The Last Exhale Part 15

Eric is standing in the room against the dresser when I walk out of the bathroom. I ran up here to take a shower. Needed the water to help soothe my thoughts. Needed to give him time to cool down from his.

I toss my robe on the bed, grab a T-shirt from my dresser and put it on without a bra. Can feel my husband's eyes pouring over my body with every move I make. I pull up a pair of boxer shorts before this conversation goes in another direction.

"Why did you marry me?"

"I don't know," I say too fast.

Eric tosses a seven-year-old letter in my direction.

I pick it up, flip it, remove the papers from the envelope with anxiousness as if I don't know what it says.

"You knew a lot when you wrote that," he says, pain etched in his voice.

I stuff the letter back in the envelope, wishing I could stuff the words back into Neverland just as easily. "It felt like the right thing to do at the time."

"The right thing to do?" My husband glares at me, yet his voice holds more intensity than his eyes. "For who? 'Cause the way I see it right now, you've messed up life for four people."

I think about EJ and Kennedy and how their lives will never be the same.

"You had a lot to say in that letter, but you're not saying much of nothing now."

It's obvious to me that the time I took in the shower did nothing to calm his anger. He's just as mad now as he was when Stevie Wonder was instigating our situation. "What do you want me to say, Eric?"

"Something. Anything. But don't sit there and act like a mute."

The letter's still in my hand. I rip it in half without giving it any thought. Get off the bed and toss my feelings in the trash. Should've done that years ago. "I'm sorry," falls from my lips.

"Sorry won't give me back the ten years you wasted."

"Wasted? Wow."

"What else would you call it?"

"Well, if you hadn't spent so much time 'getting to know' me, it wouldn't be ten years I wasted."

"Obviously, I didn't get to know you at all."

"I'm not going to do this, Eric."

He's leaning on the dresser with his arms folded across his chest. A scowl on his face that would cause the Bloods and Crips to call truce. "You know, I would've been able to take being rejected on our first date, but this is beyond comprehension. I would've rather you cheated."

"Be careful what you wish for."

He unfolds his arms, pushes off the dresser. Comes closer to me. "What was that?"

I step back, go around him. Walk out of our bedroom.

Adamant footsteps follow me down the hall and down the stairs. "Why. Did. You. Marry. Me?"

I stop at the bottom of the stairs, turn around and look into his eyes the same way I did as I repeated my vows on our wedding day. "Tell me something. How could you not know I wasn't happy?"

He brushes past me, leaves me hanging like a person at the end of a bungee cord.

I dangle in this emptiness for a moment, not long enough for it to take over, though, and join him in the living room. Fall victim to the sofa's cushion right along with him.

Eric moves over to the fireplace, stands in front of a picture we took on our first wedding anniversary. Kennedy was only a month old. "You've wasted almost ten years of my life."

This time it doesn't sting as much as it did the first time he said it. "I'm sorry," is all I can say.

"That's not something you can apologize for."

"Well, what do you want me to do, Eric? I can't give you those years back." Lord knows if I could, I would, because I've wasted the same amount of time.

"I'm not asking you to." He turns to face me with such fury I feel like I'm in the room with Bruce Lee. "Every day, I put my life on the line for this family. I risk not coming home and leaving my kids without a father, and you without a husband. I put that uniform on knowing I'm making a major sacrifice to keep this family afloat. All this time, I thought it was a mutual effort. Now I see things so differently."

We're here, at this place of no return. I've held my tongue long enough, spared everyone's feelings but my own. "Eric, do you think going to work is enough to keep a home together?"

"Obviously not. According to your words I'm boring, lack drive, and let's not forget bad in bed."

I open my mouth too quickly, feel my jaw pop. "I didn't say it like that."

"Doesn't matter how you said it. You said it."

He's right. The truth is the truth, no matter how it's said. "It's not like I hadn't told you those things before, Eric."

"Maybe you did, Sydney, but things are a lot different when they're staring you in the face." He scratches his hairless face as if visualizing my words makes him itch. "What were you thinking when you wrote the letter?"

As I rewind time in my head, I sit down on the sofa. Feel like I've been on my feet all day. My legs thank me immediately. "You really want to know?"

"I asked."

Now's my chance to finally tell him how I've felt all these years. For some reason, it doesn't feel right. I twist my wedding ring around my finger several times before my lips move. "I was thinking about how much I wanted out. My feelings were never stable in our relationship. One minute, you'd have me smiling from here to Kansas, the next, I wondered if you even knew me or wanted to be with me. I questioned if I even knew me or knew what I wanted. You made me feel invalid, made me feel confused. Felt like I didn't have a mind of my own."

"Invalid? Wow." He sits down slowly in the chair by the computer desk like he's having a bad episode with hemorrhoids. "You never said anything."

I let out an exasperated sigh. "I've lost count of how many times I've told you that. You never listen, Eric. It's about how you feel and if you feel like everything's okay in your world, everything's okay in the rest of the world. But you're not in this world alone."

"That's not true. I don't know how you can say that."

"You asked me how I felt. There you have it."

Confusion intoxicated with anger stains his face like a cup of cherry Kool-Aid spilled on a white carpet. "I don't get you."

"Bingo." I clap my hands. "That's the problem. You stopped getting me after you felt you knew me, but I've grown since we first started dating. h.e.l.l, I've grown since we've been married."

"I'm not going to let you sit up here and say I don't listen. I've lost count of how many times I set the DVR for your favorite shows, or how I spend time with the kids because I can hear the tiredness in your voice. And let's not forget the times I rub your feet after you've had a long day just by the way you toss your keys on the counter. I do listen, Sydney. Even when you haven't said anything."

He's right. d.a.m.n it, he's right.

"I just don't know what you want from me."

I get up from the sofa and stand next to the chair he's sitting in. I wrap my fingers around his jaw, raise his face up toward mine. Need him to face me, need to see if his irises and tongue speak the same language when I ask the question he diverted earlier. "Did you really think I was happy?"

He stares at me so long I swear he was born without the need to blink. "No."

My hand falls from his face. I lick my lips, then cough. Struggle with what to say. "Does that mean you've been unhappy as well?"

"Yes."

I walk back over to the sofa and drop. His one word replies have me feeling like I've jumped out of an airplane with no parachute.

27.

SYDNEY.

We're staring at the final moments of our marriage.

We can't go back to before this moment. Can't go back to the end of our first date and rewrite our relationship. All we can do from here is face the truth and make changes accordingly.

I'm not happy.

He's not happy.

Never did I think a confession would boil down to this. Never did I think my husband could possibly feel just as suffocated in this marriage as I have been. All these years, he's been putting on the same fake smile as me. Neither one of us acknowledging the other's misery. What kind of man is he? What kind of woman am I?

Eric sits down on the sofa next to me.

I ask, "If you've been unhappy, why are you trying to put all this all on me?"

His voice a whisper, "You knew I was just out of a long relationship. You knew I was in a vulnerable place. You could've stopped this instead of pulling me in."

"You're a grown man, Eric. You could've just as easily not have even agreed to go out with me until you were truly ready." I take a deep breath, try to keep myself from getting heated.

Something tickles the side of my leg. I reach down to scratch and feel Forrester rubbing against my leg. All of a sudden, I hear him purring, feel him vibrating the inside of my palm. Don't know how I missed the sound of his motor; purrs louder than a machine gun in the middle of a war.

War.

Something Eric and I are in right now.

The battle of who's right and who's wrong.

The battle no one ever wins.

Eric breaks my thoughts. "My parents have been married forty-two years. I wanted that. Wanted to be with someone I could grow old with." It's his turn to cough and struggle with what to say next.

I look down at the diamond on my ring finger. "So I was convenient timing?"

He nods.

Ouch.

"When we first got together, I still had feelings for my ex. We were still communicating, still flirting. Still sleeping together when she came to town. Still wanted to be with each other, but pride stood in the way on both of our parts. You came along and I just transferred those emotions to you."

Before he can finish, I jump across the sofa with the back of my hand making hard contact with the side of his face.

He doesn't react. Just sits there, blindly staring in the dark.

I look down, see my hands nestled in my lap. I never slapped him, just wish I had. My jaws clench, feel like my teeth will fall out if I open my mouth. I open it anyway. "That's messed up. Really, really messed up."

"Why?" He turns in my direction. "Just like I knew you weren't happy, you knew I still loved another woman, but you had to invite me over to your place at night, had to cook me dinner and offer me dessert in bed. You knew where my head was."

"Yeah, well, it would've been nice for you to share those thoughts with me instead of using your other head to tell me a different story."

"You knew I was seeing other people, too. You made that decision."

"But I didn't make it alone."

He breathes hard into darkness. "Why did you marry me, Sydney?"

The candle on the mantle casts a glow on our wedding picture above the fireplace. I gaze at the picture. For the first time, I have to come to terms with what I see. The truth is all in my husband's eyes. He didn't want to be there just as much as I didn't. His eyes held just as much uncertainty as mine. Both of us denying ourselves the last opportunity to be honest about our insecurities before saying those two words that would commit us for life.

A smile tells a thousand lies, but the eyes never deny the truth.

I turn my gaze back to Eric. "I should be asking you the same thing."

28.