The Difference Between Getting and Needing

f o r t y - t w o

"He'll be okay. He has you," Collin added.

"Thanks," I said with a grateful smile on my lips that I hoped he could hear in my voice. "I gotta go, but I'll text you later. I just needed a dose of Collin wisdom."

"Don't we all?"

We traded goodbyes and hung up, as I left my phone at the island and a sleepy Ziggy on the living room couch. I walked back into my dark bedroom, the only source of light seeping in through the crack of the bathroom door because Gus never fully shut it whenever he was in there.

After I stepped around stray pieces of clothing and shoes on the floor, I gently knocked on the door and pushed it open.

"Gus? Are you okay?" I asked, feeling the steam from the hot water waft over my face as soon as I stuck my head in.

He cleared his throat, then hoarsely called out, "Yeah."

"Are you lying?" I countered, unsatisfied with his answer.

There was a beat of silence. I thought he might shut me out again, sneak back into his shell, and tell me he was fine. He'd come up with some snarky reply that I'd take offense to which would be just the tip of the iceberg. We would fall by the wayside and it would be like reliving December all over again.

But in fact, he did the opposite.

"Yeah," he finally said, so faint I almost didn't hear him.

A cross between a sigh and a whimper broke free from my chest, masked by the stream of running water. I didn't say anything else to him as I stripped out of my clothes in the doorway until I had nothing left on my body. The last things I took off were my plastic wedding ring on one hand and the eternity band on the other, placing them on their reserved dish at the sink. I never took a chance with either of those in the shower.

Tiptoeing across the bathroom, I pulled aside the shower curtain and stepped into the tub. Gus' back was to me, his palms pressed against the tiled wall to hold himself up and his head hanging low. He didn't even twitch at the scrape of the curtain rings as I put it back in place. He didn't flinch when I slid my arms around his torso and pressed myself flush up against him. He didn't push me away when I nestled my head between his shoulder blades and put my hands on his heart.

We stood under the flow of water in silence. I didn't care that my face was about to be a smudged mess of makeup, or that the loose curls I'd perfected yesterday were now just soggy strands of hair. I didn't care that we weren't talking. I didn't care about anything that wasn't us.

"I'm so proud of you," I thought aloud.

"Why?" Gus croaked.

My fingers started stroking his chest out of instinct. "For the way you stood up to your dad. I know that was hard for you."

He sighed, and my head followed with the rise and fall of his back. "I wish he could just admit that he was proud of me without having to follow it up with bullshit like 'are you sure this is the right choice?' He makes me question every goddamn thing about myself and I'm the asshole that keeps going along with it. I don't know why I keep trying so hard to impress him and live up to whatever fucking picture he painted of me. He's never gonna change," he spilled his feelings, a bitter taste to his words.

The bitterness wasn't what bothered me; I expected that. It was the guilt lying beneath that dug into me.

"He might not, but you can and you have," I said, squeezing him as if that'd prove my point. "I'm so fucking proud of how far you've come. It's only been three months with therapy, two of us being back together, and you are a completely changed man. You're the man I love. The man I married even though I don't really remember it and I may have hated you for it at first." I paused to chuckle, and from the slight shake of his shoulders, I knew he was laughing too. "You're the man that I get to spend the rest of my life with and I don't give a shit what anyone else has to say about it."