I took a shower and poured a glass.
Confession: I poured the glass first and took it into the shower with me, soaping with one hand, drinking with the other.
I got out and got dressed, choosing jeans and a sweater instead of pajamas, although I really just wanted to curl into a ball and go to bed, forget today ever happened. After picking at a salad but finding myself unable to eat, I abandoned the effort and sat fuming on the couch, pickling my anger with wine. I drank a second glass, and then a third. And the more I pickled it, the more intense it grew—for fuck’s sake, he’d had every opportunity to tell me the truth! The only bit of truth I could see was that he didn’t take me seriously. I was a fling, that was all. Not worth honesty. Not worth trust. Not worth commitment.
I was a fling, and he was a liar.
I was not OK with that.
My house was so quiet I heard the crunch of his footsteps in the snow as he came up the driveway, a few minutes before eleven. I was expecting his knock, but I still jumped when it sounded, three sharp bangs on the glass. Pinot Grigio in hand, I stumbled to the door and opened it.
My confidence flagged when I saw the way he lit up at the sight of me. When I felt the way my heart beat faster at the sight of him. Somewhere in the back of my mind, hope sprouted. Maybe it’s not true. Maybe I should ask and not accuse. Maybe I should listen to his side.
“Hey,” he said, his eyes clouding with concern when he noticed my troubled expression. “What’s going on? Everything OK?”
“We need to talk.” My voice shook.
“Uh oh. Sounds serious. Are you breaking up with me already?”
Tucking my hands inside the sleeves of my sweater, I stepped back from the door. He shut it behind him and took off his snowy boots, careful to leave them on the rug. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but he was wearing a thick blue toggle-close sweater with a flannel shirt underneath that made me want to get inside his clothing and stay there.
He set my wine glass aside and reached for me, and before I could stop myself, I let him take me in his arms. Kiss my head. Rock me a little. “Hey you. What’s up?”
It felt so good. So damn good. But growing in the pit of my stomach was the sickening dread I used to feel when my parents would get home from a party and I knew an argument was coming. Maybe I don’t have to say anything. Maybe I can pretend not to know. We can just have sex and ignore this another day. Then I glanced at the dead plants on my windowsill and came to my senses.
What was left of them after the pickling, anyway.
“I want to talk.”
“OK.”
“I can’t talk like this. You have to let me go.”
He squeezed me tighter. “Never.”
I pushed him away and moved a step back. The room spun a little. “Don’t say things like that.”
He looked confused. “Things like what?”
“Things like never, when it comes to letting me go. You don’t mean them. You’re a liar.”
He glanced at my wine glass. “Are you drunk?”
“No,” I said, although it was obvious I was.
Charlie narrowed his eyes. “Erin, what is this about?”
“This is about you making a fool of me.”
“And how did I do that?”
“You have a daughter!” I burst out. “A daughter! And you said nothing to me about her, not for months! And you know I kill plants!”
Charlie’s mouth hung open for a second. “What?”
“And an ex-wife too! How could you think I wouldn’t find out, Charlie?”
He shook his head slightly. “Where is this coming from?”
“Do you deny it?”
“No,” he said carefully. “But I don’t like the way you’re attacking me with it.”
I coughed and sputtered. “You don’t like it? You don’t like it? You’re a piece of work, Charlie Dwyer. You march in here, with your badge and your drill and your hard wood, and you lie to me and seduce me and get me to fall for you, and now you don’t like it that I found out the truth?”
“Seduce you! Erin, what the hell? This isn’t like you at all.”
It wasn’t, but it felt sort of good to just let fly whatever I felt like saying. “Just be honest for once,” I snapped. “Do you or do you not have a daughter? Were you or were you not married to her mother?” Against all odds, that little piece of me prayed he’d say this was all a misunderstanding.
He hesitated too long.
“Answer me!” I yelled.
“I don’t see why I should,” he yelled back. “You’re just going to stand there and judge me like I knew you would.”
I shrank back. “Judge you! Is that what you think this is? I’m judging you for having a child? For being married and divorced?” But I was drunk, so it came out more like juszhingoo than judging you.
“For making mistakes! For being less than perfect, which we both know you are. You’ve never done one thing wrong in your life, Miss Perfecty Perfect Homecoming Queen with her clean floors and her ABC spice rack and her fake scented Christmas tree that doesn’t drop any needles. We can’t all be as perfect as you are, you know.”
“Fuck you!” I shook my finger in his face. “I did make a mistake, and that was letting you into my life. You had every opportunity to tell me the truth, and you didn’t. You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie to you!” Charlie’s blue eyes blazed. “I chose not to share something with you at this point in our relationship. It’s my personal life, and I get to choose when I share things!”
“It’s not a fucking thing, Charlie! It’s who you are—you’re a father!” Why couldn’t he see that having a child wasn’t something you got to choose to share or not share, like an aversion to cilantro or an affinity for hot chocolate? It was an essential part of his identity. “I feel like I don’t even know you at all, like I never have.”
Charlie inhaled and exhaled, and I could see him trying to keep his temper in check. “I told you right from the start there were things in my past I wasn’t proud of.”
“You could have been a little more specific,” I spat. My lips were so numb, I garbled the word specific.
“I also warned you not to get attached, didn’t I? I told you that I mess up every good thing in my life.”
“Well, congratulations! You were right.”
We stood seething at each other for a moment.
“So that’s it, then. You’re ending this?”
“That’s all you have to say?” I shrieked. “No real explanation? No actual reason why you’ve been lying to me? Don’t you think you owe me the truth?”
Charlie seemed to struggle with the answer. Finally he stood taller, chest rising. “I told you the truth, and you didn’t believe me.”
“Ha! How do you figure that?”
“The truth is, I’ll never be who you want me to be. It was stupid of me to even try.” Then he turned around, shoved his feet into his boots, and stormed out.
Grabbing my wine glass off the island, I threw it at him, cringing at the ear-splitting shatter when it hit the door, and bursting into tears when I was alone again in the silence.
I fucking hate messes.