Of each and every trip. Each car. Each mile down the road leaving this version of herself who had lived in this home further and further behind.

“I know what I want,” she said.

“I know you do. You were very clear about it from the beginning…”

“No,” she said, cutting him off. “I know what I want now.” She took a breath and dove right in, because she’d waited months. And she wasn’t waiting anymore. “Will, I want a divorce.”

She didn’t have Logan. She had absolutely no certainty that he would ever come back to her. She loved him. She loved him with everything she had, even though losing him hurt her.

She loved him.

But she wasn’t afraid to be alone. Whether she was with Logan or not, Will wasn’t the right thing for her. This wasn’t the right place.

“What?” He looked blindsided. Devastated. Perversely, she wanted to laugh. He might have been a mirror of where she was four months ago.

That idiot. What had he done with his summer?

“Yeah,” she said. “I think we should see other people. Only other people. I’m sorry, that was a bad joke. I swear to you I didn’t plan it.”

“But you said that you wanted to be with me. You wanted to separate because you couldn’t stand the idea…”

“I know. That was months ago. A lot has happened.”

“What?”

“Do you want that kind of honesty?”

“You’re asking me for divorce, why not?” he asked, sounding bitter and angry. How was that fair?

Of course it’s not fair. It’s feelings.

Feelings weren’t fair.

And he’d been the hero of whatever journey he’d been on this past summer, the same as she’d been on hers. She didn’t esteem his journey, but still.

“I fell in love,” she said.

The words landed hard. She could see that. Like a fist to his face.

“You got so angry at me because I wanted to have an open marriage, and then you went and fell in love with someone else?”

“Yes.” She didn’t take his bait, or tell him to save his outrage, even though she wanted to.

“I did. I learned something about myself. I can’t love more than one person at the same time.

Or rather, I can’t be in love with them.

You will always be the father of our children.

You will always be the man that I spent twenty-two years married to.

I care about you. I even mostly like you, even though I was mad at you before we split. But I’m not in love with you.”

He looked like he was processing the speech, but slowly. Trying to grasp at her words as best he could.

“You’re leaving me for another man?”

She shook her head. “No. It turns out that he doesn’t want…” A tear fell down her cheek, and she wiped it away. Here she was, crying about Logan in front of Will. But it felt really honest. She was out of everything but honesty.

She couldn’t offer easy. She couldn’t offer fake. She couldn’t offer anything but the truth.

“He doesn’t want the same things I do,” she said.

“So I’m not leaving you for him. I’m leaving you because I don’t think either of us should be in a marriage when we know we want something more .

I shouldn’t be married to you knowing that I can love someone more than I love you.

And you shouldn’t be with me knowing you want someone more than you want me. ”

“I was going tell you that I don’t… That you were right,” he said, his voice raw.

“I don’t want that. I tried it. At the end of the day, it’s just sex, Samantha.

There’s no one to go home to. There’s nobody to talk to.

There’s… None of them know me. You knew me.

You knew me when I was a teenager, and you saw things in me that nobody else did, and… ”

It was about him. All of it. What she gave to him, not how he felt about her.

She’d never been more certain of her decision. Of herself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That it took you all that time to realize that what we had was special. But I can’t be sorry that it took me this break to realize that what we had wasn’t enough.”

She was breaking him. In the way that Logan had broken her.

But this had nothing to do with her being afraid.

She was being brave. Will was just going back to what he knew.

Because it was all about him. He missed the way that she saw him.

He didn’t want to start a new relationship because he would have to get to know somebody.

They would have to get to know him. He didn’t want a new relationship because that woman wouldn’t be the mother of his children, giving him allowances and forgiveness because of their history.

She had jumped headlong into a relationship that was hard, and he didn’t want that, because she had spent twenty-two years making his life easy.

“You were right,” she whispered. “I wasn’t happy at the same time you weren’t. We were on the same page, Will. I just didn’t know it. You said it was…” Oh, she almost wanted to laugh. “You said you started feeling dissatisfied three years ago, and I can see now I did too.”

When she’d nearly kissed Logan, that should have told her everything.

Something was wrong in her marriage.

There were cracks.

She’d been so filled with pride that she’d chosen herself and Will, but she’d never asked herself why it had felt like a choice.

“We can work on that,” he said.

She would have wanted to four months ago. If he’d said he wasn’t happy, and he’d said he wanted to work to be happier with her, she’d have done it. She’d have kept on pushing it all down.

“I can’t. I spent the last four months working on myself. There are things I can’t go back to not knowing. It changed me. It changed everything.”