How We Love Read online

  How

  We

  Love

  Michael Ryan Webb

  Copyright © 2017 Michael Ryan Webb

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 197371888X

  ISBN-13: 978-1973718888

  First edition, 2017

  825 Publishing

  5625 Duke St

  Lubbock, TX 79416

  michaelryanwebb.com

  In memory of Grandma Janie,

  who taught me how to read.

  In memory of Grandpa Mike,

  who taught me everything else.

  And for Chance, who I love

  more than I ever imagined

  that I could love someone.

  Chapter One | Adam

  “Be careful with that please,” I said to the mover who was clumsily handling a box full of kitchenware as I walked back into the home I was preparing to leave. “I think we're just about done, Mark,” I called into the living room.

  My husband, Mark, timidly stepped into the foyer, my favorite blue throw blanket in his hands. He looked pitiful. His tall, lanky frame was being swallowed by one of my sweaters. His normally tan skin was pale, having not been exposed to direct sunlight in months. His jet black hair was unusually long.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  I looked into his sad, brown eyes and wanted nothing more than to wrap him in my arms and take away his pain. But the last year had taught me that there was nothing I could do. He was fractured and I was inadequately equipped to fix him and exhausted from trying, among other things. But I couldn't speak the words, so I just nodded.

  “Okay,” he whispered, barely audible. “You should take these, then.” He handed me the blanket, removed the sweater, folded it neatly, and placed it in my hands. Underneath he was wearing a t-shirt that I gave to him on our first Christmas together. I'd think he was wearing it to try to manipulate me into staying if I didn't know that it wasn't in his nature. Without the blanket to hold, he fell into his default action of counting his fingers. I shuddered to think what mental image he was trying to distract from.

  “Linda from next door said she'll pick up your medications for you if you let her know when you need them. Make sure you keep taking them,” I said to distract us both. “The Millers' boy offered to bring groceries back for you from one of his shifts at the store every week. Just leave some money for him in the garage and he'll leave the food. If you need anything else...” I trailed off. I'd almost told him to call me, but that couldn't be an option.

  The tension was graciously broken by one of the movers announcing that they were finished.

  “You have to go now,” Mark said.

  “I have to go now,” I parroted.

  “I've never been divorced before. Are we supposed to hug, or like shake hands? Or is this more of a cordial nod and smile situation?” he quipped, a hint of a smile breaking across his unevenly bearded face. There was a tiny glimpse of the humor I'd missed so greatly. If only there had been more of these moments in the last six months than I could count on one hand.

  “I think one of us is supposed to enact a crazy scheme that may or may not include posing as an old woman. At least, that's what Robin Williams would have done,” I replied. I paused, unsure how we were supposed to leave things, then said, “but, we're not actually divorced yet, Mark. I haven't even filed. Who knows -” The smile on his face quickly dissipated.

  “Don't give me false hope, Adam,” he interjected. “Please.”

  “No, no, I wasn't trying to do that,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

  I saw the moving truck pull away out of the corner of my eye and slowly trudged to the front door.

  “I guess this is goodbye, then,” I said.

  “Just like that?” he asked.

  I rushed toward him and pulled him into a tight embrace. I haven't the faintest idea how long it lasted. It at once felt both like an eternity and a split-second. He pulled away first, taking me by surprise.

  “Take care of yourself, Adam,” he said. “I-I-I-” he trailed off.

  “I know,” I said. “You too.” I hurried out the door, lest I change my mind. I heard Mark close it gently behind me. I threw the blanket and sweatshirt into the backseat of the car that Mark had bought me two years prior for our 5th wedding anniversary, and slid into the driver's seat. I started the car but couldn’t bring myself to put it in drive. I looked back up at the house we’d shared for almost a decade and thought back to the day we moved in.

  Mark had just won another big case as a defense attorney and the long hours had paid off in the form of a promotion to partner and a bonus check big enough to allow us to finally move out of the crappy apartment we’d lived in since college.

  We’d spent over a month looking at houses, determined to find the perfect fit for both of us. When our realtor finally brought us to this moderately sized three bedroom house in the suburbs, we balked at the idea of it. We hadn’t even entertained the thought of children yet. Plus, I was still in graduate school and Mark had just turned 30. The suburbs were no place for us, we insisted. But the second we stepped inside, we’d both dropped our hesitation. Without even seeing the whole thing, it felt like home.

  And over the last nine years, we’d made it one. The house bore many signs of our life together. After two years of living there, we were married underneath the large oak tree in the backyard when our original plans fell through. Like love-struck teenagers, we carved our names and the date into the bark of the tree.

  A terrible painting that we made together at one of those cheesy classes where you get tipsy on wine and try to paint hung in the foyer. It was covering up the terrible drywall repair job we’d done after I insisted on carrying Mark over the threshold after our honeymoon and stumbled into the wall.

  There were permanent stains on the carpet in the living room from the many dinners we shared there because the dining room table was invisible underneath the mountain of combined work from Mark’s ongoing cases and my research for my doctoral dissertation and later, papers I had to grade.

  Yes, the house carried many memories of our life together. But it was the front porch that I found myself unable to look away from. It was there, sitting in front of the bright red door, that I’d proposed to Mark on my 30th birthday. A coworker had jokingly asked me if I’d gotten everything I wanted for my “big day” and it sent me into a tailspin of wondering if I was where I wanted to be at that point in my life. I’d realized by the end of the day that there was only one thing I felt like I needed – to be Mark’s husband.

  We’d been together for almost ten years by that point. We talked as if we were going to be together forever, but neither of us had ever brought up an actual marriage. Of course, it hadn’t really been an option for a lot of our relationship. But it was finally legal in California where we lived at that point, and I’d decided I was ready.

  I’d rushed home that afternoon, eager to plan a proposal before Mark got home from work. But when I got there, he’d already organized a surprise party for me. As much as I’d appreciated and enjoyed the party, I was anxious to talk to him about getting married.

  While everyone was distracted with cake, I’d snuck upstairs and retrieved a small, stained glass jar out of a box in the back of my closet. It once held a candle we bought on a date to a renaissance fair. That candle had been burning at dinner the night Mark first told me loved me. When it ran out, I’d saved the jar as a reminder of that night. Since I didn’t have a ring, I’d hoped that a reminder of our love could serve as a token for the proposal.

  And it worked. I pulled Mark out to sit on the porch together and thanked him for the party. He’d poked fun at how surprised I was before asking what I’d wanted to talk about.

  “Somebody asked me wha
t I wanted for my birthday earlier,” I said. “And it made me realize how good what we have is. We’re creating this beautiful life together that is so much more than I ever dreamed I could have. There’s only one thing I really want- you. I mean, forever, for real. I mean – What I’m trying to say is-”

  “Of course I’ll marry you,” he’d interrupted, his face glowing with that smile that had always given me butterflies. “What’s the jar for?” he’d asked.

  “I don’t have a ring,” I’d explained. “But I’ve saved this since the first night we said I love you, and I wanted to give you something to remind you that I still love you, and I always will.”

  He loved the gesture. After all of the party guests dispersed, we sat on the porch planning a wedding and discussing our future. We’d spent many nights since then sitting on that porch, talking about our work and our dreams. It was hard to think about never sitting there across from Mark again. But life doesn’t ask for permission to change, and after everything that had been thrown at us over the preceding year, I felt like I had no choice but to go, for both of our sakes.

  I pictured us on that porch one last time - happy and in love, full of hope - then slowly pulled away from the curb. I had managed to avoid becoming emotional through most of the process leading up to this day, but in that moment, leaving our home for the last time, I finally broke down.

  I calmed myself down when I got to my new apartment for long enough to let the movers in, but then I sat back in the car and sobbed uncontrollably. Had I made a mistake? Was I a monster for giving up on a man I loved so deeply just because things had gotten difficult? I couldn’t face the answers to those questions. All I knew was that we’d agreed. He wasn’t getting any better; I wasn’t helping; and some space would do both of us some good.

  When I finally calmed down, I helped the movers unload everything, paid them, and started unpacking. Unsurprisingly, a large majority of my belongings carried memories of Mark. That proved too painful to deal with right away. So I just sat on my bare mattress, surrounded by boxes I was too afraid to open.

  You wanted this, I thought to myself. You needed this. You were suffocating.

  I went for a walk to try to calm my nerves. The university where I taught was only a few blocks away, so I walked to my favorite spot on campus to try to relax. I sat in a courtyard and faced a statue of an open book sitting in the middle of a fountain. The steady water flow was peaceful enough to allow me to clear my mind.

  Recommitted to my decision, I went back to my new home and unpacked. I tried to sleep afterward, but the emptiness next to me in the bed was impossible to ignore. Despite all his busy nights working on cases, Mark and I hadn’t spent a night apart in 16 years. I tried to watch TV, but since my cable and internet hadn’t been installed yet, I only had one fuzzy channel option.

  The movie Hope Floats was playing, and I found myself wishing that I could trade places with Sandra Bullock’s character. At least her husband was an asshole who cheated on her. This would have been so much easier if Mark had cheated on me and given me a reason to hate him.

  But the truth was, he hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d been struggling with a mental illness that I couldn’t understand or help him with, no matter how hard I’d tried, and we had simply grown apart. We just didn’t fit anymore. The problem was that I still so desperately wanted us to.

  I tossed and turned for several hours until I finally fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion. The next morning, I overslept. For so many years, Mark got up at exactly five o’clock in the morning to get a head start on his work for the day, and I had grown used to him waking me up later in the morning. Even since he'd been out of work, he'd continued that routine. It never even occurred to me to set an alarm.

  Get your shit together, Adam, I thought to myself as I raced to get dressed and get to work. I managed to make it to class right on time, but didn’t have time to practice my prepared lecture. So, I decided to just wing it. It was an intermediate level creative writing class, so I asked the students to write one page about a big event during their summer from an outsider's perspective and gave them the hour to work on it while I looked over my notes for my next, more advanced class.

  Afterward, as I pored over their work and made notes of what areas to focus on throughout the semester for each student, I came across a longer than required entry. The student, Lauren, detailed her tumultuous relationship drama with her on-again, off-again boyfriend. He’d claimed to be completely committed to her at the beginning of the year, “for real this time.”

  So, at the end of the spring semester, she’d transferred here and moved across the country to be with him, only to have him grow distant and eventually break up with her, leaving her to find a new place to live and get through at least the next semester in a new place where she knew only him. Throughout, she took the viewpoint of a concerned friend watching herself make bad decisions, but never tried to paint herself as a victim.

  I marveled at her resilience. How weak was I that I was falling apart in a new setting of my own design, while this young woman was handling being left in the lurch like a champ? What was I doing moping around? The whole point of this separation was so that I could have the space I felt like I needed. I spent so long feeling like a jerk for wanting it before I decided I really did need it. So why did it still feel terrible now that I had it?

  I reminded myself that this was supposed to be better, and decided to really try harder to enjoy my newfound freedom and be happy. I made plans with a couple of colleagues to go out for drinks that evening, and managed to get through the rest of my day without letting myself get down again.

  At the end of the day, the thought of waiting around my apartment seemed like asking for trouble, so I headed over to the bar early. Sofia's place, named after herself, was popular with teachers because it was the only bar in town that had a strict 25 and up policy. Sofia herself still tended the bar, and she had no patience for the drunk shenanigans of college students.

  So, I scooted into a booth in the back and ordered dinner and a drink to pass the time. By the time my colleagues, Amy and Wes, arrived, I was on my fourth rum and Coke. Amy, a tiny ball of energy with black hair and distractingly green eyes, was a recent doctorate graduate specializing in Victorian Gothic fiction. We'd bonded over a shared sense of humor and our husbands got along well, so we'd spend plenty of time together over the years.

  Wes was still a graduate student, but had attached himself to me upon learning that I was an openly gay professor. As a gay man himself, I suppose he thought we'd have plenty in common. We didn’t. I'd only really invited him along because he had a way of easily filling any silence or gaps in conversation, and I thought it would be easy to avoid talking about my separation with him around.

  Ironically, Wes had just gone through a break up himself and hearing him process it by speaking about it made me feel like I should try it too. When Amy finally asked me if anything new happened with me over the summer, I tossed back my drink and said, "I left Mark."

  Their reactions immediately made me regret my words. Amy was notoriously non-interested in other people's drama, but her mouth dropped open and her eyes darted back and forth between me and Wes. Wes choked on his drink.

  "What are you talking about? What happened?" Amy asked.

  "There's officially no hope for me now," Wes lamented.

  "Shut up," Amy said, smacking his arm. "When did this happen?"

  "Yesterday," I whispered.

  "Oh my god. Are you okay?" Amy asked.

  "Yesterday? Sweetie what are you doing out? You should be at home eating ice cream in sweats and trolling Grindr while you watch bad TV," Wes opined.

  "Wes," Amy said through gritted teeth, "Could you get us some more drinks?"

  "But I'm gonna miss the drama," he whined.

  I saw Amy try to discreetly stomp on his foot under the table and wanted out of the conversation.

  "I'll do it," I said. "I'll be right back."

  I
trudged up to the bar and found Sofia restocking. She was an older woman who'd come to America from Mexico as a young girl. She was now probably in her late 60s, but she still had the fire of a 20-something. She had a big, hearty laugh that could fill the entire bar, and most of the wrinkles on her face appeared to be smile lines. I hadn't been much of a drinker in the last decade, but when I did I always enjoyed going to her place and talking with her.

  "What'll it be, blue-eyes?" she asked, in a deep southern drawl that reminded me of my small Texan hometown, as I approached.

  "Another round for me and the gang, ma'am. Make mine a double, please," I answered.

  She made the drinks with all the flair you'd expect of someone with her experience, handed them over, watched me chug mine, and laughed as she poured me another.

  "I hope that sexy husband of yours is on his way to get you. Driving just went out the window for ya, young man," she quipped, holding her hand out for my keys.

  "Well, he's not really my husband anymore... So that'd be a surprise," I said, handing her my keys. I hadn't meant to say that, but I'd also lost track of how many drinks I'd had by then.

  "Lo siento, mijo," she said. She grabbed two glasses and filled them up. "To fresh starts," she said, holding up one of the glasses. I tapped my glass against hers and we drank.

  "Are you supposed to be drinking while you bartend?" I asked.

  "Honey, I'm a grown-ass woman and this here is my bar. I do what I want," she said, winking. "Now go on back to your friends. The gringo looks like he's 'bout ready to explode waiting for ya to come back"

  I thanked her and made my way back to my seat. Amy and Wes were, of course, bickering when I reached them. They quickly shushed each other as I sat back down and stared at me expectantly.