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the mirror every day, and say, “I like that person looking back at me.”
—excerpt from The Modern Woman’s Guide to Divorce (And the Joy of Staying Single)
Ivy flung open the bedroom door and peered down the length of the hallway. No Dillon. But a narrow sliver of light shone through his partially open door like an written invitation. She marched down the hall, intent on barging in on him before he had the chance to do the same to her.
Rather than knock, since such gestures hadn’t been high on his list of priorities, she shoved the door open and stepped right inside.
The first thing she noticed was the binders and loose papers strewn across the bed. The second was Dillon sitting in the middle of it all, back propped against the headboard, reading some official-looking document. He didn’t look as though he was preparing to barge in on her anytime soon.
“Problem?” he asked, watching her expectantly.
She just stood there, mouth hanging open, probably looking like a trout stuck on a hook. He was wearing a pair of jogging pants, a Texas A&M T-shirt, and his feet were bare.
He really hadn’t been going anywhere. When he said he was going to his room to stay, he’d been telling her the truth. He hadn’t been planning to bug her after all.
He set down the papers he’d been reading. “What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?”
She said the first thing that popped into her head, and she said it with…enthusiasm. “I am very happy with my life.”
He shrugged, looking more than a little confused by her outburst. “Okay.”
Now what? Now that she’d just made a complete ass out of herself. “I just wanted you to know that. Because I’m finding out that some people don’t think I am.”
“Really. Do these people have names?”
“That’s not important. The thing is, these people seem to think that my unresolved issues with you are holding me back somehow.”
He folded his arms across his chest, looking intrigued now. “Oh, yeah?”
“In case you’re wondering, they’re not. But, to shut them up, I’d like us to sit down and talk and figure out what it is that’s unresolved, and resolve it. Without arguing or fighting,” she added. “In other words, I want us to get along.”
“There’s only one problem with that,” he said. “Your idea of getting along is when I shut my mouth and agree with everything you say.”
The accusation stung, and she was about to snap right back at him when she realized that would only start a fight. If they were going to do this she had to be willing to listen to what he had to say, even if it was sarcastic and snotty. May be it was the only way he knew to communicate his feelings.
“So what you’re saying to me is that you feel I don’t listen to you.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, as though he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. “Active listening, right?”
The man never ceased to surprise her. “How do you know that?”
“I did go to a few of my classes, you know. And I dated a psychiatrist a couple of years ago.”
“Then think how easy this will be.”
“For some reason I doubt that,” he said. “You sure you want to do this? You want to dredge up the past and try to sort it out after all this time?”
She did and she didn’t. All she knew was that Deidre’s thinking she was unhappy was an annoyance, but hearing the same thing from Miranda had scared her a little. And though she’d denied it, deep down she couldn’t help wondering if they were right. What if they were seeing something she wasn’t? What if there was something better out there and she was missing it? What if all this time she’d just been slogging through life, not really living it?
“We at least should try,” she said.
“You might not like what I have to say.”
She was well aware of that. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Okay,” he agreed. He gathered the papers and tucked them into the binder, then gestured for her to sit.
She perched on the edge at the foot of the bed. “So, where do we start?”
“Since we’re new to this communicating thing, May be we should practice first. May be we should try talking about something we never fought about.”
That subject did not exist. “Dillon, we fought about everything.”
“Not everything.”
“See, we’re fighting already!”
“This is not fighting. This is discussing.”
“Name one thing in our entire relationship that we didn’t fight about.”
“Money,” he said.
“Money?”
“Money was never an issue. You nagged me about school and rode me relentlessly about my drinking and my weekend excursions. But never money. Even during the divorce it never came up.”
He was right. She may not have approved of the way he spent his money, particularly the trips to Vegas and Atlantic City that would put him back thousands of dollars. But she hadn’t felt she had any right to dictate where and how he spent—or wasted—his fortune.
And when the divorce happened, she didn’t ask for a penny. She just wanted it to be over fast. And it might have been if his father hadn’t gotten involved. Apparently, he hadn’t trusted her to fade away quietly. Either that or he was just pissed off that he’d been wrong about her, that she really hadn’t been after Dillon’s money.
“And sex,” he said. “We never fought about sex.”
Oh, but they had. One time. It had been the argument. The one that had hammered the final wedge between them.
“The day I told you I thought I might be pregnant, we argued. Sex…pregnant. Can’t have one without the other.”
“And I’ve been trying for the first one for days now, but you’re not cooperating.”
Clearly, he used humor as a defense mechanism when she came close to hitting a nerve, to making him face something he didn’t want to deal with.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t make a joke out of this or nothing will get resolved. Just talk to me. I know you’re not used to talking about your feelings, but you’re going to have to if we really want this to work.”
He was quiet for a second and she could see the wheels spinning, see him working things through, trying to decide if this was worth the hassle.
What would it be?
“I had every reason to be upset,” he finally said. “Neither of us was ready to start a family.”
“You were more than upset.” He had been furious.
How could she let that happen, he’d shouted? How could she be so careless? As if he’d had no part in it.
The pregnancy test she later took had been negative, but by then the damage had already been done.
After that it had been as if they were afraid to touch each other, afraid there might be an accident that would bind them together for life. And without the sex, there had been nothing left to hold them together. She knew that it was only a matter of time before everything fell apart. But admitting it was over was as good as admitting that her mom was right. So she had hung on until the bitter end.
“I overreacted,” he admitted, then he really blew her away by adding, “I think that deep down I knew I was a lousy husband and thought I would be an even worse father.”
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