“When did you decide?”
“Last night. After talking to Rory when he came back. After what we did in this house, I can't keep living here, pretending like it's all fine. Lying to his face every day. And I can't watch you and Rory destroy each other. None of this is right.”
“So you're going to run?” I asked, staring at the mangled pieces of toast on my plate.
“Lil, look at me.”
“No. I can't.” If I looked at Bobby, I would burst.
“Lil—”
“No. Just go. Slip away and vanish like you did last time, you coward. Let me deal with the pain—”
“I want you to come with me.”
I turned in my seat to face him. “What?”
“I thought about this. A lot. And, I want you to come with me. When I left, I kept telling myself that I did what was best. I let Rory win. I let you go. And I couldn't even stand to be around you. I wanted that life I gave away to my brother that badly. But I found solace knowing I did the right thing. That I hurt, but when I would see you both again, I would come here and you would be happy. That's all I needed to see. Then I would be able to deal with the constant ache of missing you. Never did I think I would come back to this. You and Rory were a mistake. He's not the person I thought I left you with—” He looked down, almost ashamed to judge Rory. “Or maybe he was, but you two have brought out the worst in each other.” He stepped closer to me. “Because it wasn't right. It was supposed to be us. And I can't go back and change the horrible decision I made, stepping aside while you married my brother, but I can change things now.”
“I—I don't know what to say.”
“You know what to say. Stop living in this lie.”
“It's so sudden. I don't know how to even start.”
“No, Lil. It's been over six years in the making. You've been dying a slow death in this house. Choose to live again. Come with me.”
I shook my head, trying to untangle the developments of the past few weeks.
“Lil, you’re set to move in a couple of months and I won’t—can’t—follow you around. You know that. This game we’ve been playing, we knew it could never last. It either becomes something real or we let it die. This is the fork in the road. You either commit to Rory and go to Minnesota, or you come west with me. The options couldn’t be more clear.”
“So we're just going to slip out when Rory's out of town?”
“I think it's the best way. I'll handle him. I don't want you getting the brunt of his anger.”
“I don't want you to. You guys can't lose each other over me. I never wanted to be the person to get in between you two.”
“Lil, there's no way that this ends where I have everything. I have to choose. And I choose you. And whether Rory wants it or not, I'll always be there for him.”
I took a deep breath. “How would we do this? Where would we go? Rory said you were leaving today.”
“I'm staying at the motel on 100 tonight. You can think about it on your own today. I leave tomorrow at noon. You just call me and I will come get you and we'll leave. I'm not going to smother you. I want you to make this decision on your own.”
“Tomorrow? That's so fast,” I murmured to myself. “He's gone until Thursday. That's almost a week. Why don't we wait until then? We could have this week here together. Go to the lake? Take our time.”
“Because I'm sick of stealing another week, another minute, another second. I want the rest of our lives. I want forever.”
I cupped my face in my hands as tears poured down my cheeks.
“If you can't leave with me tomorrow, if you aren't that sure about us, then this was never what I thought it was, Lil. I was just an escape for you.”
“Don't say that, Bobby,” I cried. “You were never an escape. You were my pain. You lived in my heart every day and it was never able to heal until you came back.”
Bobby knelt down in front of me, pulling my tear-soaked hands away from my face and gripping them in his. “Lil, no matter what, I'm not leaving like I did before. I'll never vanish again. I'll always be a part of your life. I will check in with you and Rory every week. I will visit. This is not a threat or an ultimatum. It's not me running away. It's me finally stopping the bullshit. Telling myself I'd be content to see you with anyone else. Or that I was okay with just one night with you. I'll never be. So it's all or nothing. And I'll leave it all for you. You understand, Lil? But I am done sharing you. And I need to be upfront with my brother. Even if he hates me for it. I'd rather be hated than a liar. But I can’t be honest with Rory if you stay with him. I won’t do that to you.”
I nodded. I believed Bobby. I didn't want to. I tried to remind myself that he left me for so many years and there was no way I should trust him again. But the day I marched down the aisle towards his brother, in his eyes, I had left him for a lifetime. Deep down, even I knew the only way Rory and I could have a fighting chance was if Bobby left. But even then, Bobby's ghost tore our marriage apart.
Bobby reached for my hand and raised me to my feet. “I'm going to go now. Because I'm not settling for pieces of you anymore. I want all of you. I want to wake up to your face every morning and not have my first thought be 'when will it end?' I want to watch you smile as we travel the coast in my truck. And then, I'll show you the world. And once I've shown it all to you, we'll find a spot where the sun always shines and the breeze always carries us, and we'll have babies who play in the water and climb the tallest trees just like we did. I want your laughter to be the rule, not the exception. And if you want to work, you can work. If you don't, that's okay, because I'll make sure we have everything we need. Rory will be in pain, but then he'll be okay, because he'll realize that his woman is out there still. That his happiness was never with you. Just like you said, we tried to do the right thing, but it was wrong. It's time to do the right thing. Even if it hurts. Even if it means we lose the things that tethered us to some sense of stability.”
I wrapped my arms around Bobby's waist and he enveloped me in his strong arms. Even in that moment of the unknown, his embrace was the safest place in the world.
“I love you,” I wept into his shirt.
“. . . since before I even knew what it was.” His voice shook as it struggled to convey strength.
But I couldn't just leap. I needed to think. This was too sudden. I had a mother and father who were still alive. Bobby didn't have to worry about shaming his parents. I had an entire life, albeit an unsatisfactory one, I had built here. I needed some time alone to think about how I could unfasten myself from the invisible anchor that held me to my station.
“You just come over. You call the motel. However you want to do it. And I will be here in a heartbeat. But I've said my piece. I won't come back and beg anymore. This is something you need to decide for yourself. If you want to come, use today to get your affairs in order. Just come or call before noon.”
I nodded as Bobby wiped a tear from my cheekbone.
“Lil, if you want to make this work, you will. It's as simple as that.”
I gripped his hand. “Please don't go,” I wept frantically. Though I had the choice, something in my gut told me I might never see him again. “Please,” I begged shamelessly.
“Lil, I'm just down the road. We both have some things we need to get in order. No matter what, this isn't goodbye forever.”
“Kiss me.”
Bobby grimaced as if it took every fiber of his being. “Not until you're done with Rory.”
Salty tears ran over my lips. There was a lot I could accept, but I couldn't accept Bobby not kissing me at this moment.
“Kiss me.”
“Lil, don't do this. It's not fair,” he begged.
I looked into his eyes, the color of the lake on a late afternoon, when the sun's reflection would dance along the ridges of water. His eyes always took me to place of warmth and comfort. I could look into his eyes, no matter where I was, and be home. But I needed more. I needed to taste his lips. I need
ed his strength if I was going to shed my old life like dead, useless skin.
Bobby brushed back a sweaty lock of hair that had stuck to my temple, and relented. He softly placed his lips on my mouth, sliding his tongue against mine. I peppered his full pout with kisses and gentle tugs. Then his fingers wove into my hair, balling his hand fiercely as we tasted the bittersweet of years of unspoken words from each other's lips.
“No, Lil,” he grumbled, pushing me onto the kitchen table. “We can't keep caving.” A traitor to his words, he grazed his teeth along my collarbone, then up the long curve of my neck.
“I need you,” I cooed. “I need to feel you.” To be reminded of what it was like to just be us again. Without rules.
“I can't,” he heaved as he pulled my legs apart. Bobby ran his hands up my thighs and along my nightgown, pulling up the gauzy fabric. His thumbs stopped at the crease of my thighs.
“No underwear?” he muttered.
“For you. Only for you.”
I couldn't bear Rory's touch and hadn't let him lay his hands on me since Bobby's arrival, besides the disastrous incident in the backseat of our car.
Bobby tensed up, as if he had found a new well of strength to resist me, but I needed to steal that strength. My heart needed it to coerce my mind, strong with thoughts of doubt, fear, and misguided loyalties.
I slid down the straps of my nightgown, exposing my tight breasts to him. “Suck on them, Bobby.”
He bit his own lip so hard, trying to hold back, I thought it might bleed. I reached up, and with a gentle tug against the lip with my thumb, I freed it from the battle. He closed his eyes and sighed as I glided my thumb back against his lips, coaxing it into their soft grip. The fleshiness of his pout was contrasted by the sharpness of his bite clasping the edge of my thumb, sinking his teeth into the fruit of temptation.
I pulled my hand back, luring him closer, like a snake charmer. “Use those teeth on
me . . . those lips . . . that tongue,” I barely rasped into his ear.
He ran a thumb over one of the nipples, hardening it. But just before he placed his lips on it, he rested his forehead against my chest. “Lil, I promised myself, not here anymore. Not until you came with me.”
“It's just us,” I begged. “This is just a place.”
He let out a massive sigh, kissing my breastbone, the plump paleness of my breast, and working his way to the peak, where he used the tip of his tongue to draw out a careless moan from my lips. Flaxen rays of light snuck through the window, onto my exposed skin, illuminating the tiny goosebumps his mouth cajoled. I arched my spine towards Bobby, begging him with my body to make the doubt and fear disappear.
“I'd do anything for you, Lil,” Bobby murmured into my neck.
I braced his face so that his eyes would meet mine and I kissed him everywhere my lips could land, spreading the taste of my tears across his face.
He pulled my hips to the edge of the table, reaching in his pants to pull himself out. A pleasant, anxious fluttering surged in my stomach at the sight of his throbbing phallus, gripped in his thick fingers. My dewy opening blossomed like a morning flower at the promise of Bobby boring into me. When he did, I wrapped my legs around his hips as I drew out a cry into his neck. Rory's discarded breakfast plate and my battered toast clattered on the table, skittering little by little with each thrust, until one of the plates crashed to the floor. But it didn't matter. This place was an artifact. My heart was already imagining a new future.
Bobby's girth inside of me, so tight that I could hardly breathe, took my focus. It dampened the screaming voices of trepidation. It dulled the sharp stabbing of fear.
“I can't live without you,” I gasped into Bobby's lips. “I can't go back.”
“You're my goddamned heartbeat,” he answered against mine.
Our bodies melted into each other, like hot caramel, so that we could no longer tell where one person ended and the other began. Just a messy haze of sweat, tears, and skin. We were linked in ways that we could never break. That distance, time, and duty could not separate.
My hips thrusted up to meet Bobby's and we crested against each other like waves against a bluff, the table barely needing to support me as I clung to him. His shirt stuck to the sweaty knolls of his chest and arms as he grunted savagely, coming closer to his climax.
“Come with me,” he groaned into my neck.
I braced Bobby's torso against mine as I convulsed against him, biting down onto his shoulder as an intense stampede of pleasure rolled over me. I held on as tightly as I could, feeling like if I let go, I would drift away and never be able to hold him again. That I would lose him in this helpless abyss of rules and unfairness we call life. Bobby tensed against me, his groans as gritty as mud and earth as he released inside of me.
I kept my embrace firm around Bobby, hoping we would freeze in time like the images I had seen in textbooks about Pompeii. Or that we would burst into trillions of stars, so that we could live in the heavens for eternity like the constellations we admired on moonless nights. So that one day, other weary lovers could look to us in the sky for hope.
But we were still here. Pieces of flesh and bone, desperately clinging to each other.
“I have to go, Lil,” Bobby said somberly. “I'll see you tomorrow.” It seemed he was trying to convince himself more than me this time.
I let my arms go limp as Bobby slid away from me, collected himself, grabbed his bag, and left.
I mindlessly collected the dish fragments from the floor trying to decipher what was holding me back from going with Bobby. This was the life I had dreamt of. But I had made vows. I had chosen my path. Somehow I felt like packing my bags and leaving was cheating.
Maybe it was the guilt I carried from being with Bobby the night before the wedding. That the rest of my life was penance for that one act. Or maybe I cared more about what other people thought than I had realized.
A small shard pricked my finger and pulled me out of my fugue. I stood up and placed the chunks of porcelain in my hand on the kitchen table and wandered the house, taking stock of the life I had here.
Things.
Furniture. Clothes. Cars. A house. A few acquaintances. This was all an illusion. As if I tried to grasp any one of them they would slip through my fingers like sand. I didn't really have a life. I didn't miss any of these things when Bobby and I were up at the lake. It was as if I had picked out the pieces for my real life dollhouse. And I felt as empty and fake as the doll in the center of it all.
My family, they would always be my family. I could only hope they would forgive my decision if I left Rory for his brother. But it wasn’t them who would live with the consequences of the choice I faced. I couldn't keep choosing this life to please them while I suffered.
I didn't have a say when Bobby slipped away seven years ago. When he never visited. When he left to war. When he vanished from the face of the earth. But I had a say now.
If I did this, I would be starting over. Everything I owned was shared with Rory. I had a modest trust fund, virtually untouched. That, and my clothes, was all I could take with me. Someday, I would split my parent's estate with my sister, but who knew if that would change when they found out about my behavior. It didn't matter though. Between Bobby and me, we would find a way.
I slipped on some clothing and grabbed my purse and car keys. I needed air. The house was stifling. I drove aimlessly at first, down the main street, through county highways, until I decided I had a destination: the lake house.
It was only an hour away from home, and the afternoon sun was still at its peak when I arrived. I kicked off my shoes and dug my toes into the cool grass, closed my eyes, took a lungful of crisp air, and smiled.
Freedom.
This is what it would be like. We would experience the world together, and then we would get a little cottage by the lake or the beach, and we would read to each other, or sing, or dance. And one day, our little babies would lumber around in their diapers, and then t
hey would grow enough to run and jump into the water, and then they would one day fall in love and have their hearts broken and patched back together and then we would watch them as they watched their little ones. Bobby and I would witness it all, experiencing every smile and tear with them. This was the life we were meant to have.
And if I wanted to try something new, Bobby would encourage it, not tell me what I wanted. And if Bobby wanted to open up a shop to build furniture or fix cars, I would encourage him. Because all we wanted was what the other wanted.
In the walls of my house with Rory, my dreams had been strangled for so long, it made it impossible for me to imagine anything else. But out here, on the tree swing, watching the birds sweep over the water, feeling the breeze curl along my neck, I could smell the scents of my new life. Taste its flavors. Feel it tickle my skin.
When I stripped it all away, it wasn't so hard to imagine leaving.
After watching the bright afternoon sun dull from the swing, I made my way into the house. I went upstairs to the bedroom and into the jewelry box. I slipped off the ring I had worn for seven years as an impostor and returned it to its rightful place: my mother-in-law's jewelry box. Next to it was a small box that held just one item. I opened it and slipped the pale apricot-colored gem on my finger. I found an empty large cardboard box and carried it to the living room, where I grabbed the record player and a few records, including the Billie Holliday vinyl.
I threw in my favorite overalls and loaded my car. I wasn't sure when I'd ever see this place again.
I thought about whether I should say goodbye to Barbie as I drove home, but I decided against it. I was going to slip out as quietly as I could. I smiled to myself as I drove back to visions of me showing up at Bobby's motel door, my suitcase by my side. How he would embrace me and we would cry tears of joy. How I would tell him I was sorry I ever doubted us. And that I was sure. I would bet everything on us.
I had stopped at a diner by the lake to eat supper when a sharp and sudden hunger demanded to be addressed. It was nice being anonymous. I listened to music from the mini jukebox at the table while I scarfed down a shake and burger. I felt unburdened, like someone released from captivity.
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