Page 68 of Came the Closest
I avoid Cheyenne’s eye when I walk into the kitchen that smells of fresh cilantro and fajita steak. I poke Milo’s belly when he prompts me to, and when he giggles, Indi explains that he’s pretending to be the Pillsbury Doughboy of 1982. I take Milo swimming and we walk up to my dad’s house for s’mores around a crackling campfire. I let the girls get Milo ready for bed, and we look through Sailing: The Basics like we’ve done every night we’ve spent at the lake house. I tell my sister goodnight in the hallway, and I avoid the creaky third step downstairs out of habit.
And then, empty-handed, I go down to the dock. Cheyenne’s toes skim the still surface of the lake, and her blonde hair brushes lightly against her lower back. When I sit down beside her, I feel the overwhelming urge to run.
But I don’t.
For the first time in my life, when the urge to run strikes me, I sit still.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Decorative Mailbox
Cheyenne
The flyer I tugged from the bulletin board at Falls Market earlier today feels like it weighs a ton. I mean that in the literal sense. Two-thousand pounds of emotional weight in a single, slightly pixelated, full-color sheet of paper.
Art Gallery Opening at Midtown in Omaha, July 27th.
Submissions open.
That’s not why Colton came down here, though. I haven’t even told Indi yet—she and Milo were distracted trying to pick a decent cart when I slipped the paper into my tote bag. He’s here to discuss what happened last night.
But I’m not ready for him to vocalize his regret, so I blurt out, “Stephen cheated on me.”
Colton stills. I don’t think he even realized he was fidgeting with a splinter of wood on the dock, but now he doesn’t move a single muscle. If not for the rise and fall of his chest beneath his Falls Lake tee, I’d wonder if he was still breathing. I’m not brave enough to look at his face, though, and when he doesn’t say anything, I keep talking.
“Now that I can see it from the other side, I know I missed the signs. Late nights and early mornings at the office seemed plausible—I mean, he was the head curator at the Institute. A position like that comes with a lot of responsibility.” I inhale sharply, my fingertips turning white from gripping the flyer so tightly. “Or maybe I just wanted to believe the best. He was my husband. I wanted to trust him. Wanted him to…”
Trust me. Love me. Cherish me. Want me.
I never imagined he would rather dispose of me.
“I was up for a promotion—the position just under Stephen’s—and I thought I was going to get it,” I continue. “I had the degree, I had the experience, I had the connections. And then the position was given to a girl named Courtney.”
Acid burns my throat. Stephen had pressed his hand into Courtney’s lower back when she was invited onto the small stage at that gala, and I’d known. I’d been played, professionally and personally. My marriage had a ticking time clock on it, as did my job.
“I didn’t truly know that they were together until he left his email open one night, though,” I say stiffly. “You don’t have to be Einstein to connect the dots, considering she said she’d have a bottle of chardonnay at her place to celebrate, and he called her babe—emphatically. Stephen hated endearments and pet names. Or maybe that was just with me.”
Between us on the dock, Colton’s hands curl into fists. I have no doubt there would be downright fury in his expression if I looked up. I don’t. I stare at the paper in my hands until the words blur in my vision, and I force the rest of the story out before my courage fizzles.
“When I approached the board, his infidelity had nothing to do with it. I had a right to know why the position was given to Courtney, so I asked. She was, after all, an intern who had graduated college only months before. Without a trace of hesitation, Stephen said, in front of everyone, that she was better qualified because she…” My voice breaks. I lift my chin higher, as if that’ll help. “She was better qualified because she was singularly focused on her career. Her focus wasn’t divided like mine was.”
I squeeze my eyes closed. Against the betrayal that still stings all these months later, against the inadequacy and the spiraling self-doubt. “He knew—he knew—that it had only been a couple months since I lost the baby, and he…” I shake my head and press the back of my hand to my mouth. “But you want to know what hurt the most? What hurt the most—worse than his infidelity, worse than losing my promotion, worse than my failing marriage—was when he fired me behind closed doors. He told me he couldn’t believe I had the audacity to jeopardize his career by approaching the board like I had.”
My voice is barely audible by the time I finish. A fish snaps up a fly ten feet from the end of the dock. My toes trace the ripples on the surface of the lake. A jet leaves a stream of white across the sun-streaked azure sky.
Colton says nothing.
Outside the no wake buoys, a Sea Ray idles by on a sunset cruise, Jimmy Buffett’s Oceans of Time drifting across the waves. Laughter from neighboring docks, from kids and adults alike, softens the sharp edges of a siren in the distance. Cicadas are warming up for their nightly choir from oak trees bordering the shorelines, and wind rustles leafy tree branches.
Our surroundings are anything but silent, but Colton and me? We’re deafeningly silent.
“Colton?” I whisper when it becomes too much. “This is where you say I told you so, or—”
“No.” The word is so firm that I have to look at him. God, help me, because I was right. Fire sparks in his blue irises, his mouth set in a grim line, his jaw tightening. “I will never say that to you, because that would put me on the same level as him. I’m a flawed man, Cheyenne, but if I ever treat a woman that way—if I ever treat you that way—I don’t deserve the breath in my lungs.”
My own lungs cease to function. I should say something, and if I could, I would. Habitually, I want to defend Stephen; to say he didn’t mean it, or he wasn’t bad all the time. But the pain simmering in my chest? The physical ache that I want more than anything to be free from? That reminds me how valid my hurt is.
I’ve spent the last year of my life rationalizing Stephen’s behavior while, little by little, wearing my own confidence down to the quick. I’ve internalized his words and tucked them into neat little boxes that build, and build, and build, until the weight of them is too crushing.