Trigger warning: Discussion of past suicidal ideation. Take care<3
A week before Christmas, our lawyers call to inform us that all the divorce paperwork is ready to be signed. Effective immediately, Freddie and I will be officially separated until a judge finalizes our divorce. That's when his team will release the news to the media—and that's the more nerve-wracking part.
My anxiety is at an all-time high, and my body has been reacting accordingly in anticipation—this is finally getting so real, and I'm all over the place about the end of my marriage. Of course I want this arrangement to finally end. But I can't help feeling guilty—as if I'm walking away from a friend.
My sleep has been restless, and the stress finally catches up to me. I've been down with a mild fever for the past week and even had to take a day off from teaching because my stomach wouldn't settle while waiting to hear from the lawyers. I kept expecting something to go wrong—like being found out that our marriage was an arrangement, or getting accused of insurance fraud, and everything falling apart. But it's fine—it's all just in my head. Everything is fine. Everything will be fine.
I'm on my way to Freddie's place now, and the walk feels a bit melancholy. I can't help but think back of the beginning of our marriage, how these streets became familiar to me in the best and worst ways posisble. Getting my diagnosis, then locked down in quarantine. The phone call that changed my life. Saying goodbye to Tony through the phone screen. Losing strands of my hair for the first time after a few weeks of chemo. A minor post-surgery complication that almost drove me to a dark abyss. Finally seeing pictures of Lucy for the first time, just a tiny, sick infant, and promising to myself that I'd try to get better so I'd get the chance to hold her—because I couldn't lose her too.
I wipe away a stray tear from the corner of my eye and take a deep breath before approaching Freddie's front door. I still have the keys, but the door opens before I'm even at the last step of the stairs.
"Hey," I greet Freddie with a smile.
He returns it easily. "Come on in."
It's just us here. After the final meeting with our lawyers last week, we agreed to sign the papers on our own. We needed to have this moment to ourselves, without being under their watchful eyes. Besides, I've got a feeling that Freddie's gonna get all sappy about it, and he might not want to have witnesses. And, who knows? Maybe I will get sappy, too. I'm feeling super emotional already—curse the fact that I just got my period this morning on top of everything.
"The documents are in the dining room. Figured my office would be too stuffy for this," Freddie says, taking my coat to hang on the coat rack. "Jonah still coming?"
"Later, but he sent us a good luck." He's been staying with me in my humble apartment in Brooklyn since we came back from Los Angeles, but he's currently filming a Christmas special for a colleague's food series on YouTube or something. He didn't really want to do it—it's not part of his contract with his cookbook release or anything, but his friend assured him that it would be low-key and nothing like a scripted cooking videos like he's used to, so he finally agreed.
Freddie pauses under the archway. "Wanna get into this straight away?"
I let out a huge sigh. "Might as well get it over with. Right?"
As we walk into the dining room, I toy with the diamond ring on my finger. This morning, I decided to wear it, just for the last time. I see the papers sitting on the dining table, all arranged neatly, but I cross the room and go for the tall windows instead.
"Gonna miss this place," I admit.
Freddie chuckles. "No one says you can't visit me here, Hannah. The doors will always be open for you."
I smile a little. I remember spending my first winter here, staring out the window from my bedroom on the floor above, clutching strands of my hair that had fallen through the gaps of my fingers, pale as the thin layer of snow that's currently covering the ground.
It feels like yesterday but also a lifetime ago.
I swallow my dry throat before saying, "I hope you know that I'll be eternally indebted to you." Freddie immediately opens his mouth to interject, but I hold up a hand. "Not in the monetary sense. Just. I know this all has been crazy. You were stuck for the whole pandemic quarantine taking care of a cancer-ridden me. Cancer-ridden, grief-ridden, guilt-ridden me, on the brink of absolute madness. I can't... I don't remember a lot of things that happened in those months, but I know it couldn't have been easy living with me. I know I probably said some unforgivable things to you in my grief and anger."
Freddie just stares from across the room, but I can see that his eyes are beginning to glisten with tears, too. He says, "I'm just glad that you're okay again."
"I can't... there are a lot of things I don't remember from those months. You know, like my brain's still blocking it out." I know that my brain tends to do that when things get hard, as some kind of defense mechanism. My memories tend to get twisted, or parts of them missing. I know for a fact that there's a lot I don't remember clearly from that year. "I just remember a lot of crying and screaming. I can't really remember what I said to you, but it must've been awful." I look away from him, ashamed. "I do remember, though, that you just... couldn't look at me for the longest time. You'd run when I walked in the room, and your face... whatever I said to you must've been so hurtful. I'm really sorry for that, Freddie."
The silence that follows stretches for so long, I almost think he's left the room. I brave myself to look up, and Freddie's still there, standing rigidly. His eyes are wet, but his cheeks are still dry.
"Do you really not know why it hurt to look at you, Hannah?" he asks quietly. "Do you really... not remember why I had to leave the room when you were around?"
I force a thin smile on my face. "Why? Was it my balding head?" I joke, but his lips stay flat, unamused.
Freddie shakes his head and finally wipes his face with the back of his hand. "You could've gone home... before the city went into a complete lockdown. You would've been with your family then. But I made you stay here. I basically begged you to stay here. Didn't you remember?"
"I know I wanted to go home, but... but what did I say to you? What did I do?" I ask, unsure if I really want to hear the answer.
It's his turn now to look away, and there's a glimpse of the same expression I used to see on his face while I was sick. Like it was too hard to look at me. Like doing so made him ill.
"You didn't do anything. It was all me. I couldn't look at you because... because how could I? After what I did to you?" Freddie says to me in such a defeated voice, but I'm still trying to focus on remembering. "Remember... remember when Tony called you?"
"When he told me that he thought he was having symptoms?" I recall, my chest aching. It was one of the last times I ever got to hear my brother's voice. I don't even really remember what we talked about on that phone call.
Freddie nods weakly. "You promised him that you were coming home. But I didn't let you. I wanted you to stay in New York."
"I... yeah. I do remember that part." Freddie still won't look at me. "I was... I just got my diagnosis, too. But I hadn't told anybody else at that point. That was why you didn't want me to fly home, right? Because I was sick, and you didn't think it was safe for me to fly across the country."
"But it didn't matter that you stayed here. Your treatments were delayed anyway when the whole city shut down. You could've been home instead. You could've seen Tony for the last time, before he was gone. I couldn't... I couldn't look at you when I was the reason you were thousands of miles away from your brother when he died."
Small bits of memory start to trickle in. Snippets of loud screaming on my part, when I realized that Tony was sicker than we thought. Flashes of Freddie's pained face when he turned away from me.
"You wanted to come home and call off the wedding, but I insisted that you stayed. I said... I said it wasn't a big deal. I said it was just a flu." Freddie's voice thins out, his face looks green. "I was the reason why you couldn't be with your family. Why you couldn't come to the funeral. I was... I couldn't look at you and not think of all the different things I could've done to spare you that pain. I could've flown with you home, found other doctors there. I shouldn't have downplayed his illness. I should've let you go home."
The voices in my jumbled memory start to clear up, and I can finally hear them—all the ugly words that I yelled at him, my own voice thick with anger and grief that I directed at the only person who was in my vicinity.
My legs feel numb, and my insides ache. I lower myself to the ground, hugging my knees to my chest. "I blamed you. Over and over again."
Freddie still won't look at me. "Yes. Rightfully so."
"I said that it was all your fault... that I wasn't there when he died. I really said that to you, didn't I?" Even saying this out loud makes me want to throw up. I know there was more that I said to him. Worse things that I can't even bear to think. I press my thighs deeper into my stomach, feeling it churn.
"You got sicker after he died and it was all my fault. It felt like I was watching you die, too. And that was why I couldn't... I couldn't look at you." His sad eyes finally find me. "You've got nothing to be sorry for, Hannah. It was all me."
I shake my head. "I didn't mean any of it. I don't think it was your fault."
"I know you don't believe that. It's okay. I wish I could turn back time, too. There are so many things I would've done differently. I felt really guilty about everything that I ended up abandoning you—"
"You didn't abandon me," I interject.
"I did," he disagrees firmly. "I know I did. Instead of making sure you were alright and trying to right my mistakes, I left you at the hands of all those strangers, the doctors and nurses I hired to take care of you. I couldn't even be a good friend to you, let alone a good husband. I made a vow to take care of you and I couldn't even manage it."
I can't stop the flow of tears that stream down my face. It's all suddenly coming back—the feeling of hopelessness and loneliness as I drowned in my sorrow. I can feel everything loud and clear now, as if I'm still stuck in that bed upstairs, unable to move. Frozen with grief.
"But you did take care of me," I remind him, my voice weak from the tears. "You were my rock. It wasn't always the nurses. Our wedding night, I threw up from the pain all over my dress. You carried me to the bathroom and held my hair up when I threw up some more, then you helped me get out of that dress. You carried me back to my room and stayed there all night, to look after me."
Freddie cracks a smile. "Slept on the floor, like the absolute gentleman I was."
"You did." I smile back. "You were there when I woke up after my surgery. You also came with me for my first chemo and let me hold your hand when I told you I was scared."
"I only went with you that one time."
"Because the smell of the clinic made you sick and reminded you of when your dad was hospitalized from his first stroke. And then he died a couple weeks later, and you had so much on your plate. You couldn't take care of me on your own. That's why you had to get help."
He shakes his head as if he doesn't want to listen to what I say. "I ignored you while you were in pain because I felt too guilty to be around you. I forced myself to be busy just so I wouldn't have to hear you cry. It was so shitty of me to—to try to keep my hands clean of you when I knew you were hurting and lonely. A-and the day that I found you in the bathroom..." His voice fades away into a pained whisper. "Sometimes I still have nightmares about it. That I didn't check up on you, that I was too late."
"Freddie. No," I choke out in horror. "You can't... Tell me you haven't been blaming yourself for that?" One look at him confirms my worst thoughts. "Oh, Freddie. Can you come here, please?"
He seems reluctant, but I guess he sees something in my eyes that makes him come over to the spot where I'm sitting on the ground. I scoot closer so I can drop my head on his arm. He shudders. My steady rock is shaking, just a little, and it shakes me.
"Listen to me. I never took those pills. You stopped me before I could do anything. Yes, I spent a whole hour sitting on the floor, staring at that bottle before you broke down the door. But I never took them. I will regret that day forever."
Next to me, his breath stutters.
"I owe you my life," I say to him. "I almost gave up. I didn't think I could ever see a way out of that nightmare, but you pulled me out of it. I can't believe you've been putting the blame on yourself, when I should be thanking you forever, for saving me."
He sighs. "Please don't make me sound like a hero. I don't deserve it."
"You kinda are my hero," I say quietly. "I'm alive and kicking, I'm still here, all because of you. And that's not an exaggeration. That's something I'll never be able to repay you for."
"See, that's what you don't get, Hannah. Seeing you healthy again is the ultimate repayment. Nothing else matters but that." He holds my gaze firmly. "I don't want to ever again hear you say that you feel like you owe me something. You don't."
I nod at him, even though I know it doesn't matter. I will always feel this way, like I'm indebted to him. But I can nod and smile just to humor him. I wrap my arms around him and hug him tightly. "Thanks for being my friend, Freddie."
I can hear the smile in his voice. "Thank you for being mine, Hannah."
"This isn't a good bye, okay? You can't get rid of me that easily," I say as I pull away.
Freddie laughs. "I would never dream of it."
"Alright. Let's stop crying. Shall we go ahead and get divorced?"
"Absolutely," he agrees and stands up, offering me a hand.
I grab his hand and pull to stand, only to grunt when my back suddenly cramped. "Ugh. Shit."
"You okay?"
"Yep. Just pulled a muscle, I think." I stretch a little, and sigh. "My age's catching up on me."
He rolls his eyes. "Please. You're twenty-six, not sixty."
We walk over to the dining table and sit down on opposite sides of the table. Freddie's prepared a glass of red wine for me, which is thoughtful of him. I'm still not much of a drinker, but I can take a sip or two. Just to buzz off these nerves.
The papers sit between us, and I bite my lip nervously. Yep. The wine is definitely needed.
"So. This is really it."
"This is it," he says, then quirks up an eyebrow. "Having second thoughts?"
"Oh, you wish," I say with a grin, but it falters a little. I really am nervous. "Okay. Stop. Be quiet. I need to read over this one more time."
"Alllllright. Take your time."
I give him another smile, before turning my full focus on what's in front of me. I inhale deeply and prepare myself to finally sign my divorce papers.
Author's note: Aahhh! It feels so good to finally circle back to the events on the Prologue!!! Sorry there's no Jonah on this chapter, but he'll be back for the next one ;)
There's only a few chapters left on this book and I'm getting so emotional. Also stressed out because I'm stuck on my next project I'm working on after this one 😂 Also, I'm only just checking my calendar and realized that the last chapter will be posted one day before my Taylor Swift show in Singapore😂😂😂 BUT, as I already told you, there will be an epilogue and a few bonus chapters from Jonah's POV ;)