Page 23 of The Big Race

Breathing Room

B ack in our hotel room that evening, I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at my hands. They were steady now, but I could still feel the phantom sensation of gripping the bungee cord, the moment of absolute terror before the leap transformed into something else entirely.

Ray emerged from the bathroom, toweling his hair dry. He’d been quieter than usual since we’d returned from the Stop’n’Go, and I wondered if he was processing something too.

“You know what’s funny?” I said, breaking the comfortable silence.

“What?” Ray settled onto his own bed, facing me across the narrow space between us.

“I keep expecting to feel different. Like conquering that fear should have changed me fundamentally somehow.” I flexed my fingers, studying them as if they might reveal some secret. “But I’m still just me. Still the guy who makes multiple to-do lists and reads user manuals cover to cover.”

Ray smiled softly. “But you’re also the guy who jumped off a bridge today. That’s not nothing, Jeffrey.”

“No, it’s not.” I looked up at him, feeling something unfamiliar in my chest—pride, maybe. When was the last time I’d felt genuinely proud of myself for something that wasn’t work-related? “I’m proud of myself. Is that weird to say?”

“Not weird at all. You should be proud. What you did today...” Ray shook his head. “I’ve been doing physical challenges my whole life, and I’ve never seen anyone face down a fear like that. The way you just decided to jump, despite being terrified.”

His words warmed me in a way I hadn’t expected. Ray had always been generous with encouragement, but this felt different somehow. More specific, more seen.

“It wasn’t really deciding,” I said thoughtfully. “It was more like... stopping the decision. Does that make sense? All my life, I’ve overthought myself out of things that scared me. Today, I just... stopped thinking and jumped.”

“Maybe that’s what courage really is,” Ray said. “The decision to act despite fear.”

I studied his face, noting something subdued. “What about you? You looked like you were processing something down there.”

Ray was quiet for a moment, his hands fidgeting with the towel. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer than usual.

“Watching you jump... it made me realize something about myself that I don’t particularly like.”

“What?”

“I’m not actually brave at all,” he said, the words coming out in a rush. “I mean, I am with physical stuff—heights, speed, competition. That stuff has never scared me. But the things that really matter, the emotional risks...” He trailed off, shaking his head.

I felt a shift in the air between us, the sense that we were approaching something important. “Like what?”

Ray looked down at his hands. “Like admitting when I’m struggling. Like asking for help when I need it.” He glanced up at me briefly before looking away again. “Like having conversations about what’s wrong instead of pretending everything’s fine until it’s not.”

The weight of what he wasn’t saying hung between us.

I thought about all the times in our marriage when Ray had withdrawn into training or work rather than talking about whatever was bothering him.

How he’d soldier through difficulties with that stubborn determination that I’d once found admirable and had gradually come to recognize as avoidance.

“That’s a different kind of courage,” I said carefully.

“Yeah, and apparently I don’t have it.” Ray’s laugh was bitter. “I can throw myself off a mountain without hesitation, but ask me to have an honest conversation about my feelings? Terrifying.”

I wanted to reach out to him, but something held me back. We were in delicate territory here, circling around truths that neither of us was quite ready to name directly.

“Is that what happened?” I asked quietly. “Before... before the race. Were you struggling with something you couldn’t talk about?”

Ray’s hands stilled on the towel. For a long moment, the only sound was the air conditioning humming in the background.

“I felt invisible,” he said finally, so quietly I had to strain to hear him. “Not physically, but... essentially. Like I was going through the motions of being myself without actually being myself, if that makes sense.”

It made more sense than I wanted to admit. How many evenings had I come home to find Ray watching TV or organizing his gear, both of us moving through our routines without really connecting?

“When did that start?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Gradually, I think. Leo left for college, and suddenly it was just the two of us again, but we’d forgotten how to be just the two of us. You had your work, I had my training, and we were like... roommates who happened to share a bed.”

The observation stung because it was accurate. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Ray looked up at me then, and I saw something raw in his expression.

“Because I was afraid you’d agree with me.

That you’d say you felt invisible too, or that you were fine with our arrangement, and then what?

What do you do when you realize your marriage has become convenient but not particularly meaningful? ”

The honesty of it hit me like a physical blow. Because he was right—I had been fine with our arrangement, mostly. The predictability, the lack of drama, the comfortable distance that allowed us both to focus on our individual pursuits without having to do the messy work of staying truly connected.

“So instead of risking that conversation, you...” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Instead of risking that conversation, I found someone who made me feel visible again,” Ray said quietly. “Which was cowardly and selfish and probably the most destructive thing I could have done.”

Ray's eyes met mine across the space between our beds, and for the first time in months, I didn't look away. Neither did he. We were seeing each other—really seeing each other—maybe for the first time since before Russell's name had ever entered our lives.

All this time, we'd been suffering in parallel, each thinking we were alone in our loneliness. The irony was almost unbearable—two people living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed, both starving for the same thing.

“Two different kinds of cowardice,” Ray observed.

“Maybe.” I thought about it, comparing my tendency to withdraw with Ray’s tendency to seek external validation. “Or maybe two different responses to the same problem. We stopped seeing each other clearly.”

“When did that happen?” Ray asked. “When did we stop being curious about each other?”

It was a good question, and I realized I didn’t have a clear answer. The drift had been so gradual, so subtle, that it was impossible to pinpoint a moment when connection had shifted to mere coexistence.

“I think it was after Leo settled into high school,” I said slowly. “When we stopped having to coordinate so much around his needs. Suddenly we had all this freedom to pursue our own interests, and we just... did. Without considering how that might affect us.”

Ray nodded. “I remember feeling relieved that I could train more seriously again. Plan longer races without worrying about missing his games or recitals.”

“And I was excited to take on more challenging projects at work. To dive deep into coding without feeling guilty about the time it took.”

“We both got what we thought we wanted,” Ray said. “Individual fulfillment.”

“But somewhere along the way, we forgot to stay interested in each other,” I finished.

Another silence fell, but this one felt different. Less heavy with unspoken accusations, more contemplative.

This was the closest Ray had come to explaining not just what he’d done, but why—the emotional landscape that had made him vulnerable to someone else’s attention.

“What now?” Ray asked eventually. “Now that we’ve figured out how we got lost?”

I looked at him—really looked at him—taking in the way his shoulders curved slightly forward when he was being vulnerable, the way his hands had stopped fidgeting now that we were talking honestly. He looked different somehow. Not physically, but in some essential way that I couldn’t quite name.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But Ray? Today, when I jumped off that bridge, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years.”

“What?”

“That I was capable of surprising myself. I wasn’t just the sum of my habits and fears and limitations.” I paused, trying to find the right words. “And right now, talking to you like this, I feel the same way. That maybe we’re both capable of being different from the way we’ve been.”

Ray’s expression softened. “Different how?”

“Braver, maybe. More honest. Less afraid of the conversations that matter.” I met his eyes. “I don’t know if we can fix what went wrong between us, Ray. But maybe we can become people who wouldn’t let it go wrong in the first place.”

“I’d like that,” Ray said softly. “I’d like to be someone you’d want to stay curious about.”

“And I’d like to be someone worth staying curious about.”

We looked at each other across the space between our beds, both of us changed in ways we were only beginning to understand.

The man who’d jumped off a bridge that morning and the man who’d just admitted to years of emotional cowardice—we were both still ourselves, but also somehow more than we’d been when we woke up.

“Get some sleep,” I said, lying back on my pillow. “Tomorrow’s going to be another long day.”

“Jeffrey?” Ray’s voice was soft in the darkness after I’d turned off the light.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For jumping today. For talking tonight. For... still being here.”

“Thank you for being worth it,” I replied, and was surprised to find I meant it completely.

In the darkness, I heard the rustle of sheets, and then Ray's voice, closer than before.

"Can I..." he started, then stopped.

"What?"

"Can I hold your hand? Just for a minute?"

I reached across the space between our beds, our fingers finding each other in the dark. His palm was warm, slightly damp with nervous sweat, but familiar in a way that made my chest ache.