Tanner and Esme

Chapter 17 (Tanner): Green-Eyed Monster

"Are you ready for the Big DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!" Jude yelled as he came running down the stairs one Saturday morning. "Who wants the Big DEEEEEEEEEEE?"

I stopped in the middle of the kitchen. What the fuck? Did my little boy just say what I think he did?

"Jude, can you come in the kitchen, please?" I called to him. 

He zoomed into the kitchen because Jude's only speed was warp. 

"I'm hungry, Daddy!"

"I'll get you breakfast in a minute, buddy." Smiling at my little man, I moved Liora to my left arm, and knelt down to be Jude level, putting a hand on his little shoulder. He made a face at his sister, and she belly laughed, so he did it a couple of more times until we were all cracking up. He adored his sister and I was glad at least one sibling relationship in the family was working. I hadn't spoken to Trent in a year except when it couldn't be avoided at work. Even then, it was direct, task-focused and icy.

I didn't blame Trent for the decision I'd made to cheat on Esme -- that was on me and no one else was at fault -- but I was pissed that he'd been in touch with Mindy for four years, that he'd been telling her things I'd told him in confidence. I was also pissed that he'd always been tearing down my marriage, poking at Esme and trying to push me to live my so-called dreams, but as my therapist said...why didn't you stop him, Tanner? Why didn't you shut him down hard and stick up for your wife and for your marriage?

Those had been uncomfortable questions to answer. I'd had to go much deeper than because I was a fucking loser. I finally peeled enough layers back to realize that I'd felt validated when Trent was telling me how much I'd given up, that someone else remembered I'd had dreams, so I'd let his little slings and arrows go. And I'd never stuck up for Esme because that would have been letting go of what I'd once had and truly accepting Ez as my wife. It would have been a line in the sand telling everyone clearly this is my wife. I'm in this marriage and I'll defend it.

And now, when I would defend it with my life, my marriage was gone. Nonexistent. Legally dissolved. It'd been a long year of taking an in-depth look at myself and identifying every place I'd failed as a husband and even as a fucking human being. It was looking at why I'd held on to Mindy as the ideal, why I'd always felt that I'd given up so much, why I felt the need to be the hero.

"When I'm really the worst kind of villain," I'd told my therapist. "I was all about me. Not Esme. My focus was on me. I was living in what I thought were my glory years, hanging onto those and God! I was all about me."

I should have shut Trent down, and that was still part of why I wasn't talking with him. He'd never apologized for being in touch with Mindy, for feeding her information about me, about my marriage.

My former marriage. That thought continued to make my stomach wobble, as Jude would say when his tummy hurt. Every single time I thought of the way that I'd cheated on my wife and hurt her unbearably, I wanted to throw up. Pretty much an everyday occurrence.

That still killed me. I'd lost what I never admitted that I wanted. And now, I didn't know if I'd be able to win her back. Every single occasion I spent time with her over the last year, I felt as if I were seeing her with new eyes.

Maybe I was. Maybe I was seeing her without the fog of Mindy clouding my vision. And every time I was with her, the knife went a little deeper in my heart that I'd had this woman in my life and I blew it with her. She was fascinating to me, and the more I learned about her, the more I wanted to know.

You had her and you pushed her away, you dumbass.

I wasn't pushing anything with Ez. I didn't feel I'd earned that right, didn't feel I'd come far enough as a person. Yet. But I was working hard on it. I wanted to become someone worthy of Esme. And as much as I was working on myself, she was working on herself, too, making her dreams come true.