Ever After Always

One

Freya

Playlist: "I Go Crazy," Orla Gartland

I used to sing all the time. In the shower. On road trips. Painting our house. Cooking with Aiden. Because I'm a feeler, and music is a language of emotion.

Then, one week ago, I crawled into bed alone again, curled up with my cats, Horseradish and Pickles, and realized I couldn't remember the last time I'd sung. And it just so happened to be when I realized that I was really fucking fed up with my husband. That I had been. For months.

So I kicked him out. And things may have devolved a bit since then.

Hiccupping, I stare at Aiden's closet.

"You still there?" My best friend Mai's voice echoes on speakerphone, where my cell rests on the bed.

"Yep." Hiccup. "Still drunkish. Sorry."

"Just no operating any heavy machinery, and you're doing fine."

I hiccup again. "I think there's something wrong with me. I'm so pissed at him that I've fantasized about sticking chocolate pudding in his business shoes-"

"What?" she yells. "Why would you do that?"

"He'd think it's cat shit. Pickles gets diarrhea when she eats my houseplants."

A pause. "You're disturbing sometimes."

"This is true." Coming from a family of seven children, I have some very creative ways to exact revenge. "I definitely have a few wires crossed. I'm thinking about resurrecting some of my most sinister pranks, and I'm so horny, I'm staring at his closet, huffing his scent."

Mai sighs sympathetically from my phone. "There's nothing wrong with you. You haven't had a lay in . . . how long, again?"

I grab the bottle of wine sitting on my dresser and take a long swig. "Nine weeks. Four days-" I squint one-eyed at the clock. "Twenty-one hours."

She whistles. "Yeah. So, too long. You're sex starved. And just because you're hurt doesn't mean you can't still want him. Marriage is messier and much more complicated than anyone warned us. You can want to rip off his nuts and miss him so bad, it feels like you can't breathe."

Tears swim in my eyes. "I feel like I can't breathe."

"But you can," Mai says gently. "One breath at a time."

"Why don't they warn us?"

"What?"

"Why doesn't anyone tell you how hard marriage is going to be?"

Mai sighs heavily. "Because I'm not sure we'd do it if they did."

Stepping closer to the rack of Aiden's immaculate, wrinkle-free button-ups, I press my nose into the collar of his favorite one.

Winter-skies blue, Freya. The color of your eyes.

I feel a twisty blend of rage and longing as I breathe him in. Ocean water and mint, the warm, familiar scent of his body. I fist the fabric until it crumples, and I watch it relax when I let go, as if I never even touched it. That's how I feel about my husband lately. Like he walks around our house and I could be a ghost for all it matters. Or maybe he's the ghost.

Maybe we both are.

Slapping a palm on the closet door and slamming it shut, I hit the wine bottle again. One last gulp and it's gone. Freya: 1. Wine: 0.

"Take that, alcohol," I tell the bottle, setting it on my dresser with a hollow thunk.

"Is he still in Washington?" Mai asks, tiptoeing her way around my tipsy rambling.

I stare at his empty side of the bed. "Yep."

My husband is, at my request, one thousand miles north of me, licking his wounds with my brother and duly freaking out because I put my foot down and told him this shit would not stand. I'm home, with the cats, freaking out, too, because I miss my husband, because I want to throttle this imposter and demand the guy I married back.

I want Aiden's ocean-blue eyes sparkling as they settle on me. I want his long, hard hugs and no-bullshit musings on life, the kind of pragmatism born of struggle and resilience. I want his tall frame pressing me against the shower tiles, his rough hands wandering my curves. I want his sighs and groans, his dirty talk filling my ears as he fills me with every inch of him.

Distracted by that vivid mental image, I stub my toe on the bed frame.

"Fuckety shit tits!" Flopping onto the mattress, I stare up at the ceiling and try not to cry.

"You okay?" Mai asks. "I mean I know you're not. But . . . you know what I mean."

"Stubbed my toe," I squeak.

"Aw. Let it out, Frey. Let it goooo," she singsongs. "You are, according to my kids, Elsa, Queen of Arendelle, after all."

"But with hips," we say in unison.

I laugh through tears that I furiously wipe away. Crying isn't weak. I know this. Rationally. But I also know the world doesn't reward tears or see emotionality as strength. I'm an empowered, no-nonsense woman who feels all her feelings and battles the cultural pressure to contain them, to have my emotional shit in order. Even when all I want to do sometimes is indulge in a teary explosion of hugging my condiment-named cats while cry-singing along to my nineties emo playlist. For example. Like I might have been doing earlier. When I opened and started chugging the wine.

In a world that says feelings like mine are "too much," singing has always helped. In a houseful of mostly stoics who loved my big heart but handled their feelings so differently from me, singing was an outlet for all I felt and couldn't-or wouldn't-hide. That's why, last week, when I realized I'd stopped singing, I got scared. Because that's when I understood how numb I'd become, how dangerously deep I was burying my pain.

"Freya?" Mai says carefully.

"I'm okay," I tell her hoarsely. I wipe my eyes again. "Or . . . I will be. I just wish I knew what to do. Aiden said, whatever it was, he wanted to fix it, but how do you fix something when you don't even know what's broken? Or when it feels so broken, you don't even recognize it anymore? How can he make that promise when he acts like he has no fucking clue why I'm feeling this way?"

Horseradish, ever the empath, senses my upset and jumps onto the bed, meowing loudly, then kneading my boob, which hurts. I shove him away gently, until he moves to my stomach, which feels better. I have cramps like a bitch. Pickles is slower on the uptick but finally jumps and joins her brother, then begins licking my face.

"I don't know, Frey," Mai says. "But what I do know is, you have to talk to him. I understand why you're hurt, why the last thing you want to do is be the initiator when he's been so withdrawn, but you're not going to get answers if you don't talk." She hesitates a beat, then says, "Marriage counseling would be wise to try. If you're willing . . . if you choose to. You'll have to decide if you want to, even if you think it's too far gone."

And that's when the tears come, no matter how fast I wipe them away. Because I don't know if I have anything left to choose with. I'm scared we are too far gone. Crying so hard my throat burns, I feel each jagged sob like it's breaking open my chest.

Because the past six months, I've witnessed the core of my marriage dissolving, and now I don't know how to build it back. Because at some point, critical damage is done, and there's no returning to what it was before. In the human body, it's called "irreversible atrophy." As a physical therapist, I'm no stranger to it, even though I fight it as much as I can, working my patients until they're sweating and crying and cussing me out.

It's not my favorite part of the job, when they hit their low point, shaking and exhausted and spent, but the truth is, that's good pain-pain that precedes healing. Otherwise, muscles that go unchallenged shrink, bones left untested become brittle. Use it or lose it. There are a thousand variations on the fundamental truth of Newton's Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The less you demand of something, the less it gives back, the weaker it becomes, until one day it's a shadow of itself.

"I'm so tired of crying," I tell Mai through the lump in my throat.

"I know, Frey," she says softly.

"I'm so mad at him," I growl through the tears.

Six months of slow, silent decline. It wasn't one big, awful argument. It was a thousand quiet moments that added up until I realized I didn't recognize him or us or, shit, even me.

"You're allowed to be," Mai says. "You're hurting. And you stood up for yourself. That's important. That's big."

"I did. I stood up for myself." I wipe my nose. "And he acted like he had no goddamn clue what was wrong, like nothing was wrong."

"To be fair, a lot of guys are like this," Mai says. "I mean, Pete has gotten better at carrying more of the emotional load of our marriage, but it took time and work. You remember two years ago, when I kicked him out?"

"Uh. Yeah. He slept on my sofa."

"That's right. So you're not alone. Guys do this. They mess up, and they're usually clueless at first as to how. Most men aren't taught to introspect on relationships. They're taught to drag race for the girl, then once they have her, to hit cruise control. I mean, not all men. But enough of them that there's a precedent."

"Okay, fine, most of them don't tend to introspect. But when things deteriorate like this, how are they happy?"

"I can't say they're happy. Complacent, maybe?"

"Complacent," I say, tasting it sour on my tongue. "Fuck that."

"Oh, you know I agree."

There's no way Aiden's happy with this corpse of a marriage, is he? And complacent? That's the last word I'd ever use for my husband. Aiden's determined, driven, the most dedicated and hardworking person I've ever met. He doesn't settle for anything. So why would he settle in our marriage? What happened?

Is he content to come home, exchange the same seven lines about our day, shower separately, then go to bed, just to do it all over again? Is he fulfilled by a quick peck on the cheek, satisfied that we haven't had sex in months?

We used to have such fire for each other, such passion. And I know that dims with time, but we went from a blazing roar to a steady, warm glow. I loved that glow. I was happy with it. And then I realized one day it was gone. I was alone. And it was so, so cold.

"This sucks, Mai." I blow my nose and throw the tissue nowhere in particular. I almost wish Aiden were here to cringe at the mess I've turned the house into. I'd watch his left eye start twitching and derive perverse satisfaction from actually eliciting some kind of response from him. "This sucks so bad."

"I know, honey. I wish I could fix it. I'd do anything to fix it for you."

Fresh tears streak my cheeks. "I know."

The security system of our Culver City bungalow beeps, telling me someone entered and used the security code.

"Mai, I think he's home. I'm gonna go."

"Okay. Hang in there, Freya. Call anytime."

Sitting up, I dab my eyes. "I will. Thank you. Love you."

"Love you, too."

I tap the button to end our call just as the door shuts quietly. Horseradish and Pickles leap off me, bounding out of the room and down the hall.

"Should have named them Benedict and Arnold," I mutter. "Traitors. I'm the one who feeds you!"

"Freya?" Aiden calls, followed by a bang, a thud, then a muttered string of curses. I think I left my sneakers right inside the door, which he must have tripped on.

Oops.

The door clicks behind him. "Freya?" he calls again. "It's me." His voice sounds hoarse.

I swallow a fresh stream of tears and try to wipe my face. After a week, you'd think I'd be ready by now, that I'd know what to say, or how to say it. But my pain feels . . . preverbal, tangled, and sharp-a hot barbed-wire knot of emotions, shredding my chest.

Pushing off the mattress, I rush to the attached bathroom and splash my face, hoping a few handfuls of cold water will wash away evidence that I've been crying. Then I glance in the mirror and groan, seeing how I look. My eyes are red-rimmed, which makes my irises appear unnervingly pale. My nose is pink. And my forehead's splotchy. All signs I've had a good cry. Excellent.

Aiden's reflection joins mine in the mirror, and I freeze, like prey who senses the predator's about to pounce. He stands in the threshold of the bathroom, his ocean-blue eyes locked on my face. He has a week-old beard, brown-black like the rest of his hair, which makes him look like a stranger. He's never had facial hair beyond stubble, and I don't know if I like it or hate it. I don't know if I'm glad he's home or miserable.

Silence hangs between us until a drop of water falls from the faucet with an echoing plink!

My gaze travels his body, broad and strong. It feels like that first glimpse of home after a vacation that went just a few days too long. I realize I missed him, that my impulse to turn and throw myself in his arms, to bury my nose in his neck and breathe him in, isn't entirely erased. It's subdued but not gone.

Maybe that's a good sign.

Maybe that scares the shit out of me.

Maybe I'm drunk.

God, my brain hurts. I'm so tired of thinking about this, I don't even know what to think about the fact that some part of me wants to be in Aiden's arms, for him to turn his head and kiss that spot behind my ear, then whisper my name as his hands span my waist. That I want that feeling of coming home, I want him to look into my eyes the way he used to, like he sees me, like he understands my heart.

"Y-" My voice cracks with phlegm and tears, before another hiccup sneaks out. I clear my throat. "You're back already."

"Sorry, I . . ." He frowns. "Are you drunk?"

I lift my chin. "Plausibly."

"Possibly, you mean?" His frown deepens. "Freya, are you okay?"