To Live Again (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

I didn’t sleep that night. At work the next morning, I was a zombie—physically there, mentally elsewhere. Even as I went through the motions of my day, Sailo’s departure was never far from my mind, and I couldn’t get past it.

Every time I replayed my last conversation with Sailo, it made less sense than before. The words all made sense, but the ending didn’t. Going our separate ways. Calling this thing a disaster waiting to happen.

No. No, this was the wrong ending. There was no telling if our relationship had the legs to last forever, but now? No. Too soon.

Or maybe I was just out of my fucking head? It had taken time to accept that my marriage was over, so why not this?

By the time I was home from work, I barely remembered anything since that morning. I was vaguely aware that I’d driven to the office, made a valiant attempt to be a decent employee, and slogged through traffic to get home. Now I was here, and still flailing as badly as I’d been last night.

The next day, same shit. The next, again. The one after that, I was up, out the door, and halfway to work through unusually thin traffic before I realized it was Saturday. I didn’t even have the energy to feel like an idiot. I just drove home, took off my shoes and tie, and collapsed in bed again.

My ex-wife hadn’t turned my world on its head like Sailo had. Maybe this was just because Sailo’s departure was so close on the heels of hers—insult to injury, salt in the wound, whatever.

But that didn’t make sense. I wasn’t thinking about her. I’d more or less made peace with the divorce. I was settling into the life that came after Becky.

After Sailo, though…

God. What do I do?

One thing was for damn sure—I needed some advice from someone whose head was screwed on a little straighter than mine right now. So, I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my contacts, searching for someone wiser and saner than myself.

And the minute I saw Rhett’s name, I didn’t hesitate to send him a text.

You busy tonight?

He didn’t respond. After ten minutes, I decided I’d had my answer. Time to see what Netflix had to offer tonight. Something funny? Maybe a horror movie?

A good twenty minutes later, though, Rhett texted back:

Sorry, didn’t hear my phone. Free tonight. What’s up?

Oh, thank God. After a few back-and-forth texts, we agreed on a bar a few streets over from his place, and an hour later, Rhett slid into a booth across from me.

“Hey,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“I’m all right.”
Liar
. “Where’s Ethan?”

Rhett chuckled. “Sabrina dragged him out shopping for baby stuff.”

“Ethan? Really?”

“Yeah.” He shook his head, still laughing. “He made the mistake of telling her he can spot shoddy furniture construction from a mile away, so now he’s been recruited to help her furnish the baby’s bedroom.”

“Poor sap.”

“Yep. Teach him to open his big mouth.” Grinning wickedly, he added, “I’ve done my time going to Babies ‘R’ Us and all that. It’s his turn.”

“Smart move.” I chuckled, but it took some effort.

And judging by the way he eyed me, his grin fading, Rhett heard it.

“Something going on?” he asked. “I get the feeling this isn’t just a friendly beer.”

“I could, um…”
Why do I feel like such an idiot?
“I think I could use some advice.”

“Sure. What about?”

“Well…” I hesitated, struggling to even put the words together. “Sailo and I split up.”

“Wow. Really? Shit.” He held my gaze for a moment. “What happened?”

“That’s the part I’m still trying to figure out.” I sat back and told him about Sailo dropping the bomb on me. “Up until that night, everything was great. Shit, we even went on a double date with Mark and his boyfriend the night before.”

“With—” Rhett blinked. He put up his hands. “Back up, back up. First, your son is gay?” He lowered his hands again. “And second, you went on a double date with him?”

I nodded. “And then the next day, Sailo…” I gestured in the air, as if to say,
do the math
.

“Out of the blue?”

“Out of the blue.” I drew lines in the condensation on my beer glass. “Everything seemed great that night. I mean, it was an awesome night. Not just dinner with my kid, but me and Sailo afterward. It was…” Remembering the sex we’d had prickled my neck with goose bumps and twisted my stomach with renewed sadness. “I thought everything was fine.”

“Did he say why?”

“Yeah, he…” A mix of guilt and shame knotted in my gut. Everything was fine? No, it wasn’t, and I only had myself to blame. Shoulders sagging, I said, “He said things were moving too fast. That it was doing what rebound relationships do—getting way too intense, way too quickly, which—”

“Inevitably ends in disaster,” Rhett said softly.

I nodded again.

He watched me for a moment, absently thumbing the side of his glass. “Was it going too fast?”

“I…” I rubbed my eyes. “Fuck, I don’t even know. It
was
moving fast. I just don’t know if I agree with him that it was too fast.” Lowering my hand, I asked, “How do you even know if it’s really too fast?”

Rhett shook his head. “You’ve got me. Falling for someone usually happens on its own time. Some people take years. Some people take one date.”

“And some people think they’re falling, but they’re really just getting over the person who just dumped them.” I lifted my beer glass almost to my lips, and right before I took a deep swallow, grumbled, “Fuck knows how I’m supposed to tell the difference.”

“I don’t think anyone can tell,” he said with a shrug. “The only time you know for sure about a relationship is when you’re looking back after it’s over.”

I raised my eyebrows. “That’s a cynical way to look at it.”

“Think about it.” He wrapped both hands around his beer, his wedding ring clinking quietly against the glass. “How many people are blindsided by divorces and breakups? We all think we’ve got our shit together, but there’s no guarantee that any of us are going to make it to the next anniversary.” His shoulder lifted slightly. “I firmly believe Ethan and I will be together until we’re dead, but I thought that before we almost called it quits for good. If that separation taught me anything, it’s that we can’t take a damned thing for granted.”

I chewed on that for a moment. “How do you know when to give up and when to try again, though?”

Rhett shook his head again. “I wish I knew. Sometimes you’re beating a dead horse. Sometimes you’re bringing something back to life that will probably last.” He held my gaze. “I guess what you have to think about is what you had before you split. Is having that again worth the risk of another round of feeling like you are now?”

“Yeah,” I said without hesitation. “It is. Right now, I just…it doesn’t feel
right
.”

“That’s rough. So are you guys still talking, or…?” His upraised eyebrows finished the question.

Shaking my head, I ran my finger around the rim of my glass. “I don’t think so.”

“That’s a shame.”

“It is, and it’s…” My shoulders were suddenly as heavy as the ball of lead in my gut. “Can I be completely honest? Even if I might sound pathetic?”

No judgment in his eyes, Rhett nodded. “Sure.”

“To be honest…” I swallowed. “This hurts more than when Becky kicked me out. Shit. Maybe Sailo’s right. Maybe I was in way too deep.”

“Or maybe you’d checked out of your marriage.”

“I…” Had I?

Rhett sat up a little, resting his elbows on the table and clasping his hands loosely between them. “It seems like you’ve figured out a lot about your marriage after the fact. Stuff you didn’t see or know about before the divorce.” His brow creased, and he softly added, “Maybe you and Becky need to sit down and talk some of those things over.”

“Like what? We’re done. Why pick at the scab?”

He shrugged. “Maybe there’s stuff you both need to work through so you can move on completely. I mean, when Sabrina’s mom and I split up, we could barely talk to each other for like five years before we finally decided enough was enough. Then we hashed a few things out, buried the hatchet, and now we get along fine.”

“I’m assuming it’s easier said than done.”

He whistled. “
Oh
, yeah. But by then we’d been apart for a while, and we’d started seeing other people. I was already with Ethan by then. And I guess enough time had gone by for us to be objective about it. We could see the things we’d each done wrong, and I mean, maybe hindsight really is twenty-twenty, but it was a lot easier to see that our marriage had been coming apart long before we broke up.” He picked up his drink. “Something about that, it made it easier to put the whole thing to rest. Like, it really was something that needed to end because we just weren’t meant to be, not because one or both of us were horrible people.”

I sat back, exhaling. “That was a few years later, though. We’re not even out of the same calendar year.”

“And it would’ve been a hell of a lot better if we’d done it sooner.” He sipped his beer and muttered, “Trust me. And sometimes after you split with someone, the best way to make peace with it is to bury the hatchet with them, and then move on. Without them.”

I winced.

He pushed his glass away. “The thing is, you’ve raised your kids. It isn’t like you have to do a custody switch every other week. If you can’t see eye to eye, then maybe…” He held my gaze, his brow pinching slightly, and his tone was soft as he added, “Maybe a clean break is what you both need.”

Fuck. Splitting up with Becky had been painful enough. The thought of not having her in my life at all, of moving on alone without the woman who’d been there for better than half my life, was a tough one to swallow.

“It’s hard to imagine life without her.”

“I know. But if you two have to close the book on each other, maybe you can do it peacefully. You’ll always have all the good memories of her. You’ll always have the kids you raised together.”

“That’s true. Still…”

“It doesn’t mean either of you failed, or that you’re bad people. It might mean you’re just ready to move on.” He held my gaze for a moment, then added, “And I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s never going to be easy to let someone go after you’ve spend that much of your life with them.” He grimaced. “Believe me—I get it.”

“I appreciate the advice,” I whispered.

Silence fell, but it didn’t last long. “It might not hurt to talk to Sailo too.”

His name hit me in the gut. I pushed back the lump rising in my throat. “What’s the point? It was a fling. It’s over.”

Rhett tilted his head, eyeing me as if he saw right through me. “I don’t think that was a fling, and I don’t think you do either.”

I squirmed under his scrutiny and held onto my cold glass for dear life. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, for one thing, how quickly you said you’d be willing to risk hurting like this again if it meant giving what you had another shot.”

“That could just mean I’m not good at letting go.”

“It could, but…” His eyes lost focus for a good minute. Then he looked at me again. “Do you remember when we all went to dinner with you and Sailo? Before you moved?”

“Yeah.”

“You remember when he walked in, and you looked at me and asked what I was grinning about?”

I nodded.

Rhett idly ran his finger along the rim of his glass. “The thing is, I knew Sailo had walked into the restaurant before you said anything. The minute he was in the room, you changed. You just…came to life in a way I’d never seen before.”

An image flashed through my mind of Mark’s eyes lighting up when Devon had walked in for our double date, and I shivered at the memory of my heart speeding up when Sailo walked in the night Rhett was talking about.

“I was infatuated,” I said. “He was…the first guy…”

Rhett’s eyebrow arched.

I looked away and sighed. “I think I’m better off just letting him go. He’s probably right. It went too far, too fast, and I…”

“Who are you trying to convince?” he asked softly. “Me? Or yourself.”

I didn’t have an answer.

“I think you need to talk to him.”

So I can listen to him tell me why I’m an idiot and this is a disaster and—

“Greg.” Rhett’s voice was gentle and soft. “Talk to him. He might not be willing to give it another shot, but you won’t know unless you
talk to him
. Trust me—I know what I’m talking about.” A strange undercurrent worked its way into Rhett’s tone, like a mix of hurt and desperation. “Ethan and I were well on our way to moving on without each other, and
one
conversation put us back on the right path.” He swallowed. “Don’t think for a second I wasn’t scared out of my mind going into that conversation, because I had no idea what would happen. But I can’t even put into words how many times every day I’m thankful we had it, because now I know exactly what I would’ve lost if we’d kept walking away.”

“You guys had so much more history, though.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Rhett dismissed the idea with a sharp wave. “You and Becky had twenty-five years of history, and you’ve said yourself there was no salvaging it. Time guarantees nothing. But…look, just talk to him. It’s better to say your piece and walk away empty-handed than to leave it unsaid and still be empty-handed.”

I tamped down the emotions aching in my chest. “I’m just having a hard time believing there’s a chance of not being empty-handed when it’s over.”

Rhett nodded. “It’s a risk. It’s not easy, but…is what you and he had worth that risk?”

I swallowed. “I don’t know. I don’t… I just don’t know.”

“Just think about everything we’ve talked about,” Rhett said. “Don’t give up on him.”

“I’ll think on it. Thanks.”

We finished our beers, and after I’d paid, headed out for the evening. In the parking lot, I sat in the driver’s seat for a while, just staring out into the night and trying to make sense of…hell, everything. In a matter of weeks, everything I knew had changed. I’d had to get used to saying “ex-wife.” I’d come out to my kids. One of my kids had come out to me. I’d been with a man, fallen for a man, and lost a man. Things were different now.