If I keep myself busy enough, I won’t be able to think.
Or feel.
If I work all day, cook dinner for Gabe and me, pack our stuff, and fall into bed exhausted, I won’t be awake long enough to lie there, wondering. Wishing.
Or that’s the theory, anyway.
The reality is that it’s 1 a.m. on Friday night, the night before our move, and I’m not asleep. I’m wide awake, and I’m hyper-tuned to the sounds in the house.
Last night, Jack went out with Henry and Clark. He didn’t even come home from work. He just texted to ask if Gabe and I would be okay on our own and to say that he had plans with the guys. I texted back, We’re fine. And of course we were. Gabe and I made spaghetti and had a delicious meal together, followed by a lovely, peaceful storybook bedtime.
Gabe only asked me about ten thousand times where Daddy was. And each time felt only a little bit like a barbed arrow in my heart.
Despite the psychic pain, I wasn’t at all tempted to change course. My sadness only made me more convinced that I was doing the right thing, because the longer Gabe and I live under Jack’s roof, the harder it will get to say goodbye. And the harder it will get for Gabe to understand that this situation is only temporary, that it has to be temporary.
Of course, Gabe can’t really understand, but maybe someday when he’s older I can explain. Not that I have any idea what I’ll say. It’s heartbreak city, no matter how you spin it. I just have to have faith that in the end, Gabe will know he has a mother who loves him more than anything and a father who, even if he will never be a TV-perfect dad, loves him too.
I don’t doubt that Jack loves Gabe, not at all. I’ve seen it in his face and his actions, in the time Jack has spent with Gabe, the way he’s learned the little details of the bedtime routine and improvised some of his own. In the photos he texts me, the way he leapt into action the other day at the aquarium, his willingness to cook with Gabe and get down on the floor and play with Legos.
I don’t even doubt that Jack loves me, in his own way. I just know that it’s not the way that he needs to in order to want to blow up his bachelor existence for us. And in my own way, despite my sadness, I totally get that.
Still, I am lying in bed right now thinking about what Jack’s doing, and it’s making me crazy. I’ve pictured him and the guys in Jack’s truck on the way to O’Hannihans, plotting their approach. I’ve pictured him jumping down from the driver’s seat, striding into the bar with his alpha-confident swagger. Turning heads as he walks in. Catching someone’s eye. Buying her a drink, chatting her up, making her feel like she’s the center of his universe. And she probably is, for those few minutes—or even days or weeks.
The woman I picture, the one who catches his eye, is Lani, of course. Wearing something outrageous, raven hair down around her shoulders, greeting him with her beautiful wide smile.
Have you ever noticed how the absolute worst jealousy is what you feel toward people you genuinely admire? So I’m basically just torturing myself by imagining him with her, because who could blame him? She’s fun and gorgeous and sexy and smart and I hate her right now and I hate myself for it.
I understand why people talk about being “consumed” by jealousy, because it really does feel like some big monster has me in its slobbery jaws and I’m propping them open and trying to keep my head out in the air while the digestive process works on my feet. Or something. That metaphor died.
I know that no matter what I do, I won’t be able to stop wishing Jack were here with me instead of out with—whoever.
Only time will cure that.
I know that no matter what I do, I won’t be able to stop loving him. Probably even time won’t cure that, but it will blunt it, and maybe I’ll find someone else I genuinely care about. For the time I was with Harris, I didn’t miss Jack so much. Sure, I compared them, even if I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was doing it, and even if sometimes I outright lied to myself. Like, Harris is such a dependable guy. If I’d gotten pregnant by someone like that, things would be different. Sure, there wouldn’t have been so much passion, but there also wouldn’t have been so much drama. And that’s good, right? Less drama. That’s what adult women should want in their lives.
I know I’ll meet someone else eventually.
I also know, deeper than bone, that it will never be like it is with Jack.
I glance at the clock, at the numbers that now say 1:11, and resign myself to being okay with that.