We’ve been rattling around the quiet, empty house for two days, leaving only once so I could take her to therapy. We left the session after no spikes in her memory, and the hopelessness seemed to multiply by a million. I’ve forced myself into the spare bed each night, and hated it with a vengeance every time I’ve left her in our suite. Each time, she watches me as I go, and each time I’ve wondered if she really doesn’t want me to leave. But there’s no way I can ask her.
I keep seeing glimmers of a familiar look in her eyes, a pleased look, the look she used to give me every day of our lives. It’s the look that tells me she wants me. The attraction she’s never been able to hide. But now she’s holding back. She’s trying to fight it. Just like she did all those years ago when she walked into my office.
But this time, I can’t charge her resistance down like a bull. I can’t take what I want. I have to wait for it to be given to me, and it’s killing me a little bit more each day.
I’ve been watching her, wondering what’s going on in that mind of hers. And she’s caught me doing it often, smiling a small smile each time. She’s getting used to me. Weighing me up.
It’s now night-time again, and dread fills me as I walk her up to our room, the bed still unmade from this morning. I’d normally strip her down to her skin, lift her into bed and crawl in behind her. But that fear of scaring her to death or being rejected stops me again. I don’t know if I could take it. Yet walking out and leaving her kills me, too. Kate’s words crawl into my mind. Where’s the Jesse Ward we all know and love?
On that note . . .
‘Arms up,’ I order Ava, taking the hem of her T-shirt.
She gazes up at me, a little surprised. There’s uncertainty in her eyes, and she flinches when my fingers brush the flesh of her tummy. In return, I flinch, too, yet my reaction has nothing to do with the usual flame on my skin whenever I touch my wife, and everything to do with her wariness.
I drop her T-shirt and step back, giving her space, trying to control the agony in my chest before it puts me on my knees and has me begging. ‘Never mind. I’ll give you some privacy.’ I turn before she catches sight of my watery eyes and take myself away from the one person in this world who brought me back to life. And the one person in the world who can finish me.
Closing the door behind me, I stalk away, aware that if I stop and try to gather myself, I’ll either put a hole in the wall or crumple to the floor and cry my fucking heart out. I roughly brush at my damp eyes as I take the stairs, eager to put as much space between us as possible so that when I roar my frustration, she’s not as likely to hear.
My pace quickens as I round the bottom of the stairs, and I stagger into the games room and shut the door behind me, falling against the wood, my body rolling with the effort it’s taking to breathe. Bang. I smack the back of my head on the wood, squeezing my eyes shut, quaking with a fury I’m unable to control.
Why? Why is this happening? I’ve pushed her too far too soon. The roar I’ve been suppressing since I escaped our room bubbles up from the pit of my stomach and explodes out of me, and I turn, throwing my fist into the door. The door doesn’t splinter, but my already split knuckles split some more. It doesn’t hurt. The only pain I feel is in my fractured heart. ‘Fuck!’
I stay where I am, forehead resting on the door, fists clenched, for as long as it takes me to cool down. It could be two minutes, it could be an hour. I don’t know. I feel as though precious time is slipping like sand through an hourglass. Unstoppable.
It’s the sound of my phone that eventually pulls me from the door. Feeling numb, I walk over to the table and swipe it up. It’s Kate.
‘Hey.’ I slump onto the couch and inspect my bloody fist.
‘Everything okay?’
‘My wife doesn’t know who I am, Kate. So, no, everything isn’t okay.’
She doesn’t reprimand me on my curtness. ‘No progress, then?’
I sigh, long and tiredly. ‘I keep getting glimmers of hope. Small things that make my heart leap with promise. And then they disappear, my hope dies, and I’m back to square one.’
‘I know it’s not your forte, but you need to be patient, Jesse. Like the doctor said, there’s a cog in her mind that’s jammed.’
‘And it keeps jittering and then grinding to a stop again. It’s so fucking frustrating.’
‘You’re frustrated?’ She laughs a little. ‘Imagine how Ava must be feeling, Jesse. She’s woken up with a husband and two kids and sixteen years of her life missing.’
Guilt. It sweeps right in and cripples me. ‘I know.’ I rub my forehead, like I can wipe away the stress. ‘I can see it all in there, Kate. It’s all in there, I just need her to remember it.’ What if she never feels the connection and emotion she did when we met? No matter how much I might try to describe it to her, it won’t be as intense and crippling as it was back then. How it always is. It won’t bond us in the same way, and now more than ever I need that bond.
‘She’ll remember. Don’t give up.’
‘Never,’ I vow, hoarse through the despair blocking my throat. Despair I’m quite sure I’m not hiding very well.
‘How about dinner one night? All of us. Drew and Raya are game.’
‘Yeah,’ I agree half-heartedly. I’m not all that enthusiastic about sitting around a table with friends so they can see how much of a stranger I am to my wife. ‘Let me know when.’
‘I will. Keep it together, Jesse. It’s no wonder she doesn’t recognise you. I barely do myself.’ She hangs up with those words still lingering in the air.
‘Jesus,’ I breathe, dropping my phone to the couch, so caught in conflict. I replay all those little glimmers of hope that Ava’s given to me, words that have come from nowhere, but have been quickly snatched away with a frown or muddled look on her face. The soaring happiness followed quickly by unrelenting hurt.
My eyes fall to the drinks cabinet across the room again, the bottle of clear liquor enticing me, pulling me in with promises of respite. ‘Keep it together,’ I say to myself, forcing my heavy body up from the couch. I lock up the house and make my way upstairs, my eyes nailed to our bedroom door as I wander to the spare room. Another night without her sprawled all over my chest. Another night missing her warmth.
Another night with the biggest piece of me missing from my side.