His face contorts with exasperation and confusion. “I don’t know, Ivy. This is hard for me, too. I love you and the kids. I’m very torn. I just . . . I don’t even know how to explain it. I guess I just want something different. When I met Charlene, it’s like everything I thought I wanted just changed. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“That’s just great. I’m glad to hear that Charlene has led you to the path of true happiness and saved you from your boring, torturous life here with your family. I’m sure her sexy body had absolutely nothing to do with any of it.” I hurl my tissue into the small garbage pail next to the nightstand.

“That’s not true, and I didn’t mean it like that. Maybe because I’ve only ever been with you, I got restless. Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like to be with someone else?”

I turn to stare at him. “So you got bored sleeping with me and had to have some twenty year old? Someone you could fuck so hard they couldn’t walk? Is that what you said to her? When did you become a pig? And no, I have never thought about being with another man. Unlike you, I have always been more than happy with exactly what I have, even though you’ve never fucked me so hard I couldn’t walk. In fact, most times, you can barely stay awake to finish the job.”

He winces at my comment but reaches for my hand. I quickly pull away. “Don’t touch me, Paul.”

“I’m trying to apologize.”

“Don’t. That’s not even possible. What are you going to do now? What do you want?” I repeat.

He sighs and looks around our bedroom like he’s never been here before. “I don’t think it’s right for me to stay here anymore with all this going on. I’m going to leave and come back tomorrow to pack some things, and if it’s okay with you, I’ll come back with a truck next weekend for the rest of my stuff. We should probably talk to a lawyer. I promise I’ll take care of you and the kids. You don’t have to worry.” I can tell by the way he’s talking that he’s thought about all of this before. He’s mulled it around in his mind, trying to figure out what to say and what to do, and now he’s just reciting it.

Divorce. He’s divorcing me. And I don’t have to worry. I’m not even getting a chance to win him back . . . He doesn’t even want to try to make our marriage work. I am floored that he can throw eighteen years of marriage away over some girl he barely knows, who is only a few years older than his own daughter.

I shake my reeling head slowly. “Just like that? We’re over? You don’t even want to try to fix this? We could try couples therapy. Lots of people do that. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and they’re very discrete—”

“Ivy, I’ve been sleeping with another woman for a year. How do we fix that?”

The brutality of his words stuns me. I lost a year of my marriage without even knowing it. How did I not know? How did I miss all the signs?

“I thought you loved me.” My voice cracks. “I thought we loved each other.” I realize I sound pathetic, but these are the only words that come out.

“I do love you, but I somehow fell in love with her, too.” He walks slowly to the closet that we share and throws some clothes into his gym bag. “This has been a mess for me, too, Ivy. It’s been destroying me inside to lie to you for so long. I know you don’t deserve it, and I hate hurting you.”

“Then why did you? Why couldn’t you just stay committed to us? Why would you let someone come between us?”

He approaches me with his overstuffed bag in his hand. “I don’t know. I wish I had a better answer, but I don’t. I never wanted to hurt you. Ever. One thing just kept leading to another. You’re right—I should have stopped it. I’m an asshole. I know that.”

“So you want to leave me and the kids? For her?” I demand.

“Not for her. But for now, I think I need to leave. And I’m not leaving the kids. I’m still their father.”

My heart cracks and shatters into a million little isolated memories of our life together, splattering like blood at a brutal crime scene. This will never be able to be cleaned up or put back together again. He’s obliterated it.

His eyes are on me as I fall apart. I know he can’t see it, but all my hopes and dreams of growing old together with the man I love are climbing into that bag with him to be given to someone else.

“Is it because I’m not as thin as I was?” I ask him, my voice shaking. “I can join a gym, buy new clothes—”

“Ivy, God . . . no. You’re beautiful, and I still love you. It’s not that at all.”

I shake my head slowly back and forth as I try to grasp what’s happening to us. “I just don’t understand what I did wrong.”

He takes a few steps closer to me. “You didn’t do anything wrong, I swear to you. I didn’t plan it, and I wasn’t looking for it. Actually, she kinda reminds me of you when we were young. She’s happy and carefree. I like being with her and not having kids screaming and fighting, or on the other side of the wall or blasting video games and music. I’m sorry.”

“You wanted kids, Paul. They make noise.”

“I know that. But come on, Ivy. We had Macy when you were eighteen and I was nineteen. We were way too young to have a baby. We never got to enjoy ourselves or each other. And as soon as she was able to be by herself a little bit and not need one-hundred percent of your attention, Tommy came along. I guess I want to have fun for a little while, while I’m still young.”

“You should leave now.” My voice is dull, lifeless. I refuse to look at him. I’ve had enough. His resentment toward his own family is making me hate him, and I want to inflict some sort of bodily harm on him.

He hesitates for a moment and then just turns and leaves. His footsteps pound down the stairs, and the front door squeaks opens, then closes. His car door slams and then backs out of our driveway, the headlights flashing across the bedroom windows.

And he’s gone. Just like that.

I sit on the bed, staring at the wall in a daze, until the sun comes up, wondering what the heck just happened.

LUKAS

INSOMNIA IS A BULLY OF THE worst kind. Pushing me. Shoving me. Laughing in my face. Waiting ’til I feel safe and then kicking me in the skull. I fight back, but we all know how this story goes—the bully wins.

So I lay awake, staring at my cathedral ceiling and feeling uncomfortable in my own bed. Not just because I can’t sleep, but because there’s a chick next to me that I know I’m never going to sleep with again. I want to love her. I should love her. She’s cute and tiny with a banging body and long silky black hair with blue highlights. Her eyes are like fucking sapphires, and she has a giggle that sounds like a demented elf. She’s a musician, like me, so she gets me. She knows when to stay and when to go away, and she sucks me like I’m a cherry lollipop.

There’s just one thing that’s wrong.

Rolling over toward me, her lips press against my cheek. “You’re so much nicer in bed than Vandal ever was.” I feel her lips turn into a smile as she snuggles against my shoulder.

Yup. That’s the thing that’s wrong—she slept with my older brother a few times. Actually, I’m pretty sure sleeping wasn’t involved at all while he had her tied to his bed being vandalized, as he so nicely puts it. Even though I’ve tried, I just can’t get that out of my head. I don’t want to be second choice, or get my brother’s leftovers. Who would want to always be compared to his brother? I don’t want to be with a woman that Vandal has seen naked and violated. I want someone that’s just . . . mine.

I sit up, slowly untangling myself from her, and try to find my clothes in the dark room.

“Where you going?” Her hand lands on my back, her voice drowsy as she fights off sleep.

I turn toward her, dreading that I’m going to upset her, but I feel like the band-aid ripping approach is probably best.

“Rio, I can’t do this anymore,” I say softly.

“Do what?”

“This. Us.”

Bolting up, she holds the sheet against her naked chest. “Why?” Her bright blue eyes darken.

“I really like you. You’re one of my best friends . . . it’s just not going past that for me. I wish it was.”

Her usually pretty face falls into a sad frown. “Lukas . . . I love being with you. Maybe we just need some more time. Don’t think about it going any further, just let it happen.”

I slowly shake my head. “I won’t do that to you.” Standing, I pull on my jeans. “I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”

“That’s what I love most about you,” she says wistfully. “You’re the only one that actually cares and doesn’t treat me like a toy.”

I hate my brother for boning every chick within a hundred mile radius, and I hate myself even more for not being able to move past it.

She crawls across the bed toward me, her long dark hair forming a silk curtain over her tits. “Lukas, it’s all right if you don’t love me. I can deal with that. Really.” Hope and desperation taint her voice, and it upsets me to hear that in her. She’s so much better than that; she just doesn’t know it yet.

Picking her clothes up off my bedroom floor, I place them next to her so she can get dressed. “It’s not all right with me,” I tell her. “And you deserve more. Don’t settle, okay? You don’t have to. The right guy will come, trust me. And he’s going to be lucky as hell.”

“I doubt it,” she replies, slipping her shirt over her head.

“I’ll wait in the living room for you, and I’ll take you home.”

“Lukas?” Her soft voice stops me before I get to the bedroom door. “There might not be a right one for any of us. Maybe that’s just a myth, ya know?”

Maybe so, but I believe in the mythical and have faith in the legends of time. Fantasy drips through my veins. It’s what’s kept me alive.