Chapter 8
I turn the knob on the side door of the house. Oh fuck. Locked. I do a quick study of the yard. No gate over here. The only direction to go is through the backyard.
I round the side of the house onto the patio.
“Hello, Alan.”
My startled gaze locks on Chrissie.
She is sitting on the edge of a patio table, bouncing the book she was reading against her fingertips. The yard is empty. The boys are gone, the French doors closed. I can tell by her expression she knew I was here before she saw me.
“What a man of eclectic vices you’ve become,” she says before I’ve collected myself enough to even say hello. “To top off the list I’ve been reading in the tabloids of how you’ve amused yourself on tour, you’ve become a voyeur to the lusty pursuits of rabbits. What an exciting life you live.”
I tense. She said that in a silly way, but there was bite in each word. I fight not to let my anger stir since it is appropriate that her first words to me should be critical. I owe her that.
I take a moment to regroup. I can’t tell what direction this is going to go. I’m getting a dose of the playacting. Nonsensical drivel. But I don’t know what’s underneath the façade.
Anger?
Hurt?
This could take off in any direction.
I opt for nonsensical as well. “I need to take a page from the rabbits, Chrissie. The male is discreet, he is modestly quick and delightfully charming in the afterglow. Somehow it makes him all the more tolerable to the female.”
Oh fuck, what made me say that?
She shakes her head in a dramatic and cutesy sort of way. “Don’t do that, Alan. We would all be living in a boring world if you became discreet, modestly quick and charming in the afterglow all on the same day.”
Direct hit.
“I love you, Chrissie. How much longer are you going to make me wait for you this time? Five years? Ten? Let me know so I can pray, fast and mentally prepare.”
Her expression doesn’t change. Not even a hint of reaction.
“I wasn’t aware that you were waiting,” she says smoothly. “A phone call might have been useful to get the message to me. Hell, I would have even settled for a text.”
Aggravated, I run a hand through my hair. How like her to drop the mistakes we both own solely on me. “Then you are the only one unaware on seven continents, love.”
Her brows lift. “Really? How irritating that must be for the women in your life. No wonder you’ve run through so many so quickly this year. You irritate them.”
Fine. You’ve had your pound of flesh. Enough.
“Not quickly, Chrissie. While I’m there I give it my all.”
There. Hopefully, she’ll be ready to back off on this charade. I hate the playacting. She knows it. It’s not a good sign that she’s leading with it.
“You’re right. Let me rephrase. You are never quick in the endeavor. There are times you do exceed your exaggerated public persona, Alan. You exceed in the endeavor. Maybe I should take a poll on this. No, it would be an exhausting effort. How many women have you gone through this time? Fifty? A hundred? No, more like fifty. You’re getting older and you’ve only had thirteen months to work with.”
She’s learned to fight in a year. And she’s not just angry, she’s hurt. Deeply hurt. Message received, Chrissie.
“Do you want to talk about the women I’ve had in my life or do you want to talk about us? I’ll talk about both, whichever you care for. I never do bullshit with you, Chrissie. So remind yourself of that before you decide which way you want to take us in this and how far into detail. Why don’t we skip the first topic since not a single woman was of any significance since none of them were you?”
She moves away from the patio table until she is standing.
Her eyes flash.
“I won’t tolerate the women, Alan. If you can’t give me that, go home. Don’t follow me into the house. Spare us both and leave. If you step through that door it’s a promise to me. A promise I expect you to keep. Then we can take some time to figure out what we want to do about you and me.”
She walks away, through the patio door, and closes it behind her.
I sink onto the foot of a chaise lounge and stare. What the fuck happened here? Did I hear her correctly? She moved through the first round with the sureness of a military mastermind. Chrissie defined the ground rules of having a relationship with her—this time—in a series of five unleashed blows masquerading as a conversation.
Christ, I don’t understand any of this. Does she mean what I think she means? That she has already decided she wants to try to give us a go again.
Definitely not what I expected today. Not her calmness. Not her emotional poise. And not how quickly she moved us to the reason I’m here: us.
I take several measured breaths and realize I can’t sit out here all afternoon trying to figure this out. If I delay much longer Chrissie might take that as me debating with myself over whether to follow her.
I go into the house.
I find her alone in the kitchen, tidying the mess on the counter left by the children. They’ve eaten their pizza. The house is quiet. It sounds like it’s empty.
I settle myself on a stool across the island from her. “If you don’t stop force-feeding me shit, Chrissie, you’ll suffocate me before I get a chance to even ask you to dinner.”
She looks over her shoulder at me. She laughs.
“It’s the art of tough love, Alan, and you need it. I don’t need dinner. And monogamy isn’t the worst promise in the world to keep.”
I don’t like being lectured.
“I have always been faithful to you when we were together, Chrissie, and you know it.”
She nods. “I know you were, Alan. But our circumstance is more complicated. You’ve changed and not in all ways better. I can’t let you back into my life, not for a day if this isn’t something you’re going to do the way I need you to. My children come first. Don’t ever forget that.”
I sit back, staring at her.
“Would you like to explain what’s going on, Chrissie? I came here hoping you wouldn’t throw me out the front door. I don’t mind if you’re inclined to skip the preliminaries, we both know what I want and why I’m here, but I wish you’d let me know what it is you want so I can reschedule my calendar. What is it you want, Chrissie?”
Chrissie shuts off the water, turns from the sink, and leans back against the counter. “I’m not throwing you out the front door, but we’re a long way from anything else. This time it has to be my way, not yours.”
“Your way, love? What makes you think that’s a change?”
She smiles, contrite. “I concede your point. I’m sorry. I can see I’m confusing you. You came here expecting a fight and you thought I was going to hate you. I don’t want to fight and I don’t hate you. But that won’t make this any easier for either of us. I can’t be your friend. I’m pretty sure we’ll blur that line. And I won’t be your lover. There are a few issues we need to work through. It’s part of me being sure this time, sure about you, sure about us. Sure about the direction I take my life.”
Sure?
Is she fucking serious?
“I’ve loved you every day since the moment I first saw you. What more do you need from a man to be sure?”
She stares at me, blinks twice, and then smiles, one of her comical smiles. “May it be written on every obelisk and pylon. The tabloids just didn’t do it for me. Too many photos.”
Again, dramatic and exaggerated. Still playacting in round two; not a good sign.
I shake my head. “Tomorrow I’ll purchase all the obelisks and pylons in America. Where do I find them?”
I let out a ragged breath.
I sense we both need a rest in this.
“Your house is quiet, Chrissie. What have you done with your kids?”
Those blues begin to sparkle. “I locked them in the cellar.”
I roll my eyes. “I suppose I should be grateful that you didn’t lock me in the cellar, love. Not being an optimist I’m not dismissing the worry yet.”
She smiles again. The change of subject seems to ease some of her tension.
“In case you weren’t aware, Alan, you were on the patio over an hour. You have a horrible concept of time. Grace took Krystal and the boys home with her. Kaley is staying at a friend’s. You can spend the night if you want to. You look like hell. A night of healthy living couldn’t hurt you.”
I don’t take those words as an invitation to share her bed tonight even though she got rid of the kids. I’m more inclined to believe she is expecting something to happen and doesn’t want the kids to witness it.
“It’s a good thing I look like hell. I’m dead tired. I only reached LA a few hours ago. Us alone in a house—you would never let me sleep unless I looked like hell, Chrissie.”
I regret the joke the second it’s out, because hearing those words aloud reminds me of our last night together and that we haven’t talked about that yet.
She turns and reaches into a cabinet, blowing by that without a response. She pulls out two glasses and a bottle of unopened scotch. She breaks the seal, fills my glass too generously and puts a splash in her own.
“I’m assuming you still drink scotch,” she says.
“Some things never change, Chrissie.”
She picks up her glass, take a sip, and then studies me over the rim. The hold of her eyes makes my heart accelerate.
“You really do look good, Chrissie. As a matter of fact you look wonderful.”
“I wish I could say the same about you. You really do look awful.”
Something about the way her expression changes makes me more aware of this past year. I make a vague gesture with my hands. “It’s just road fatigue.”
“More like roadkill.” She eases closer to me. Her finger moves to lightly trace my chin and upper lip. “And what’s with this? When did the facial hair start?”
I smile ruefully. “Six months ago. I can see by your expression you don’t like it.”
Her lips scrunch up as if she’s holding back a smile. She shakes her head. “No, I don’t. Not at all.”
Her gaze fixes on me more sharply. The thrill of her runs straight into my veins like an elixir. It reminds me why I’m here. Why I put up with so many unpleasant things to be with her.
So I can know this.
The thrill of her eyes. The sound of her voice. The feel of her touch. The smell of her. Her laughter and little gestures missing in all other women.
I lock my eyes on her. “What are the chances if I shave tonight my room assignment will improve?”
She laughs. “Nonexistent.”
“How about in the near term?”
She laughs harder. “That depends entirely on you.”
My tightly coiled nerves unbend.
“On me, huh? You must feel sorry for me and I must really look terrible.”
My gaze roams the kitchen. Her house looks disorganized and untended.
“What is going on here? You’re living in a multimillion-dollar slum. Are you OK financially, Chrissie?”
“I just have Lourdes since the move and I think she’s a little too old to take care of all my kids by herself. I’ve been trying to hire a nanny. But I’m very careful who I trust. Especially now. I haven’t found anyone I feel comfortable with, so for now I live with mess.”
She takes her glass to the sink and seems to spend a lot of time washing it.
“Financially, I’m OK,” she says without turning to look at me. “I took a hit when the real estate market crashed, like everyone else I know. But I’ve had a good year, all things considered.”
“Congratulations on the new release. I was expecting you to take more time off, and then all of a sudden I started hearing you everywhere.”
“Jack’s idea of therapy: work. For what it’s worth, it helped. I really enjoyed doing a musical animated feature. It was the right kind of work when I needed it. Busy, but private. And the kids got such a kick out of it.”
I’m not sure I believe she’s OK. I can feel a hint of worry in her. “You know that if you need anything I will always help you.”
She turns back toward me. “I’m OK, Alan. I’ve had lots of good things happen this year. Life can be good when you least expect it to.”
I don’t know what to make of that one. “I got to visit with the girls a little when I first got here. Kaley seemed different. Is everything all right?”
Chrissie shakes her head, exasperated. “She is different, Alan. She’s seventeen. A senior in high school. She has a car. A driver’s license. A boyfriend. I only see her now when she needs food, sleep or money.”
“You guys are still close, aren’t you?”
She shrugs. “When she wants to be. Otherwise, not. Our relationship has been through a bit of a strain this year. It’s not always easy to know what’s going on with Kaley.”
“You sound worried.”
“I am worried, even though everyone tells me I shouldn’t be. I expected the move to be hardest on her. Senior year of high school and everything. I think she’s doing OK. I just don’t know for sure. And I definitely should have thought through Pacific Palisades a little more before I moved here.”
“Why?”
Her eyes widen in a blend of frustration and reluctant amusement. “The Rowans live less than a mile away. Kaley has been dating Bobby Rowan four months now. I don’t know what I think about that. Not that I am allowed to comment.”
I laugh. “For what it’s worth, Bobby is a good kid. Not at all like his old man.”
Chrissie laughs. “So Linda tells me. I worry anyway. So there we are.”
“There we are.” I fix my eyes on her face. There is something about her expression that I find not encouraging. “Exactly where are we, Chrissie?”
Her eyes meet mine directly again. “Getting to know each other again, I think. A year, it’s a long time. We both have a lot to catch up on.”
“Too long, Chrissie. I don’t ever want to go a year without you in my life, not ever again.”
“You wouldn’t believe the things that Kaley gets poor Bobby to do, so perhaps I should take Linda’s advice and not worry.”
She just pivoted in conversation. She doesn’t seem to want to talk about us and I am beginning to get impatient with her. We’ve covered the kids. Why is she talking so much about them? Isn’t it time to cover us yet?
“Have you seen any of Kaley’s documentaries?” she asks.
I nod. “Linda has showed me a few.”
“They are part of her portfolio for her USC application. She wants to go to film school. And she decided her work from Santa Barbara isn’t serious enough for submission so she and Bobby decided to do a series on OWS Los Angeles—”
I struggle to listen carefully, enveloped in tinnitus. I can see her maternal pride. There are times when she is painfully beautiful. This is one of those times.
“—Well, they went downtown and Bobby was wearing this t-shirt Kaley got made. I don’t know what famous Brit we can credit for the quote, but the shirt said: America went in one generation from a country not afraid of success to a country that sits on its ass in tents and whines about everything.”
I grimace. “That idiot would be me. However, the phrase country not afraid of success I lifted from Margaret Thatcher.”
Chrissie shakes her head at me.
“Before you give me too much grief over the comment, Chrissie, I should point out I’ve gotten enough shit over it already. Hate mail by the truckloads. OWS camped out in front of my Manhattan apartment for two months straight after that.”
“You deserved it. Network news, Alan. You didn’t think that one out at all. It might amuse you to piss everyone off, but you should have thought that one out.”
“I apologized afterward.”
She rolls her eyes. “Well, according to Kaley, that t-shirt was like setting off a bomb in that crowd. She said she kept 911 dialed into her phone throughout the filming. But that Bobby is a charmer. He ended up having this really long, frank discussion with the protesters down there. How she edited the film with her still photography and collage of interviews made it all very engaging. Well, it’s a really good piece of work. But Linda and Len weren’t amused.”
I laugh. “I imagine not.”
“And Linda has been a really good friend since I moved here. I don’t know how I would have managed without her.” She laughs again, nervously this time, flipping her hair back over her shoulder. “I love Linda, but I wish she’d stop trying to fix my life. She invites me to dinner at least once a week and tries to set me up. It’s humiliating.”
What the fuck? “Set you up? You’ve got to be joking.”
From another woman, I’d take this as some obvious ploy to try to make me jealous. But we both know she doesn’t need to make me jealous. I already want her.
I search her face, looking for some clue of where she is going and why she told me this last annoying news flash.
“She didn’t tell you?” she asks.
“No, Linda didn’t tell me,” I say, my jaw tightening.
“It was hard getting her to stop,” Chrissie says, dropping her gaze and shaking her head. “I had to tell her my life was already planned out.”
That comment in the context of Chrissie is laughable—Chrissie has never spent a moment of her life with a plan—but I don’t let myself laugh.
“I’m surprised she bought that,” I say.
Chrissie’s gaze lifts to mine, pinning me. “My life is planned out, Alan.”
My body goes cold. Did I wait too long to try to fix things with her? Has she already moved on? Is there already someone else?
I can’t be your friend. And I won’t be your lover.
Oh fuck.
“What are you trying to tell me, Chrissie?”
“I guess that I’m OK.”
No help there. I’m tense again and my mood has plummeted.
“Why don’t we go out? Go somewhere?”
She shakes her head.
“Why not?” I ask.
“I can’t,” she says.
Can’t? Strange choice of words since the kids aren’t here. I let out a ragged breath. For a long time she does nothing but silently dab at crumbs on her counter with her index finger.
Finally, she looks up, her face serious and anxious. “Did that night we shared have anything to do with your divorce?”
Oh God, not this. I don’t want to talk about Shyla, but I can tell by how Chrissie asks that she’s read the papers and is feeling badly, wondering what part she played in my divorce and Shyla’s recent drama.
I can’t avoid this damn discussion.
I fix my gaze on hers, direct and unblinking. “No. It had nothing to do with my divorce. Absolutely nothing.”
Her brow crinkles as if uncertain how she should take that. “Did you tell Shyla about us?”
I exhale slowly. “No. It was pointless by then.”
“Does she know?”
Why is she pressing me on this?
“Probably,” I say, frustrated. “I didn’t tell her, but I am reasonably confident she knows.”
For some reason, that kicks up Chrissie’s distress. She doesn’t look at me, but I can tell she’s deeply troubled and struggling with something.
“I’ve been absolutely miserable this past year, Chrissie.”
She doesn’t lift her face. “I’ve spent most of it being angry with you, Alan.”
“I’m sure you have. I didn’t want that. I’m sorry.”
Her chin lifts. “You’re always sorry. But that won’t change anything. Not a thing. And this time we can’t keep doing the same old thing.”
I study her again, the quick shifts of her mood.
She pushes away from the counter. “I’ll be right back, Alan. Don’t leave,” is all she says before she hurries out of the kitchen.
It has been so long, a year since we’ve been together. While I didn’t expected our first meeting to be comfortable, I never expected it to be this. Something about what transpired, the way she left the room, fills me with a sense of warning. This conversation is far from over, and in fact, it doesn’t even feel like it’s begun.
I step out onto the patio and smoke a cigarette. I stomp it out and look inside the house. The kitchen is still empty. I light another. I wait and watch for her to return.
Twenty minutes pass. Where is she? I go into the kitchen and pour myself another drink.
I peek into hallway. There’s a light from a room near the back of the house. I make my way to the doorway and my gaze locks on Chrissie in a rocker. Her head is leaning back, her eyes are closed, one thin strap of her shirt is pushed down on her shoulder, and there is a baby at her breast.
Oh fuck, the baby is Chrissie’s.
She was pregnant when Jesse died.
I search for something cautious to say.
“Your kids seem to have grown in number without me knowing it, Chrissie.”
Her eyes fly open. “Four months I’ve lived in LA. It hasn’t even hit ink. Not once. The cone of silence hasn’t failed me.”
I sit on the bed, facing her. “Cone of silence?”
She makes a slight smile. “There are times I forget you hate American TV. I used to watch a TV show when I was young. They had this plastic bubble that would drop down from the ceiling to keep their conversations private. They called it the cone of silence. Stupid, huh? American humor in its most trite life form.”
It is a broken, rambling explanation, and more of one than I want. “You always did have terrible taste in cinema and TV.”
She makes a face at me for that. Her gaze shifts from me to her daughter. “You didn’t know about the baby, did you, Alan?”
My eyes widen. “No. By the surprised look on your face I take it everyone knows but me. Jesse did teach you how to deal with the press. How did you manage to have a baby and not have it hit print? I just met Khloe in the kitchen today. Grace didn’t tell me that she was yours.”
“Khloe was born in August in Santa Barbara,” she explains quietly. “As for the everyone knowing part, the list of people I trust is pretty short. It’s limited to Jack, Brian, the Harrises, Rene, the Rowans, my lawyers, and now you.”
“It’s a blow to my ego to fall below your lawyers on the list of people you trust.”
I say that lightly, but I am hurt.
Her eyes cloud over. “If you hadn’t spent a year out of contact you might have ranked above the lawyers. But I don’t think so, Alan. The lawyers were necessary in this.”
Her comment carries bite, even though I can see she didn’t intend it to.
“They’ve made even having a baby a legal complication these days, Chrissie? If involving the lawyers is necessity I can’t imagine why you all do it.”
“You probably can’t imagine why we do it, lawyers or not. The world hasn’t become such a litigious place, Alan. Of my five children, this one is the only one requiring legal counsel at birth.”
Now I feel like an asshole because I’m uncertain if Jesse being dead at the time of his daughter’s birth held some sort of complication and I just made a fucking joke about it.
“You’ve had a hell of a year, Chrissie. I never intended to add to the hell. I love you. I thought by staying away I was giving you what you wanted. I reached for the phone a thousand times. I stopped myself. I wasn’t sure where things had been left between us. I assumed you’d call when you were ready. But I got tired of waiting, so here I am.”
The expression that surfaces on her face takes me by surprise. It’s an odd reaction. It looks almost as though she is bracing herself for something.
“I’d like to clarify where you left things between us.” She stops rocking and lifts her chin, her eyes boring into me. “Khloe is your daughter, Alan.”
For a millisecond the world still feels normal. Then the massive amounts of alcohol and nicotine in my blood shoot through me like an adrenal rush. And then I know, I feel it in my body, that she just hit me yet again with something life-altering and unexpected.
She searches my face. “Don’t you have anything to say? You had better say something soon so that I know you’re still breathing and can stop worrying that I may need to call 911.”
I hold her gaze, fighting to keep mine stripped of reaction. The way she waits reminds me of how unpleasant it can be with Chrissie in the serious moments of life. How grossly unpleasant. How she only seems to exacerbate the disorder between my mind, heart and body, and how I paradoxically solidify her.
The way she stares also brings to mind all the times she’s walked out on me, how they had been like this, decisions forced on me by her, swiftly and unexpectedly. Changes I hadn’t wanted.
Her in control.
Me in disarray.
Always her in control and me in disarray.
So she wants a response? Goddamn her if she thinks I’m going playact with her through this. The only emotion forming inside me is anger. “Fuck you, Chrissie.”
She meets my gaze steadily. Unflinching.
“Well, that’s a start, but not quite as eloquent as I’d hoped for.”
I pop a cigarette into my mouth, but she gives me a sharp glare and I rip it from my lips, unlit, and toss it with the pack on the bed behind me.
She says nothing. She waits. My turn to talk, it seems.
“Forgive me for not being eloquent,” I sneer. “I prepared myself for something quite different today. There is a lot to take in here. There is a lot to be furious with you over. It makes it difficult to decide where to begin. I think it best I start on the fringes. What the fuck were the lawyers about, Chrissie? I can’t believe you called the lawyers. Why call the lawyers with me?”
Tears fill her eyes. She rises quickly from the rocker to put the baby in the cradle. She stands there staring down for a long time.
She whirls on me.
“Don’t swear around my children, Alan. The swearing needs to go just like the cigarettes did when you are in my house.” Now she is fully bathed by her anger. “As for the lawyers, you deserve to be slapped for what you’re thinking. Do you think I’d file a paternity suit against you? I didn’t know the status of her legal paternity and my options in that. After a rather lengthy discussion of the issues with the Harrises, we decided to leave Jesse’s name on her birth certificate as her father. It is an arrangement we are all comfortable with if you are inclined to keep it that way permanently.”
That sends me from the bed. “Fuck you, Chrissie.”
I don’t want to pace. I know that Chrissie understands what the pacing is about, but I don’t have a better way to keep a tight lid on what is surging for release. A tight lid at least until I sort through all this and have some inkling of what I want my reaction to be.
If I let loose all that I’m feeling now I’ll rip her to shreds and a marginal part of my brain warns that would end us.
“You might as well dump it all, Alan, exactly what you’re thinking—one dump out on the table without bothering to be indirect,” she continues, a controlled attack. “I would, however, appreciate if you passed on the cheap shots. You want a fight from me. You don’t need a fight if you don’t think this is something you can do. I want this resolved however it ends up being resolved. In fairness you should know that if you walk before we resolve this, I won’t let you back in the door. Not ever. That is how I’ll resolve this.”
I sink down on the small sofa. It is the first time Chrissie has ever manipulated me that way and I don’t like that she’s done it. Never once has she used my love for her as a weapon to manage me.
“I know why you feel the way you feel about this so stop being angry with yourself for feeling as you do,” she says quietly. “And stop turning that anger at me. Please don’t make me the enemy because things are not the way you want them.”
The lines of my face harden. “Is that what I’m doing? Making you the enemy? Why is it that is exactly how I am feeling?”
“Fighting isn’t going to change a thing. We have a daughter. I would rather find out where this leaves us.”
“I’m not sure we’re ready today for that much directness, Chrissie. It’s a loaded question. You may not be as ready for the answer as you believe.”
“I come with kids, Alan. If you want to be with me, you’re going to be with kids. Why should it matter if one of them is ours?”
Her words only manage to kick up my anger to something beyond anything I’ve ever felt.
“When you get it wrong, Chrissie, you get it fucking wrong. It’s not paternity I’m having trouble with. I can’t believe you think that’s why I’m angry with you. You didn’t call me, Chrissie. You wouldn’t have let me know about the baby if I hadn’t come here today. I thought we shared something different between us. You let a year pass, Chrissie. A year without even a call. I don’t understand how you could do that. After loving you through every ugly, every fucking insane moment we’ve shared together, this is what you decide you can’t share with me. I don’t even want to get into the decision to leave Jesse on the birth certificate. Let’s just leave that one at you couldn’t have fucked up more and hurt me more on every exposed nerve than you did in this if you tried. Direct? How did I do?”
She starts to cry. Listening to it is like having a nail dug into my spine. But I let her cry and I say nothing. I’ve never done that before.
She cries for at least ten minutes. She looks at me, sniffling and running the back of her hand against her dripping nose. “You were very direct. I did what I thought was right. I never meant to hurt you by any of it.”
“You never mean to hurt me, Chrissie. Somehow you always do.”
She takes in a ragged breath and moves several steps away from me.
“I’ve had a long day, Alan. So if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to stop this and go to bed. You are welcome to stay the night with me if you want to continue this in the morning.”
“I don’t know if I care to stay the night, Chrissie. Are you talking about sex or sleep?”
Her eyes flash. “I have no intention of becoming number fifty-one in your year of self-abuse. I would just be number fifty-one tonight if either of us were angry enough to do that. I have a guest room at the end of the hall.”
“Don’t worry, Chrissie. We might as well fuck tonight. It’s impossible for you to be number fifty-one. You were number one in my twenty years of self-abuse.”
“That was mean, Alan—” Her voice breaks on a sob. More tears run from her eyes leaving harsh tracks on her cheeks. “I don’t have the stamina I used to. If you go for a knockout blow with each angry remark I will probably end this not loving you.”
I can’t rally enough control to relent.
I turn toward the door. “Today, Chrissie, I’m not at all sure I have the stamina to love you anymore.”