Big Man’s Happily Ever After

by Wylder, Penny

  I raise an eyebrow and look between the two of them. “Clearly, you knew exactly where I was.”

  Jessica looks at me with anger in her eyes. “You missed dinner.”

  Gesturing to the stove and the steaming pots and pans, I say, “I’m making dinner with Casey. I’m sure he’ll let me have a few bites so I don’t starve.”

  “More than a few,” he says from behind them, smiling. His hands are in his pockets, and I can tell he’s trying to diffuse the tension. But it doesn’t work.

  “Casey is a grown man and can cook for himself. You need to come home right now,” Mom says. “You need to talk to your fiancé and get your life back on track. Tyler has called you and texted you all day. When you didn’t answer, he called us and talked to the family. He said he made a huge mistake.”

  I frown. That doesn’t sound like Tyler. “He called you? And apologized?”

  “He was so sad, Carley,” Jessica says. “He said he was really, really sorry and that he misses you. That he needs you, wants you, and is planning to make it up to you. Mentioned something about a car that you’d loved that would look good on the Chicago streets?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Casey shifting uncomfortably. It is just like Tyler to offer to buy me a car as an apology. That makes me think that he actually might have talked to them and it’s not just a ploy to get me back home.

  I take the phone from her and scroll through the messages he sent. There are missed calls too.

  Carley, I need to talk to you. Please pick up.

  Please, I’m so sorry baby. I really fucked up. I realize that now.

  You are so good for me, and it took you leaving for me to see how much I took you for granted. Please, I’m so sorry.

  I love you so fucking much. You don’t even know.

  We’ll go to couples’ therapy together. I’ll do whatever I have to to make myself better for you. I want to make this work.

  A cool sense of relief washes over me. I didn’t realize how much anxiety I’d been holding in over his silence and lack of awareness. But this…Tyler never talks like this. If he is at the point of texting like this, he is desperate.

  Maybe we can make it work. I can go back to my life in Chicago where I’m comfortable, and this time I can actually be happy. There’s a twinge in my gut, and I look at Casey, whose face is carefully blank and neutral. I swallow. “I need to call him. That,” I gesture to the dinner in the pan and smile, “only needs a little more time. Even you can’t mess it up.”

  I don’t wait for him to speak. I shove my boots and coat on and head outside. I feel Mom and Jessica at my heels, but I let them pass me on the porch. “Alone,” I say.

  They go stand by the car—pulled up way too close to the porch. Frankly I’m amazed that they give me any privacy at all, but I’m grateful for it. I don’t think that I can do this with them listening.

  Tyler answers on the first ring. “Carley?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh my God, baby, I’m so happy to hear your voice.”

  Tears fill my eyes because it’s good to hear his voice too. Whether or not he hurt me, I’ve still spent seven years of my life with him. I love him, and I hate that I’m getting emotional over it.

  “I am so, so, sorry.”

  I clear my throat. “I gathered from your texts.”

  “Listen, I am going to make this up to you. I’m twenty minutes away.”

  I go still with shock. “From where?”

  “From your parents’ house. I’m in an Uber—though let me tell you, he did not want to drive this far. I needed to see you. I need you back in my life, and I’m going to be there soon in order to make everything right. I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  I hang up without anything more. What do I say to that? Seems like he’s going to be here soon to make me listen anyway. I’m blank again. Without words.

  My eyes are on the floor of the porch. The same floor where Casey and I fucked. Where he sang me that love song that he wrote about me after I broke his heart. Oh God, I was still…we weren’t using protection. Casey is still deep inside me right now, and my fiancé is on his way.

  Shame rises up in a flush even as I hear the question in my mind. Is he really your fiancé if you gave the ring back? But I can’t fight the embarrassment, and I don’t dare look back toward the house. I know that I’ll find Casey watching me, and I can’t look at him. I can’t.

  I walk toward the car and my mother opens the back door for me to slide in. She and Jessica take the front and I pretend that I don’t see the expressions of smug victory on their faces. “Tyler’s on his way,” I say, my own voice sounding like it’s very far away.

  “That’s wonderful! I’m so excited to see him.”

  He’s met my parents a few times before, and my mother has always been enamored of him. But I’m so twisted up right now that I don’t know how to think or feel.

  I want to make it work. I do. We’ve been through so much; I don’t want to just give up on the life I wanted. But the hurt is still there too, and these blossoming new feelings for Casey. What the fuck do I do?

  The short ride back to my parents’ house is filled with me wondering whether I should panic or not. And if yes, why am I panicking? What am I going to feel when I see Tyler for the first time? I don’t know.

  It’s only minutes after we enter the house again before we hear wheels crunching gravel outside, and I go to the front door and see a large SUV pull up. Tyler gets out, a huge smile on his face.

  And I feel…underwhelmed.

  He seems smaller. Were his shoulders always that narrow? In my memory they seemed bigger. Was his hair always like that? Caked with so much product that it looks so stiff it could crack? Was his face always…pinched like this? I feel like I’m him seeing in an entirely new light—one that’s not shining with love and my own excuses.

  Tyler pays the driver and drops his suitcase on the ground before practically running to me on the porch. The whole family is watching, and he knows it. He sweeps me off my feet and spins me around before setting me down on the ground and kissing my cheek. “I missed you.”

  “Hi.”

  My dad goes and picks up the suitcase while my mom grins. “We’ve got your room ready for you two. Carley, we’re moving you into the bigger guest room with Tyler.”

  Of course she is. Now that I am doing what she wants, she will reward me. Guess it isn’t that big of a deal for the kids to sleep in the small bed after all.

  “Are you hungry?” my mom asks Tyler, nearly pulling him into the house. I follow at a slower pace. I still don’t know how to feel. My emotions are both too much and too little at the same time, and I just end up with…nothing.

  “I am hungry,” he says. “It was a long trip.”

  “Perfect!”

  In the dining room, there’s a large jug of sweet tea and the leftover rolls from lunch this afternoon—both things that Casey brought with him as a gesture of kindness. And now Tyler is consuming the rolls at an amazing pace, and all I can think about it that those rolls aren’t meant for him.

  Jessica pulls me into the room and practically shoves me into the chair beside Tyler, whose arm falls around my shoulder like it’s the most natural thing. But it doesn’t feel natural anymore. It feels…awkward.

  If we did what he said and went to couples’ therapy, would we be able to erase the friction between us? Would I ever be able to forget the fact that he wanted to try something different and liked it?

  “How’s Chicago?” my mom asks as Tyler butters his second roll.

  “Amazing as usual,” he says. “Couldn’t be going better. I think I’ll have some very, very good news at work before new year, and I can’t wait to get back to cozy nights hanging out with this one.” He pulls me close and kisses my temple. It doesn’t spark anything in me the way it once did.

  “Oh,” Jessica asks. “What kind of things do you guys do?”

  Tyler looks over at me and smiles. “We�
��re quiet people. We like to sit in front of the fire and watch TV. Sometimes we’ll go out to dinner and walk in the park.”

  That’s hardly what we do. Our evenings would have us sitting in the same room—me on the couch, Tyler in an armchair—with the TV on. He would be working on his laptop and I would be reading a book. It wasn’t the cozy image he conjures of us curled up together, happily watching our favorite shows. And walking in the park was usually us just walking through the park to get back to our apartment because using the car and finding parking was too much trouble.

  The image that he’s painting for them isn’t the reality. But it’s the one that I thought we had before everything fell apart. And the ease with which he paints that picture feels…slimy. Oily. I don’t like it.

  Has he always been like this and I just didn’t see it? Am I letting the hurt from his actions paint my view or am I finally seeing clearly? I don’t know. All I feel is confusion and sadness.

  Tyler keeps telling stories about us and our life, and I just sit there…listening to him talk. Until it’s time for everyone to go to bed. Tomorrow is the day before the fireworks, and the whole town will be here in the morning to set up the carnival, booths, and the fireworks themselves. Everyone needs to help. In some ways, it’s just as much or more fun than the fireworks themselves.

  I head up to my room—our room—and see that my stuff has already been moved. Of course. There’s no chance that my mother would let there be the slightest hiccup now that my life is back on the course that she approves of.

  My hand goes to the empty space on my finger, feeling the dent that’s still there. I haven’t even thought about it the last few days, because my thoughts have been full of something else. And that was amazing.

  But I’m doing the right thing, right? I agreed to marry this man, and the least I can do is give him a chance to make it up to me if he’s truly sorry.

  Quickly, I change into my pajamas and stand there, watching Tyler. He changes too into his sleeping uniform. A t-shirt and boxers. Getting into bed with him feels…strange. It could feel like something, but I’m not letting it. I’m resisting.

  He rolls over toward me and kisses me on the forehead, the way he always does when we’re at home. “I’m so happy you’re giving me another chance.”

  And then he rolls away and lays facing in the other direction, just like at home. And something slinks through me that I’d rather ignore.

  I’m doing the right thing. I’m doing the right thing.

  I keep repeating those words until I fall asleep.

  14

  Carley

  I wake up early, and stare at the ceiling. Tyler is asleep beside me, snoring softly. I didn’t sleep much, and the few hours I did get were plagued with dreams that were steeped in anxiety.

  There’s no way I’m going back to sleep, so I get up and get dressed quietly, heading downstairs to help with breakfast. It’s a particularly big breakfast today, as people always show up early on this morning and more than just the family ends up eating pancakes.

  No one is in the kitchen yet, but the menu for today’s breakfast is set in stone. I don’t need to wait to start cooking. I need to do something with my hands to take my mind off of everything.

  I start making the pancakes, and about an hour later, I’ve made more pancakes than twenty people can eat, and my mother’s jaw drops when she comes into the kitchen. “Wow.”

  “Got a head start.”

  She smiles and comes over and pats my cheek. “See what a little apology can do for you? One night back together and you’re already more productive than the rest of us.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Oh, cheer up, buttercup. It’s set-up day! You always used to love that.”

  It’s true. I did love it. But now I know that I’m going to have to go out there and see Casey and I don’t know how to handle that.

  Shame washes up over me again. I shouldn’t be this conflicted. I remember when Tyler proposed. He took me out to my favorite restaurant in Chicago and got us a private table that overlooked the river. And then, he announced that the reason he was able to afford all of it was that he had just gotten a brand-new promotion at the firm, and he wanted me by his side for the journey. He dropped to his knee by the table and asked me to marry him.

  In that moment, I’d never felt such joy. I cried when he slipped the ring on my finger, and everyone cheered when I called to let them know.

  I’m so far away from that now that it’s not even funny. But there is something familiar about all of it. “I’m going to go shower.”

  “Go ahead,” my mother laughs. “You’ve done more than your part.”

  I go back upstairs, something that Tyler said ringing in my ears. He’s just getting out of the shower when I walk back into the room, a towel slung low on his hips. The comparison in my mind is instant. Tyler doesn’t have a bad body, but compared to Casey, whose body is honed and hard with hours of physical labor every day, he looks soft. But I shouldn’t be thinking about that.

  “You said you were going to have news by the new year. What is it?”

  Tyler sits on the bed and grins. “I’m up for partner at the firm.”

  “Partner.” That was a thing that he always talked about. And it is the goal for a lot of lawyers. To be considered for partner so young is a huge deal. “Congratulations.”

  “I was in the middle of the meeting for it,” he says, “and that’s what made me realize how badly I fucked up.”

  “Really? How?”

  He pats the bed beside him and I sit. “Alan was talking about everything and telling me that everyone on the 88th floor really admired my work ethic and the thought that I put into my life. The fact that I owned a home and I was getting married. And right then, all I could think about was you and how lonely the apartment had been since you’d left. And the first person I wanted to tell about the meeting was you. Not Andi or anyone else. You.” Reaching out, he tucks some hair behind my ear. “And that’s when I realized that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life, and that I needed to get you back, no matter what it took.”

  The kiss he presses to my lips makes me feel nothing. I used to crave the little bits of affection that he threw my way like they were diamonds. But now, when I’ve suddenly experienced what it is like to have affection poured on you in buckets, it feels tiny in comparison.

  Maybe that isn’t entirely Tyler’s fault. People are different. And he isn’t someone who is incredibly free with touch and affection. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love me.

  But as I undress and get in the shower, I feel cold in spite of the hot water. Nothing that I see in Tyler now makes me like him any better than when I left angry at him. And nothing convinces me that he is actually sorry. It took being reminded by his boss that I was his fiancée to make him understand.

  The thought makes me shudder. I try not to think the worst of people, but I wonder if the reason he wants me back at all is because the higher ups at the law firm know that he is getting married and he wants everything to look perfect so he will get his promotion.

  It settles in my stomach like a rock.

  He’s dressed when I come out of the shower. “How are things going to be different?”

  “What?”

  “You say that you’re sorry. That you want to go to counseling with me and make yourself better. But I want to know in what ways you’re going to be different.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know what you mean. We’re going to go to counseling. We’re going to work it out. I’m not seeing Andi anymore. And everything else will go back to normal.”

  Frustration rises in my chest. “I don’t know if I can do that normal Tyler. I’ve had a lot of time to think, and we were just existing, we weren’t happy.”

  “Yes we were,” he protests. “We were fine.”

  “That’s exactly it. We were fine. We never ‘spent the evenings watching TV together.’ You were on your laptop the entire time. Do you
remember the last time we had sex naked? Neither do I. Because you were too busy fucking Andi to bother making sure your fiancée was actually satisfied. I can’t remember the last time you actually asked me a question about how I felt or how my day was or what I wanted, because everything was always about you. So if that’s what you mean by going back to normal, no. I’m not doing that.”

  He grows serious. “Of course it won’t be like that. I love you.” Coming over and taking me by the shoulders he says, “I promise things will be different. We’ll do things together. I’ll pay more attention.”

  “How?” I insist.

  “Let’s talk about this when we’re home. You can lay out everything that you need from me and then we can make a plan.” He kisses me on the forehead and heads out the door. “I heard your mom calling, people are starting to show up so get dressed quickly.”

  He didn’t answer the question.

  Tyler is a lawyer. He knows how to dodge questions he doesn’t want to answer. Dread still sits in my gut. If he doesn’t have an answer, then he doesn’t have a plan. And Tyler always has plans for the things he wants to accomplish. He’s had a plan to make partner since we met in college.

  I dress and push it out of my head. Right now, there’s nothing I can do. We have to set up for the fireworks, and everything else can wait. At least a day.

  It seems like the entire town arrived in the twenty minutes that I was upstairs. People are eating pancakes and are overflowing outside toward the field to start the early clean up. The first big job is to comb the field and clean up any trash or dangerous things. There usually isn’t anything, but just in case, everybody covers the whole area.

  Tyler is already outside, coat and gloves on, talking with a smiling Jessica. I know that expression. It is the charming expression he wears when he is flirting. Or when he wants something. I’ve seen it a lot since we first started dating. It worked on me, and I know that it can work on everyone else too.