“I guess so,” he said. “You’re probably right, though. He’s just being Ex. I’ll get some rest. Things will look better.”
“If I hadn’t been pushing us all so hard these last few months, we wouldn’t have been so fried coming in,” I said. “I think there’s blame to go around.”
Aubrey chuckled and sat back, his fingers laced together, his exhausted gaze on me. I felt myself starting to blush.
“So, we should probably talk,” he said.
“I was thinking that.”
“You want to start, or do you want me to?”
I took a deep breath. Outside, Chogyi Jake started the van’s engine, then let it die. Through the picture window, I could see the soft grass, bright green with the first growth of spring. The back of our little Virgin Mary. Pray for us now and at the hour of our really awkward conversation.
“I’ll go,” I said. “I’ve been kind of avoiding… well, us. There’s a lot tied up in it, you know? You’re married, and I didn’t find out until after we’d fallen into bed. You’re separated and Kim’s seen other men, so it’s not like you’re married married.”
“You grew up in a particularly religious home,” Aubrey said. “Having taken vows means a lot to you.”
“And I hate that it means a lot to me,” I said. “All of that. But…”
My heart was ramping up, a slow leak of adrenaline giving my blood a little electric push. It felt like looking over a precipice, even though it was only really confessing.
“There’s something I haven’t been telling you,” I said.
“It’s okay,” Aubrey said, gently. “I already know. Eric told me about your mother. The affair. Everything. I absolutely understand why the idea of being with a married guy would be a deal breaker.”
There have been a few times in my life that a few syllables—just words in sequence—felt like being hit in the head with a brick. When my supposed best friend in college confronted me and blew up my carefully constructed life. When my lawyer had explained that I had inherited the equivalent of a small nation. When I’d crawled out of his bed and discovered that Aubrey was still married.
And now.
“Wait,” I said. “What?”
“Your mother’s affair,” Aubrey said. “Eric told me about it. How your folks almost got divorced.”
“My mother had an affair?” I said, standing up. “When the fuck was this?”
Aubrey’s eyes went wide.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It sounded like it was just after they were married, but I didn’t—”
“My mother? Had an affair?” I said. “You don’t understand. My mother doesn’t have a sexuality. She’s like a Stepford Wife.”
Aubrey looked up at me from the floor, his arms crossed.
“So, I guess that wasn’t the thing you weren’t telling me about,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I wasn’t telling you that I’ve got your divorce papers. Kim left them in Denver, and I never handed them over to you because I felt… conflicted or something. My mom had an affair? My mom? Who with?”
“Eric didn’t know,” Aubrey said. “He only knew about it because your dad went to live with him for a few months after it happened. Well, after it came out. Apparently your dad was pretty wrecked by the whole thing. Kim has divorce papers filled out?”
I couldn’t imagine my father and Uncle Eric in the same room, much less living together. But the big break between them hadn’t happened until I was in high school. Of course they’d had a history before that. They’d grown up together, gone to the same schools, known the same people. They were brothers.
If it was true, if something had happened, maybe my father would have turned to Eric. Maybe they’d had the kind of relationship back then that would allow it, even if it had all gone to hell later. But my mother?
All my life, I had seen her as a pale shadow of a woman. She’d made dinner, cleaned house, taken me and my two brothers to church. She had done as Dad, the full-on patriarch of the house, told her. The few times she had talked about a life before marriage, it had been when Dad wasn’t around. Mousy, repressed, controlled, and oh-my-God asexual. I’d always been amazed that my folks had managed to have three kids. And my father-razor-cut hair, starched shirt, reading the Bible and scowling—had seemed like the perfect match for her.
And she had had an illicit affair that almost ended the marriage? The idea of her wrapped in some lover’s embrace, risking her reputation—her soul—in order to have sex, was insane. She would never have done it. It wasn’t possible.
Or maybe it was. A lifetime of interactions between my parents suddenly shifted focus. My father’s gruffness and need for control suddenly looked like a constant need for reassurance. My mother’s submission became a kind of years-long apology. Everything about my childhood—love, family, sex—came into focus.
“Jayné?” Aubrey said again. I was only vaguely aware he’d been repeating my name for a couple minutes.
“Sorry,” I said. “What?”
“Where are the papers?”
“What papers?”
“The divorce?”
“Oh. In my pack.”
Aubrey levered himself up with a grunt and passed into the kitchen, returning a minute later with the papers in hand. I watched him as he flipped through them, nodding to himself now and then, sometimes smiling wryly.
“And you’ve had these since Denver?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“And you just didn’t mention it because…?”
“I was afraid you might still be in love with her and not sign them,” I said. Apparently being in shock had a clarifying effect. I had barely admitted that fear to myself, and I sure as hell hadn’t intended to bring it up here, with him.
Aubrey stood framed in the kitchen doorway, the light from behind him making him seem larger. Like a still frame from a movie, projected on a huge screen. Then he shrugged and took a pen from his pocket.
“Okay,” he said as he signed them, “I can see that.”
“Kim still loves you,” I said.
“I know. And she’s great, but…”
He folded the papers and tucked them into his shirt pocket. The urge to explain why she left him—that she’d been sleeping with Eric and her conscience couldn’t take it anymore—rose in me, but I couldn’t tell if it was because I wanted him to know everything or if it would only have been to cement his decision.
“My turn?” he said.
“Um. All right.”
He squatted down in front of the couch and took my hand. His eyes were bloodshot and there were circles under them like bruises. The wounds on his collarbone and chest peeked out over his shirt, the scabs a black crust, the flesh around them puffy and red. He took my hand.
“What we did yesterday? I have to thank you for that. I needed… I needed something. Not sex, exactly. Or not just sex. But being with you matters to me.”
My heart jumped up to my throat somewhere and got stuck. I fought to speak.
“Thank you,” I said. It seemed profoundly inadequate.
“I’m a little messed up right now,” he said, his face going a little colder, more focused within himself. “What happened with… Marinette…”
He’d been violated. His body hadn’t been his own to control. I knew enough girls who’d had occasion to say the same things that I heard what he couldn’t bring himself to speak.
“I understand,” I said.
“If what we did was a onetime thing, I can accept that,” he said. “If it’s more than that, I’d love it. I love you, Jayné. You’re funny and sexy and smart. And vulnerable in ways you seem totally unaware of. And you make me laugh.”
My chest felt hollow and full at the same time. I love you. The most common, used, trite words in the world, but my eyes were tearing up just the same. Aubrey wiped his thumb across them, and the world became a little less wavy.
“But seriously, I’m kind of messed up right now,” he said. “And it may take me a while to get my head back on straight.”
“Oh, I will so totally wait,” I said.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “But it would be great if you did.”