by Chloe Liese
“You have a partner who wants to give you all of herself, who wants all of you, your struggles, included. Don’t squander that. Because if you keep that door shut and locked long enough, one day you’re going to open it, and then what?”
I stare up at him, swallowing roughly. “There’s not going to be anyone on the other side.”
“Exactly. So go home. Talk to Freya.”
A book hits me in the solar plexus. “And read a damn romance novel,” Viggo snaps, before he stomps inside and slams the glass door shut behind him.
I slide the book into my back pocket and glance around at the remaining four. “I appreciate the intent of this, but now you need to stay the hell out of my marriage. I know I’m screwing up. I know I’ve failed my wife. But for us to come out on the other side of this, I need to be the one to figure that out, along with her.”
They blink at me.
“Respectfully,” Ryder says. “I think you’re wrong.”
“Very wrong,” Oliver adds.
“Yeah, well, if I am, it won’t be the first time. Not by a long shot.”
Turning, I walk the length of Ren’s house to wait for the Uber and brace myself for what’s next. As much as I want to shove that book down Viggo’s throat, he or Lisa Whoever-he-quoted is right. Marriage is so often the end of the story in those feel-good movies, in the books Freya reads and then closes with a dreamy sigh, but in real life, marriage is the beginning.
It starts off foreign and thrilling, a rollercoaster ride with your eyes shut, knowing dips and turns and plummeting drops are ahead, but never when or how they’re coming. And as you climb that first massive height, then feel the moment when everything changes, when it shifts to a wild, weightless drop, that’s when you learn marriage isn’t the final destination. It’s the ride itself, one moment smooth-sailing, the next, jolting and unpredictable. It’s the ride that’s so upending and life-changing and worth it that we want to stay on and ride it again and again and again.
At least, it should be. For a long time, it was for me. I used to wake up, excited to be a better husband in ways that had nothing to do with savings or tenure or business ventures. I wanted to learn everything about Freya, what made her smile and laugh, what made her light up and sing at the top of her lungs. But then the demands of real life came pressing in, bursting our happy bubble. And time for those moments became a luxury, not a guarantee. Now, they’re all but gone.
I want them back. I want hours more in every day to watch sunrise paint her profile, to kiss her awake how I used to, then crawl down her body and wake her up with a patient, teasing come. I want to listen to Freya hum while I make pancakes and she pours coffee. I want to rub her feet, then tickle her until she tackles me off the couch.
But if I do that, minutes, hours, are lost—time I should be spending shoring us up, protecting us, anticipating the worst. Which is exactly what my father never did, for the short time he stuck around, and my mom never recovered from that. I’m not exactly sure I did, either.
I’m stuck between the rock and the hard place, discouraged and defeated. I don’t know how to begin repairing what’s broken between us. Because this is beyond Freya’s healing touch, beyond anything in my fixer-upper arsenal. Freya and I need help. Professional help.
Waiting for my ride, I stare at my wedding band and spin it on my finger, watching it wink in the moonlight. And that’s when I realize exactly what has to come next for us to have a chance in hell of coming back from this.
Marriage counseling.
Freya
Playlist: “Something’s Gotta Give,” Camila Cabello
I open the bathroom door connected to our bedroom and shriek.
Aiden glances up from the edge of our bed. “Sorry I scared you.”
I tug down my shirt, wishing I was wearing a bra because right now Aiden doesn’t deserve to see my nipples, even through a T-shirt. Especially because they’re hard. Because I want to wring his neck, but the man is too damn hot for his own good. He sits straighter on the bed and tugs at his tie, eyes on me, the simple movement sending his ocean-water scent rolling my way.
I stare at the dark waves of his hair, his aqua-blue eyes and the beard he still hasn’t shaved, as I step closer, until our toes are touching. He peers up at me and falters with his tie. It’s like staring at a stranger.
A really hot stranger.
Shut up, brain.
“Where were you?” I ask.
He swallows roughly. “I, uh…work. I was at work. Then I got…roped into a meeting…of sorts.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Yeesh, Aiden. Slow down. I don’t think I can handle all the details.”
He sighs. “Freya—”
“You know what? Forget it.” I spin away, because if I stand there much longer, I might do something insane like grab him by the tie and shake him until it jostles the truth that’s so clearly stuck inside. If I just rattle him hard enough—
And that’s my problem. I’ve exhausted myself trying, and nothing has come out. I’m. Not. Trying. Not anymore. I’ve asked. How are you? What’s up? Anything on your mind? How’s work?
To which I got Fine. Nothing. Just work. Busy.
I throw my dirty clothes in the hamper and accidentally encounter my list, which must have fallen from my skirt pocket. My list of feelings and thoughts I’ve been carrying around. My grievances, itemized. Ink splotched with tears. I stare at the paper, then crumple it until it’s balled so tight, I know that when I open it back up, it’ll simply disintegrate in my hands.
I made the list because whereas I’m a feeler, Aiden is a thinker, and I’ve always internalized this pressure in our relationship to handle my emotions more like him. To be “reasonable” when I’m upset. To be “rational” when we argue. Because I want my perspective to be taken seriously, and when I sound cerebral, Aiden seems to listen. If I sound calmer than I feel, I don’t risk triggering Aiden’s anxiety beyond the point that he can actually hear me out.
Sure, it works, but it’s a lie. It’s not how I tick. The real me cries and speaks when her feelings aren’t tidy but instead a messy mix of emotions. I work out my thoughts as I talk. I’m an emotional, verbal processor who’s been biting back that need for a decade, who’s only given in sparingly, to the point that I feel so compressed, I’m poised to detonate. No, implode.
Making a list, an itemized bullet point of hurts, confessions, and feeling words, was supposed to give me reprieve, help me feel purged and prepared when the time came to talk it out, then make amends with the man that I love. But writing the list just made me angrier and angrier, festered the hurt. The fact that I needed to make the damn list pissed me off. Where’s his list? Where’s his discontent? Where’s Aiden?
Here but not. And I’m so fucking sick of it.
I stare at him, sitting on the edge of our bed staring down at his feet—dark-blue tie loose, crisp white shirt unbuttoned two. Aiden runs his hands through his hair, turning it messy, then tosses his glasses aside on the bed, rubbing at the shadows under his thick-lashed eyes.
He peers up at me when his hands fall. “I want to go to marriage counseling.”
My stomach flips. “What?”
“I said, I want to go to marriage counseling.”
“We haven’t even talked about what we need counseling for.”
“Thus the marriage counseling, Freya,” he says, voice raw and low. “I want us to talk through…what’s happened, with someone’s help. Because I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Beginning with the truth is a good place. Like what you were actually doing tonight.”
Horseradish jumps up and meows, rubbing against Aiden. He scratches the cat absently and sighs. “I had an accident at work. I got something on my clothes.”
I frown. “What?”
“Then I bumped into some…friends who waylaid me. Now I’m home.”
“Yeah, not much better.”
Aiden’s eyes hold mine intensely. “I know,” he says quietly. �
��I know I’m not doing a very good job at…any of this right now. Which is why I’m asking: will you go to marriage counseling with me? I’m trying to tell you what I need to pull my weight here, Freya. I want to fix this.”
When I don’t answer right away, he stares back down at the ground and rakes both shaking hands through his hair again, sighing heavily. I can taste his anxiety in the air, sharp and painful, pressing in on him.
Not that he’s told me. Not that I know lately where his anxiety is, or what’s troubling him. The past few months, when I suspected he was having a tough time, he’d smile, falsely bright, then say he had work and disappear into our little home office. The room that’s supposed to become a nursery.
I wonder if…I wonder if things have been hard—harder than usual—and he hasn’t told me. And if so, why? If so much of what’s been distant between us is because he’s carrying burdens he doesn’t want to share, how could I ever honestly say I love him while denying him the chance to talk through it with a counselor? A wave of empathy crests within me, soothing the scorched ache in my heart.
I clear my throat, then tell him, “I’ll go, Bear.”
Shit. The word’s out before I realize I’ve even said it.
Aiden’s head snaps up, and our eyes meet.
Sadness tangles with nostalgia into a sharp, aching knot beneath my ribs. I haven’t called him Bear in so long, haven’t felt that nickname easy and warm on the tip of my tongue. His nickname that came about when we first started dating, when his black bear hair would tickle me in the morning as he burrowed in close, wrapping me in his arms. When he’d growl into my neck and pin me to the mattress, waking me up with slow, intense sex. That nickname is a vestige of the silly romantic shit we did at first, like couples do when they’re newly in love and so sure they’ll never break each other’s hearts, never fail or fall apart the way those couples have.
The fucking hubris.
Fighting tears, I turn away and fuss in my dresser drawers, pointlessly refolding my clothes. It’s so obviously a deflection because I never do this. I’m a slob, and we both know it.
Aiden stands, the bedframe creaking as he does. I hear the soft crush of the rug beneath his feet as he stands behind me, the closest we’ve been in months. “Why’d you call me that?” he says softly.
A tear slides down my cheek. I palm it away angrily. “I don’t know. It was an accident.”
His hand slips around my waist and pulls me against him. Bold move. Ballsy as hell. Aiden MacCormack in two phrases.
A lesser man could never have won your heart, Freya Linn.
I hear my dad’s voice in my head, his toast at our wedding as he raised a glass to us. I cried when he said that. Because I believed it was true.
Aiden buries his nose in my hair, his other hand wrapping around me, too, pinning me to his body, warm and hard behind me. My head falls traitorously back on his shoulder. “Talk to me, Freya,” he whispers. One hot kiss right behind my ear—that spot I love, and he knows it. “Tell me what’s hurting you. Please.”
I suck in a ragged breath and scrunch my eyes shut. “Aiden, I don’t know why I know what’s wrong and you don’t. Why am I hurt and you’re fine—”
“I’m not fine,” he says roughly, holding me close, his hand caressing my belly. “And I know we’re…a little distant right now.”
An empty laugh leaves me. “A little distant. We’re beyond that, Aiden. We don’t talk. We don’t connect. You’re secretive, and you’re busier than you used to be. We don’t…have sex.”
A fear that I’ve tried to banish time and again grips me by the throat and bursts out. “Are you cheating on me?” I whisper hoarsely. “Is there someone else?”
Aiden’s body goes deathly still. He grips my chin, turning my face to meet his expression which darkens like a violent storm blackening the sky. “How could you even ask me that?” His voice cracks, and a muscle jumps in his jaw.
I push out of his arms, banging into the dresser behind me. “Y-you act differently. You look different. You got fitter and hotter… Wait. I mean. Shit.” I cover my face, humiliated by my slip, angry that I can be this hurt by his behavior but I can’t deny my body’s burning from his touch.
He raises his eyebrows. “Freya, I’ve been horrible about working out. There’s no time. I get so busy, I forget to eat. I’ve inadvertently lost some weight.”
“Exactly!” I latch on to that, thanking my lucky fucking stars he didn’t jump on the fact that I called him hot. “You’re busy. Constantly. And you rush off the phone when I come in the room. It’s, like, textbook existential-crisis-turned-cheating signs. And you’re not answering me.”
“Because it doesn’t even deserve a response,” he says, dangerously quiet, hurt tingeing in his voice. “Of course I’m not cheating on you, Freya!” He leans in, and I shrink back, but our fronts still brush, heat pouring off of him, the hard planes of his body sweeping against the soft curves of mine. “You think I could ever want anyone but you?”
A tear slips down my cheek. I used to be able to answer that unequivocally. “I don’t know.”
His brow furrows, pain tightening his face. “Freya, I love you. I want you. Only you. You’re the only woman I notice or desire, and if you think it’s escaped me that I haven’t had you beneath me, that I haven’t been inside you, making you come, in months, you’re sorely mistaken.”
I swallow thickly.
“Everything I do is for you, Freya. For us. And you think because I’m working a little more than I used to that I’m cheating on you?”
I shove past him, desperate for space as countless emotions close in on me. “You’re doing more than ‘working a little more.’ Don’t downplay what’s going on, don’t diminish it. You take calls and won’t tell me what’s up. You’ve been traveling more, and all you do is throw me some line about ‘exploring a business opportunity.’ How am I supposed to know? I don’t recognize you, Aiden! You’re distracted. You’re secretive. You don’t tell me what’s on your mind, what’s on your plate. How do I know nothing else has changed?”
“Because you trust me,” Aiden says, disbelief lacing his voice. “Because you rely on the twelve years we’ve known each other, eleven and a half of which we’ve been a couple, nearly ten of which we’ve spent married, and you say, ‘I know my husband. I know he’s faithful and he loves me. There must be something else going on.’”
Anger boils inside me. “You think I haven’t thought that? That I haven’t tried? Tried talking to you, touching you, connecting with you? And what do I get? Separate bedtimes and short, generic answers. How am I supposed to ‘know’ this love, Aiden? Where’s love when there’s no intimacy? No words, no affection. No hands searching for me in the dark.”
He blinks away. Guilty.
“Where’s love,” I press, “when you used to tell me what was weighing on you, used to ask for my ideas and support? Where’s love when you don’t turn toward me but instead walk down the hall and shut the door, when it’s been months since we talked about getting pregnant and you never once ask about it?”
He flinches. “I’ve been preoccupied with work and distracted. I own that. I’m sorry. I should have…kept better track—”
“You would have,” I say through a stifled sob, “if you cared about it! You have energy and attention, Aiden, for the things that matter to you—work and work.”
“That’s not fair,” he says sharply. “Work is for us. Work is how I love you—” He breaks off, staring at the floor. “I didn’t…I don’t mean that exactly. Work is one of the ways that I show you that I love you. By working hard, so we’re protected, so we’re financially secure.”
I sigh and drop to the mattress. This conversation.
Again.
Aiden grew up in extreme poverty. A single mom who struggled to make ends meet. A dad who split when Aiden was a toddler. And I understand this, abstractly at least: poverty is traumatic. Aiden’s worries about money—his exacting need to have all the bill
s in an Excel spreadsheet, itemized, paid precisely one week before they’re due, to tackle loans as soon as financially possible, to work and work and work—are because he grew up not eating some days, wearing shoes and clothes that were too small, taking under-the-table manual-labor jobs starting when he was ten years old. How he works and lives now stems from that. That and his anxiety, which…those two things are inextricably bound, how he grew up and how his brain simply is.
And I love him for who he is. I would never wish him otherwise. But that doesn’t mean I can always understand how deeply his past impacts him. My whole life, I’ve been safe and comfortable. My dad is an oncologist, a military veteran with a pension. My mom’s frugal. Sure, we had a couple tight years when unforeseen expenses stacked up fast, but we were always able to bounce back, unlike so many people in this country for whom one bad turn of luck can mean choosing between life-saving meds and electricity, facing eviction, food insecurity, complete collapse of their lives.
People like Aiden and his mom.
So I’ve always tried to honor how he handles the echoes of that in adulthood, to be his biggest supporter, to encourage his dreams to be successful, and I’m wildly proud of him. He’s a professor in good standing at an excellent university. He empowers students to be confident and creative business minds and mentors kids like him who’re coming from no background of support or financial management.
Aiden is an accomplished, admirable man. He’s just become a shitty husband. And I can’t keep saying one is mutually exclusive from the other. He can be both. He can be good for others and bad for me.
“Freya,” he says quietly, approaching me like I’m a growling, cornered animal, which is exactly what I feel like.
