"You were amazing," I told Esme, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. Our baby boy was currently on her chest and we were both looking at him with love and awe in our eyes. Definitely some awww in our eyes, too; he was just that perfect.
"All those months of being so sick and then you go through twelve hours of hell...you're incredible, Ez."
"He was worth it," she said in a wobbly voice, a tear trickling down her cheek.
"Esme?"
Those huge eyes looked up at me. "I wish my mom could see him. I wish so bad she could have seen him, Tanner." She gave a watery laugh and waved her free hand. "Don't mind me. I'm just missing her right now. It's the hormones, I guess."
Grabbing her hand, I kissed it and then pressed my forehead to hers. "I know, sunshine. I'm sorry she can't."
She pulled back and looked at me, both of us realizing I'd called her a pet name for the first time. I'd think about that later, but for now, I knew Ez needed comfort from a mother.
"You want me to get my mom in here?"
She nodded as the tears continued. She and my mother had been seriously bonding in the months leading up to Jude's birth. My mother finally had a daughter and Esme had a mother-figure who completely doted on her pregnant daughter-in-law.
I texted my mother, not wanting to leave Esme for even a second, and two minutes later, Mom and Dad hurried into the room.
Mom made a beeline not for Jude, but for Esme. She kissed my wife's cheek and then wrapped her in a hug, without even looking at her grandson.
"How's my girl?" my mother asked Esme, pulling back slightly to look at the new mother, placing her hands on Esme's cheeks. Esme leaned forward and buried her face in the side of my mother's neck for a minute, and I wished I was the one who could have provided comfort for my wife. I wished Ez's face was buried in my neck. I wished my arms were around her.
My parents' front door swung open not long after I knocked, and Esme wasn't surprised to see me so she'd clearly used the peep hole -- and had still answered the door. That had to be a good sign.
My eyes swept over her, noting her red eyes, her flushed cheeks, the wetness still on them, her hair in one long braid that was draped over her right shoulder.
"Esme, can I please come in so we can talk?"
Without saying a word, she stepped aside and I walked in, somehow feeling like an intruder in my childhood home. Feeling very unwelcome because Esme was glaring at me.
"Can we sit down?"
"I don't want to sit," she said stiffly, none of the warmth I was used to in her voice."Ez, please sit. I want you off your feet."
"Your concern for me is heartwarming," she said, and I'd never heard sarcasm from Esme before in the four years we'd been together. "But I'll stand. This won't take long."
"Esme, this is going to take a while. There's a lot we have to talk about."
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared me down. "Let's start with your girlfriend confronting me in the preschool parking lot this morning when I was walking out to the car after dropping Jude off. That seems like a good place to begin."
Oh, God. Fuck. Shit. "Ez, I'm sorry. She's not my girlfriend, and I had no idea she'd hunt you down. Are you OK? Please tell me she didn't hurt you."
"No more than you already did," she said. "Your girlfriend said you went to her hotel yesterday."
"In the bar. In the bar, Esme, not in her room. To tell her it was over. That I wanted to make it work with you and wanted nothing else to do with her."
"Why not? Were her bI0w j0bs not quite as great as you remembered them? Your make out session marred by too much tongue or not enough?"
"Ez, stop. Don't say that. It's not like that. Not even close."
"I'm just trying to understand what would make you go running to her two times, blow up your marriage and then, once you lost your family, tell her it's over."
No. I could feel the bile rising up in my throat. No. "Esme, I don't want to lose you. Not you, not our family. I don't want her."
"Less than 48 hours ago, you let her blow you, Tanner. About a week ago, you were flirting with her at your brother's and making out with her. And I'm supposed to believe you've had a complete change of heart since I found you with her in your office?"
"I did realize it was wrong. I knew it was wrong. I'd already realized that I didn't want to continue with her."
"But it wasn't wrong until after you came in her mouth, though. Right? It wasn't wrong talking to her about us, about how you really felt about me, flirting with her in front of your brother and the other people at his house? At that point, it still wasn't wrong? You felt good about the choices you were consciously making? And it wasn't wrong when you went outside with her and kissed her over and over? How about the whole next week, letting her text you, a married man with a small child and a baby on the way -- it still wasn't wrong then? It wasn't wrong when you went flying out of the house to meet her at your office, leaving your pregnant wife and child back at home? Essentially turning your back on us and choosing her? It wasn't wrong when you unzipped your pants and let her suck your dick? You expect me to believe it was only wrong after she swallowed every last drop of your cum? That's when it became wrong?"
"Esme, I was wrong! I know it. Knew it. And I'm so sorry."
"But you didn't let that stop you. You went ahead with it. It was only after that you regretted it. I do that all the time with desserts. I eat and eat some more, knowing I'm going to feel sick, but I keep eating and then, when my stomach hurts, I'm ready to admit I shouldn't have eaten all of that."
"Please. You have to listen to me, talk this out."
"Why?"
Her simple question stopped me cold. "Why...what?"
"Why do I have to listen to you? Why do you want me to listen to you?"
"I want you to listen to me because I want to fix this. I'm trying to fix this."
"Again, not to sound like a broken record, but why? Why on earth would you want to fix this? Here's your chance, Tanner, to be free of the woman you only love as the mother of your child and be with the woman you've truly loved for the last four years."
"It's not like that."
"You told me that's what you said to her."
"Esme, I'm not sure I can even explain why I said that, but deep down, that's not how I really feel."
"I think it is," she said softly. So softly and quietly that her eerie calm unsettled me, and I wished she'd start yelling and screaming at me. This was far more terrifying than out-of-control anger because you couldn't break through a block of ice as easily as you could walk through fire.
"For four years, I was falling for you, but we never talked about our feelings," she pressed on. "So I watched for signs that you cared and tallied them up. You initiated us sleeping next to each other in the same bed. That had to mean something, right? Later you initiated sex after my six week-check up. That certainly must have meant something. Then, over time, it became little touches, hand holding, kisses outside of the bedroom, the sweetest smiles you aimed at me, the insistence that we do everything together as a family except when we were going on dates you planned when your parents took Jude."
"It meant something, Ez. Swear it. It meant the world to me."
"But as good as it was, you never once said you cared. You had a wall up, a wall I didn't understand until that night in your office. You held back, but I'd been afraid to say anything for fear of losing what I did have of you. I thought I'd give you time. All these years, I thought I was being cowardly by not saying anything, but I realized that night I found you in your office with her that you were the biggest coward of all. What we shared was precious and special and sweet. But you couldn't admit it because you were so busy looking over your shoulder at what was behind you that you couldn't see what was right in front of you."
I couldn't deny that I had done that, so I kept my mouth shut.
"You looked at our lives not as something to be treasured but as a placeholder. You were in a holding pattern whether you wanted to admit it or not. Your girlfriend said you told her that I was someone to pass the time with until your break with her was over, and that you thought you'd get back together with her."
"That was before we got married, Esme," I interjected, and if desperation was creeping into my voice, it was because I felt like I was trying to stop an avalanche with just my bare hands. "I still thought she was my future while you and I were seeing each other. And then you and I got married --"
"While she became that perfect girl who got away, and you were the star-crossed lovers who were destined to be together but were tragically separated by an unplanned pregnancy. She was the girl you shared dreams with, not realities. And let's face it, when you hold up rosy-hued dreams as your ideal, the messy reality of actual life always comes in second."
"Our lives weren't second, Ez. They weren't. I was just too focused on what I thought I'd given up for too long."
"What you'd given up." Esme laughed cynically at that. "I've always been aware of what you've given up, Tanner. Always. Not about Mindy, obviously, but Trent had told me you never wanted to work at the corporation and you'd had a dream of being a travel blogger. You weren't planning to be a husband and a father by twenty-two, so I tried to make it up to you by being the very best wife to you that I could be and a devoted mother to Jude so maybe one day you'd see me not as someone you had to marry but as someone you were glad you married. But have you ever given one single thought as to what I've given up?"
Had I? I'd seen her pain when she dropped her classes, but in my entitled mind, was that anything compared to the life and dreams I'd given up?
"Not much, Esme. I'm sorry," I admitted, feeling like utter shit.
"You graduated, Tanner. You got your degree. I still want mine, but that's on me for putting it off when you asked if I wanted to go back to school. I was going to go back when Jude started kindergarten because I wanted to be there for our son like my mom wasn't able to be for me."
"Ez, we could have worked it out --"
"And then you pushed for another baby. That was another sign, I thought. Another sign that you wanted us to be a family. It was, in my stupid mind, you telling me you loved me without saying the words. Maybe it was the start of that wall coming down that you put up between us. So why did you ask for another baby, Tanner? Can you tell me that?"
Images of Esme pregnant with Jude flashed into my mind. Lying in bed next to her at night, feeling the baby kick in her belly. Watching her across the room with her hand on her baby bump and a secret smile on her face. Walking up behind her and sliding my arms around her belly, full of wonder that this woman was mine and she was carrying my child.
"Because I'd never in my life felt so close to anyone as I did when you were pregnant with Jude. I wanted that again, Ez."
She gave a little, choked sob. "And that's the biggest tragedy of all, Tanner: you didn't recognize what we shared because it wasn't explosive fireworks and excitement, and most of all, because I wasn't Mindy. You've turned something that could have been so beautiful and pure between us into a joke. And unless she'll take you back, you've lost us both."
That sounded scarily final, and I almost jumped at her to hold her in place, as if she was going to run away from me.
"Esme, for God's sake, we can't just throw away four years. Let's talk this out, get counseling; I will do whatever it fucking takes to fix us."
"Except love me."
"Ez," I groaned, never having felt more inadequate than I did at the moment. "Don't say that, please. Give me time --"
"You've had four years, Tanner. Four years and you still went running after your dream girl the very first chance you had despite my best efforts to make you see me. Can you imagine what that felt like, to walk into the immediate aftermath of your infidelity?"
Her eyes searched mine. "Do you know that of all the dreams I gave up, the dream I had to give up that night in your office was the very worst? Seeing that woman on her knees in front of my husband...knowing what had just happened...that was the death of the dream I had where someday your wall would come down and you'd hold nothing back from me. And on the day that would have happened, I would have told you everything I held in my heart for you."
At that, I did grab her by the upper arms. "We can still have that, Esme. I will do whatever it takes, and we will have that."
She wrenched herself from my arms, shaking her head. "No. All we're going to have is a divorce because I'm done. Done waiting for you to see me. Done waiting for that wall to come down. Done waiting for my dreams to come true. Done, done, done."
My worst fear.
"No, Esme, I am fucking begging you to give this some time, think about it, work it out with me. Please."
My eyes were filling with tears that were running down my cheeks and I didn't even care.
Neither did Esme.
"Save your tears, Tanner. I've cried enough over the last couple of days and I'm immune to them. I'll let you know when the baby's born."
I felt like a bear was coming at me and I'd tripped and was scrambling to get up. "Esme. No! No, think about this. Please. I want to be there for you for the appointments and during your labor --"
"You made your choice as to where you wanted to be when you ran out of our house to go to Mindy. So now, I'm making a choice and your place is in the waiting room. Your mother's agreed to be in there with me."
"Esme, I'm your husband --"
"I'm hoping you won't be by the time I give birth, although the timeframe may be tight. I've already met with a lawyer and you should be served with the papers next week. And if you dare to contest anything, I will make you regret it. I've been more than fair."
"I don't want a divorce, Esme. I want you to let me make this up to you."
"Well, as I think the last four years have proven, we don't always get what we want, Tanner. But some of us make the best of it, and others just wallow in what-could-have-beens."
She yanked open the front door.
"It's time for you to go."