We arrive at the park and I am not sure, of anything. Why I flew here, why he wanted me to.

We used to bring our dog here. We used to hold hands and lie on a blanket in the grass. I often forgot those days, the good ones. I watch Connor get out of the vehicle, his form casts shadows on the grass, then his lights go out. His lights would have gone out if I had stayed.

I follow him, the only thing in my hand is one notebook, the one detailing our marriage. The sound of the passenger door of his Range Rover echoes in the night.

When I reach him, he is sitting on a swing, lazily swaying forward, backward. Like we used to do.

“Tell me what it’s like.” He speaks to his shoes, a worn pair of boots I have seen a million times, and tried, in vain, to throw out.

“Tell you what what is like?”

“The sex.”

“Fuck you.” I halt my reach for the swing next to him. I cross my arms and feel the regret on my tongue.

“Can you just be honest with me for once? That was always your problem. You loved lying to me.” He is no longer trying to convince me I am worth saving, worth wanting back. I hear it. All the things he never had the brass to ask.

“No, I just couldn’t be myself with you.”

“You could. You just didn’t trust me enough to love you for who you were.”

“And whose fault is that? Yours or mine?” I really want to know, because I don't have the answer.

“That’s the question, isn’t it? The one I lose sleep over. The one you gave up trying to answer.”

“What was the point? Square peg, round hole.” We are too different. I always said that. When I was leaving, or trying to leave, letting him convince me to stay. I still believe it.

“You always loved using that phrase on me.”

“Because there is no truth I know more than that.”

“What is it he gives you that I never could? Is it because he’s an artist? Is it the long hair? Is it because he will hurt you in bed, the way I never could?”

“He does it because I like it. You never could because you worried too much about hurting me. And that’s what killed us in the end. You never trusted me to safe out. To know my own limits.” I started to want pain. To confess my desires after we got married. I told Connor I couldn't enjoy sex anymore unless I felt like I was fucking someone who didn't love me. Who didn't care to see me again. He told me he could play that game, but he didn't mean it. Not really. How could he keep up? Our sex for years was vibrant, alive. Then I woke to memories of what my stepfather did to me, and I couldn't stand to be touched at all. For years.

After we got married, I figured I could be honest with him. Vows mean no leaving, right? He couldn't leave me and all my dark? He promised not to. Logan gives me what I need because I will it, I write it.

“Those games never would have worked with me. You resented me too much.”

“I didn’t resent you.”

“The worst part is you never just lied to me. You lied to yourself all the time. You resent me still because I pulled the truth from you. I pulled the truth from you and it made you better. It healed you in so many fucking ways and it led you to him. He gets you. That mother fucker gets the reward. I know, Gwen, I know it’s been a year and I am supposed to be moving on but seeing you here now, I hate him. I hate that bastard because he stole you from me. Even when you came back, you were still his. I’m sure he is a great guy and he makes you happy but to me he is scum. He is a fucking thief.”

He doesn't know how true his words are to me, to everyone. “You can’t steal what’s already gone.”

“Nine years together and you could barely talk to me and now you’re this open book. Save the truth now. It’s just a goddamn knife in my gut."

"Just let me give you the divorce," I say. Isn't that what I'm here for?

"And you'll go back to your rainy day lovely life with your artist.”

"Let it go." I'm so tired. So very tired of the years and the worry in my heart.

“Letting it, you, go is obviously not a skill I have learned to master. Here's the thing. I'm never going to be as broken as you. I can't win that and I don't want to. I don't want you to have been through what you've been through but I've hurt, too. You hurt me and I'm not the same man I was before. I have a darkness in me and you changed me. You never thought I could relate to you before but I can now.”

"This isn't a contest." My words are biting. I feel the red I always bite down.

“Why can’t you just comfort me? You never can. You’re so cold. Do you comfort him?” There is more anger than blue in his voice. Sharp angles and hidden edges.

I still. “He doesn’t need me to comfort him.” He is more made up than man. More everything I want a lover to be.

“What does that mean?”

“He’s just…content with me. We move in waves, the same direction.” He is my mirror. I wrote us into existence. All that he is now, all that we were, all that we are. He is a reflection of everything I need. “With you and me, it was always back and forth. You loved me more, then I loved you more. It was never at the same time.”

“So you don’t hold him?”

I think of all the times Connor wanted me to touch him. To just reach my hand out, brush his temple, press my lips there. But when I felt that want from him, I froze. “You know that part of me died. It died when I found out the truth. I don’t want to be held at night. I don’t want a kiss on the forehead. I don’t want my hand held. It wasn’t just you, it’s in me, this distance. This is who I am now and it had nothing to do with you.”

“You weren’t always like that. You loved to hold me, before.”

I can barely recall those days. It’s only in my notebooks that I catch glimpses of that girl. So fragile and open-hearted, even in her guarded ways. I hate that he always pulls her back up, to the surface. That he doesn’t allow her to drown, as I have. “I know. And you always like to remind me of that. That I was whole once. That I was normal once.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He speaks more openly now than I do. Less in command of his language. He lets everything out, unafraid of where it will fall.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s what you do to me. You take this thing that hurts me, this part of me, and you make it about you. You make it about your hurt.”

“No, that’s what you did to me.”

I flinch at the truth. “I just wanted to be left alone! I wanted to be left alone and you wouldn’t go away. You made it about you. Like, something had been stolen from you, not me. That my change had ruined your future! You were selfish. You wanted me to stay with you so you could be happy. You didn’t care that I was dying. Trying to be normal and happy and perfect for you. The little suburban housewife. The perfect little woman just like your mother and sister. You stopped seeing what I wanted. If I had never left, would you have let me go so I could be happy? Or would you have watched me wither away in front of you? Watched me change everything about myself so I could be what you wanted?” I think he would have.

“I wanted you to be happy. That’s why I wanted you to go to therapy.”

And here we are, transported back in time. “You wanted me to go to therapy so I could be better FOR YOU!”

“Why do you always say that?”

I say it because he does not listen. So many years of jokes about my short attention span. About the way I never listened to what he said, and he was doing it, too. “Because that’s how it felt. One more thing to cross off your list for your cookie cutter life.”

“I just wanted us to be happy.” He looks down at his boots again.

“Well, we weren’t. You would have lived the rest of your life miserable with me. You would have taken that over being happy.”

“Happy the way I am now? I’ve had you and I haven’t had you. It’s worse without you.”

“If it were right, you would say it was right with me and without me it was wrong. Instead, you’re saying without me it’s wrong and with me it’s a little less wrong. We are both still young-ish. You struck out with me, but there’s someone out there who will make you wish you had never met me.”

“Most days I do wish I had never met you. I was happy, healthy, before you.”

“And that’s not what love is.”

“Love is pain, sacrifice.”

“It has to be more than that.” I’m not sure what it is, but there must be more.

“Do you have that now?”

“Close enough. It’s not in the cards for me, that perfect thing. The kind you think exists.”

“What about your version of perfect?”

I laugh, no song there, no smile in my eyes. “I have no version of perfect. It’s all shit.”