PAUL IS GONE when I wake up and the room is still and silent. I roll over and feel his side of the bed. It’s cold, but I know he was here for most of the night because I roused several times and he was always either cuddled up around me or stretched out beside me. One time, when I was lying there trying to convince myself to get up and go back to my own bed, he actually woke up, too. His voice was rough with sleep, but ripe with concern anyway as he mumbled, “Are you okay, Bel?”
I’d have done anything for him to say those words in that soft tone of voice once upon a time. It’s strange how easily the question came from him last night. What’s changed? Is it me, or is it Paul...or is it both of us?
It’s early now, close to dawn, judging by the soft light that’s filtering through the gap in the heavy drapes. I try to go back to sleep, but my mind will have none of that—it seems I am destined to ruminate today. Last night was a mistake. It was stupid and foolish and impulsive, and I can’t even say I didn’t know what I was doing.
The problem is, in the cold light of this morning, the complete lack of regret I’m currently feeling about Paul and I falling into bed together is somehow stranger than the fact that it happened in the first place.
I head downstairs to dress in my workout clothes and step onto the pavement just as the sun hits the horizon. The breeze is cool this morning and it’s a little too gusty for comfort. I’m glad I brought my hoodie, although it’s inevitably going to wind up around my waist once I get going. I stretch, then walk a little to warm up, and soon fall into the rhythm of my jog.
Here at Greenport, I’ve always run the same loop from one side of the island to the other, taking a much longer trek than the few short miles I do once a week back home. Time, like sunshine here, seems a less precious commodity and so I always liked to linger on this ritual, sometimes letting it drag all the way through a morning or an afternoon. Often, I’d stop for a coffee and pancakes at Marie’s before I made the return trip home. I’m starting to think about doing just that when I remember that Paul and I established this habitual loop together, and that it had been his idea to go for coffee and pancakes after our very first run here together all of those years ago.
I see him just as this hits me. He’s just ahead of me on the sidewalk, but running back toward me, no doubt completing the same loop I intended to take. And of course he is. Where else would he be? I’m sure he’s just following his regular weekend routine, just as I’m following my regular Greenport routine.
I wonder if it’s going to be awkward if he stops to talk to me. But for last night, perhaps he might have just flashed me a scowl as he ran past me. Now, though, I am not sure where we stand—does one encounter make us lovers again? That doesn’t feel right. Will we just ignore last night and go back to the way things were, with the two of us unable to even have a polite conversation?
Huh. It turns out, I hate that idea most of all.
Paul stops running when he sees me and slows to a walk. I’ve only just started running so I have no intention of stopping yet, and I’m not ready to dissect what happened. I decide I’ll just smile and nod as we pass one another.
“Morning,” Paul says quietly, then he turns and starts jogging alongside me.
“Are you following me?”
“Following you?” he repeats, and then he laughs softly. “I think you’ll find you’re following me, since I was here first.”
“Well...” I say, indignant, then words fail me. “Fine. Sorry. It’s a habit to do this loop.”
“Yep, same for me. So listen—”
“I’m not in the mood for a postmortem.” I cut him off, and my tone is a little too sharp.
“Postmortem? I was going to give you a performance review.”
I gasp in indignation, and Paul’s easy grin does terrible things to my composure. We’re jogging at a decent pace now, although not fast enough to leave me out of breath—but he’s got me so flustered I’m starting to struggle to get enough air anyway.
“Kidding. No, I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh, shit, Paul,” I groan. “Haven’t you messed enough with my weekend?”
“I think we should have breakfast together. Talk some more.”
I stop dead in my tracks, and when Paul stops, too, and turns back to me questioningly, I gape at him. “You’ve lost your fucking mind.”
“Hear me out,” he says, and his mild, reasonable tone enrages me. I’m further infuriated by the way he starts jogging again and, after a few steps, turns back to gesture for me to follow him. I do so—but I tell myself I’m doing it because I want to keep running, not because he effectively told me to.
“We’re getting divorced,” I remind him pointedly. “On Wednesday. People who are getting divorced in a matter of days don’t sleep together, and they don’t have cozy fucking breakfasts together.”
“If we leave things as they are now, we’ll never be friends again. But I really think there’s enough between us that if we take the time to part properly, we can undo some of the hurt we’ve caused each other, and maybe then we can actually get on with our lives.”
“I’m going to move on just fine,” I mutter, and he snorts.
“You’re here to mope, and so was I. Even the fact that we both had exactly the same idea for this weekend tells me something.”
“I don’t even like you!”
“No, you don’t like the version of me that you’ve seen this past year, and I don’t blame you because I hate that guy, too,” Paul says, and I bark a surprised laugh. He glances at me. “Well, that’s not me, just as the version of you that I’ve seen this year wasn’t you. We’ve treated each other like shit since you decided you wanted out, but it doesn’t have to be that way. That’s exactly why we should hang out together this morning.”
“Paul...” I’m actually lost for words. I mean, who is this guy, and what has he done with my ex-husband?
“I want to remember and to respect the Isabel I was happy with for years. I want you to remember and respect the Paul you were happy with for years. I want to put the bitterness behind us, and then we can part from our marriage properly.”
I can’t think about the good times yet. It’s almost a traumatic response, the way I’ve set up a mental block in my mind. I focus so hard on that awful last year because it hurts too much to remember what came before it. Paul’s reference to our earlier years enrages me, and I feel that now-familiar anger rising again like a tide. My footsteps on the pavement land heavier, and my hands start to clench into fists.
“I was not happy—” I start to say, but Paul abruptly breaks his stride, coming to a dead stop on the sidewalk. I stop running, too, and I also stop speaking mid-sentence because when I turn back to him, he’s staring right at me, but he’s clearly braced himself. He knows I’m about to hurt him. His words last night echo in my mind—the way his voice was raw with vulnerability and pain and how I was immediately sick with remorse and shame.
You did have the power to hurt me. You still do. You always will.
Now, we stare at each other—and the space between us is positively volcanic.
My rage is fading so quickly I could almost convince myself it was never there. Suddenly, I’m simply relieved that he stopped and cut me off, because the memory of my cruelty last night is still fresh, and I was about to do it all over again. What the fuck is wrong with me? It’s like I can’t stop myself from being hurtful toward him, but he’s actually right—that is not me at all.
I force myself to raise my gaze to look at him again. His eyes are guarded now, his stance still wary.
Without a single word, Paul has reminded me that my words have power. And it’s bizarre and unexpected because none of this makes sense from the man I was married to. I know I’m remembering him correctly. He was never the kind of partner who was conscious of the impact his actions would have on my emotions, let alone someone self-aware enough to teach me a lesson about empathy. Paul was closed off emotionally, and yet here he is, tearing himself wide open and letting me know that I am still important enough to him to bring him to his knees.
This Paul deserves better from me. If I’m honest with myself, even the old Paul deserved better.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out, staring at the pavement beneath my feet, then I force myself to be vulnerable, too. Because his vulnerability yesterday meant we could have a night of peacefulness together, and I am grateful for that. “Okay. Yes, we had some good times. Great times. It would be amazing if we really could part on good terms. That’s what I originally wanted...that’s what I expected all along.” Still I hesitate, because as appealing as the idea of a persistent state of harmony between us is, I’m not sure such a thing is actually possible. “It’s just... Don’t you think all of this is just going to make it harder?”
“Do you really think it could be any harder?” he asks me. That intense stare is entirely focused on me and is completely, heartbreakingly open. This was what I wanted all along—just a glimpse of the man behind the cold facade. Never in a million years would I have left Paul if I’d seen that he was still capable of this kind of interaction with me.
And here it is. It’s just happened ten months too late.
I look away hastily, and I crack a stupid joke because it’s the only way I can think to stop myself from bursting into tears. “Are we still talking about emotions?”
It’s Paul’s turn for a surprised laugh, but he quickly sobers.
“I’m not even talking about sex. Although, you know, last night was...” He trails off.
I glance back to him again and something flares between us—a spark of remembrance that in this early morning light looks a whole lot like longing. Paul doesn’t need to finish his sentence. Last night was nothing, and it was something and everything, and neither one of us knows what to do with it. Eventually he gives me a helpless shrug of those deliciously bulked-up shoulders and admits, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to repeat it, but it was a pretty spectacular one-off.”
At least this part of what Paul is saying makes total sense. We should definitely not jump into bed again. Yet I am completely bewildered by the disappointment that now sits in my gut like a stone. “So, just to be clear—you’re proposing we just share another meal. We hang out.”
“Yep.”
“We don’t have sex.”
“No.”
“We don’t...” I hesitate, reluctant to even say the words aloud. My gaze drops to his left hand, and the wedding band he’s still wearing. Jesus. I’m pretty sure he has no interest in reconciling, but I need to be sure what his intentions are here. We might clear some of the air between us, but there’s no way we could ever undo what’s happened this year. “...we don’t get back together.”
Paul grimaces, as if the idea is completely distasteful. I suppose it would be awkward and awful if he were desperately hoping for a reunion, so his reaction to that suggestion should be a relief to me, too.
“Definitely not,” he says.
I’m not disappointed. But strangely, I’m not relieved either.
“I just don’t understand why you want this, Paul. And I really don’t get why that ring is still on your finger.”
He offers me a somewhat helpless shrug. I think he’s going to admit that he doesn’t really understand it either, but then he asks me quietly, “Tell me the truth, Bel. None of this kick-Paul-in-the-balls-while-he’s-down bullshit, just some honesty,” he murmurs, and I feel my cheeks heat. “When you look back at our marriage, do you think it was a mistake?”
Oh how I loathe that particular question! It’s just not something that can be summed up with a yes or a no. Paul scared and entranced me from the first moment I met him.
I’d been hearing about Paul for two years by then. I got the train schedules mixed up the weekend Jess invited me to join her here at Greenport with her partners, and the party was in full swing by the time I arrived. When I first knocked on the door, no one answered. A few, louder knocks, and it opened to reveal Paul.
From the way Jess had described him, I’d pictured someone brilliant, awkward and maybe shy. But he wasn’t some shrinking computer geek—he was arrogant and bold, and he held my gaze as though he had a right to it. And despite the lazy styling of the worn swim trunks and oversize T-shirt he was wearing, Paul was still vastly more attractive than I’d anticipated. He shook my hand in the doorway, and while I was still trying to make sense of the shivers that ran through my body at the contact of skin against skin, I managed to stammer out, Hi, I’m Isabel. I’m Jessica’s Pilates instructor.
Just then, Jess burst into the room. She threw her arm around my shoulders and laughed. Oh, fucking hell, Izzy. By now you’ve surely earned the title of my friend, although yes—you do still happen to teach me Pilates sometimes, too.
Paul invited me in and showed me around the house, then we sat out on the deck with the rest of the gang. Everyone else was talking and drinking and someone ordered pizza. The night wound on and on, until people started disappearing into the bedrooms, but I barely paid a shred of attention because Paul was increasingly absorbing my focus.
By the time the sun rose the next morning, we’d been chatting for eighteen hours and I was already completely infatuated with him. I laughed at his jokes even when I didn’t get them, because I wanted desperately to keep his attention. I was lost to his sharp wit, ambition and intelligence—even Paul’s arrogance appealed to me because he was brilliant and he knew it. I’d never met anyone like him.
As morning broke, we walked to Marie’s for our first ever coffee date. Paul only ever drank bitter black coffee, but that day, I convinced him to get a sickly sweet hazelnut latte, and he tasted it and told me it was like candy and coffee had a baby together, and I told him he was hilarious.
We sat on the grass at Mitchell Park to drink the coffees so we could watch the sunrise. Just as he finished his drink, I launched myself at him for our very first kiss. The sun breached the horizon before us as we kissed and kissed, with the sea breeze in my hair and the fluttering of something miraculous in my heart.
All of that led to this sunrise moment, with things broken and ugly between us. This time instead of the wonder of a new beginning, Paul’s presence here with me can, at best, mean getting closure.
“Our relationship was a mistake,” I whisper. “And it wasn’t.”
“You can’t really have it both ways, Isabel.”
“I can. They were the best years of my life, at least at first. But that’s what makes where we wound up so hard.”
“We used to bring out the best in each other. Falling in love with you gave me a confidence that I’d never even known was missing, and everything I’ve done since has been a result of that. And I know that falling in love with me changed you, too. You’d never been so happy. You told me that on our wedding night.”
I do remember saying that, but I also remember thinking that he wasn’t even listening, because he was giving me that glazed stare at the time. The pattern of emotional distance that eventually destroyed us had started right from the very start. I had been so confident that I could reach him because I was sure that one day, he’d reach for me, too, and we’d meet each other somewhere in the middle.
“I want to be friends with you, Isabel,” Paul says now. There’s a sad, slightly pleading tone to his voice, and the part of me that once loved him is gripped by the soft way he says my name. “I want to be able to see you around and ask how you’re doing and to celebrate with you when the answer is ‘fantastic.’ I want to email you when great things happen in my life and I want you to be excited for me. I want to go to Jess’s stupid rooftop extravaganzas and know that it’ll be okay that we’re both there.” He clears his throat, and then adds very quietly, “Most of all, it really matters to me that those years we spent together were real. And if they were real, we can’t part on such bad terms. People who love the way we loved each other shouldn’t wind up separated by hate.”
The wind is blowing right in my face and my eyes are starting to water, but I don’t want to stop running because if I do, I’ll have to look at him. Everything he’s saying makes sense, but every single word feels like a knife to my heart.
“So what does this look like?” I ask him unevenly.
“I’m not talking about us throwing ourselves into a full-on relationship of any kind—it’s just sharing breakfast as friends. I mean, if that works, then potentially we could spend time with our other friends in the future as a group without it feeling fucking awful for everyone. Can you at least try to work toward that with me? I know I let you down, and I have to live with that. But I do still care about you, and I want us to find a way to put all of the anger behind us.”
At long last, I slow my steps, and then I stop running altogether. Paul slows and stops in time with me. When he turns to me, our eyes lock.
I’d eventually have told him to leave me alone this morning, except for one thing: Paul has just said the magic words. He’s given me the one thing I have so desperately needed to hear from him over these past few years.
I’ve let you down.
I have to live with that.
I do still care about you.
Somehow, out of the pain and confusion of our separation, he’s garnered...what? Sensitivity? Humility? I’m not entirely sure what it is, but there’s no denying that something in Paul has changed. Last night, I thought it was just alcohol and exhaustion, but he’s well rested now and sober as a judge.
This is the new Paul. This is undeniable evidence of real emotional growth.
Later, I’ll reflect on that and I know I’ll cry about it. There’s a lost opportunity for us somewhere in these circumstances. If he was capable of change after I left, then maybe he could have done it while I was still there, and maybe we could have found a way forward together.
For now, all I can do is give him what he’s asked for and try to maintain this harmony with him. I know this is going to be uncomfortable, and it’s not at all what I planned when I decided to come out here this weekend. But there’s a big part of me that’s relieved about the chance to interact with Paul more, because I am desperately curious about this modern-day version of him.
“Okay,” I say. He raises his eyebrows, as if he can’t believe I’m agreeing to this either, and I shrug. “But...no trip down memory lane, right? Just hanging out. Rebuilding a friendship.”
“Exactly,” he says.
My gaze drops to his left hand, hanging loosely by his side, and I hesitate. “But...seriously, Paul. What is with that ring?”
He glances down at his hand, and then he gives me another one of those helpless shrugs. “It didn’t feel right to take it off.”
“You weren’t wearing it at mediation.” I remember staring at his finger and thinking how strange it was to see that space bare. “You must have taken it off, at least for a few months.”
He hesitates, then he admits, “Bel, I just didn’t want you to see that I was still wearing it. I took it off just for those meetings.”
“But then you put it back on.”
“Yeah.”
“Huh,” I say, and he glances at my finger.
“Yours is gone,” he points out.
I stormed out of that marriage counseling session in a blind rage because from the minute Paul started explaining our situation to the therapist, he dismissed me. He was angry that I’d walked out, and he was adamant that our life together was perfect so if I wasn’t happy, I must be impossible to please. I was so angry I couldn’t even convince myself to stay and share my own perspective—I just had to get out of that room before he diminished me.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to fix things—I did, and desperately. Even as I tumbled into bed that night at the hotel, I left my phone on its loudest setting because I was so sure he’d at least try to contact me and I didn’t want to sleep through his call.
After that, I waited for days, and then weeks. I was constantly checking the screen between clients or classes, hopeful I’d missed a text or a call or, Jesus, at that point I’d have happily received an email or a telegram. A whole month went by before I could bring myself to accept that Paul wasn’t even going to try to contact me.
In all of the scenarios I envisioned when I decided to leave, radio silence was not something I’d considered. I spent hours trying to figure out why he wasn’t coming after me. And yes, I know I could have contacted him.
But something awful happened inside me over those weeks. Every single day that passed without us reconnecting, my frustration toward Paul evolved. I hadn’t really doubted that he loved me until I left—that’s why I was so sure he’d come after me. And when I realized he was just going to let me walk away, something ugly began to simmer in my chest.
I’d rolled the dice on what was left of the goodwill between us, and I’d lost. Loneliness, disappointment, rejection, and sadness all bubbled away until what was left was a seething, furious resentment.
I spent my thirty-third birthday alone, refusing Jess and Abby’s attempts at cheering me up. Even Nick tried to convince me to go out for cake after work, but that day had become some kind of invisible deadline in my mind. If Paul couldn’t even find it in his heart to send me a happy birthday message, I’d be justified in finally giving up on him...in giving up on us.
I took my wedding and engagement ring off at midnight. They’re still sitting on top of the jewelry box on my new dresser, out in the open not because I like to look at them, but because I’m half hoping someone will break in and steal them.
That was months ago. I don’t even have a tan line on my ring finger now.
I glance back at Paul, and he gives me a lopsided smile.
“You’ve always been better at embracing change than I am,” he says softly. “Maybe you can teach me how to take the ring off. I promise you, I’m not wearing this ring because I think you’re coming home, if that’s what you’re worried about. I don’t want to get back together. Last night was fantastic, but it’s pretty obvious that there’s too much chaos in our past now for us ever to go back. I’m wearing the ring because I can’t break the habit, that’s all.” He grimaces. “Marcus has been calling me Gollum.”
I chuckle reluctantly, and Paul’s smile returns. I see the sincerity in his gaze, and the last of my concern fades. I return his quiet smile with one of my own.
“Okay—fine.” I extend my hand to him. “Truce?”
“Truce,” he says, grinning as he shakes my hand. As soon as he releases it, I get into the starter’s position, and he raises his eyebrow at me. “I said truce, not ‘race.’”
“You’re carrying a lot of very heavy muscle there these days, and I’m a lean, efficient running machine. I just want to see if you can keep up.”
I set off at a sprint without waiting for his response, because I know he’ll catch me and even outrun me, but I also know that if we’re really going to spend this morning together, we’re going to have to shift the tone of our interactions from raw tenderness back to something like a friendship. And if there’s one thing Paul and I used to enjoy, it was a good competition.
When I finally give up ten minutes later and admit he can well and truly outrun me, I collapse on a park bench gasping for air as Paul does an effortless victory lap around me. I feel like maybe there’s a chance the better versions of ourselves can find something amicable out of the chaos.