“Maybe you will,” I said. “Maybe your mind will catch up with your heart.”
“I don’t trust my heart. That’s the problem.”
Lieutenant Dan nudged his nose under her arm and she started crying softly again. I wanted to carry her off and put her where I could keep her safe, pack love around her and insulate her from whatever was eroding her.
But I couldn’t do that, so I just held her instead. I folded my arms around her, and she clutched my shirt like she was afraid I would vanish. But she was the one who was going to vanish, not me.
I felt panicked. I didn’t know how to love her better than I already did. How to show her I wasn’t like her ex or her father. She had all of me—there was nothing else I could give her—and if that wasn’t enough to convince her, what else could I do?
We stayed holding each other for a few minutes. When she finally stopped crying, she spoke against my chest.
“I’m sorry, Jacob.” She sniffed.
“Sorry for what?” I said gently.
She went silent for a long moment. “I’m broken.” The hopeless way she said it made tears pinch from my eyes.
“We’re all a little broken, Briana. We are a mosaic. We’re made up of all those we’ve met and all the things we’ve been through. There are parts of us that are colorful and dark and jagged and beautiful. And I love every piece of you. Even the ones you wish didn’t exist.”
I pulled away to look her in the eye. “What do you need? Tell me what to do. What can I do to fix this?”
She was quiet. “You can’t give me what I need.”
“Try me.”
She searched my face. “I need to be able to see into your soul.”
I shook my head. “I love you. You know that.”
But I could see in her eyes that she didn’t believe me.
She didn’t look at me again after that. But she let me hold her and she let me stay. That was at least something.
A half an hour later I brought the soup to her in bed. She didn’t eat much of it. She was distant and withdrawn, and my anxiety pulsed and clawed around.
The surgery was the day after tomorrow, and knowing I was about to be helpless when she might need me made me feel panicked. I didn’t want to be laid up in a hospital for a week and not able to get to her. If she lost the baby, I wouldn’t be able to be there. I didn’t want not to be able to carry her to bed, or drive to her house if she decided she wanted to see me, or not to be able to take care of her for the next two weeks because I’d be post-op.
But there was nothing I could do about any of it.
When she fell asleep curled into me, I fell asleep too. For the first time in days I could close my eyes without my brain racing because it was wondering why she wasn’t with me. I didn’t even know how exhausted I was until the moment that my body finally let go.
There’s a special peace in sleeping next to someone you love. When you slip into the dark holding them and wake up and they’re still there and you know that everything that matters is just opening your eyes away.
When I felt her hands wandering my body, the light was no longer coming in through the curtains. I didn’t know what time it was. I don’t think she was really awake and neither was I, but I slipped a hand under her shirt and she slid one down the front of my pants and it was dreamlike and somewhere between awake and asleep and it felt good to touch her and for her to touch me. To have some proof that she still wanted me, even if it was just this.
We didn’t talk. Talking would have ended it. We just kissed and took off each other’s clothes and made love in the dark. But she felt like a ghost, going through the motions of the things she used to do while she was alive.
When I woke up again, it was morning. And then she asked me to leave.
I didn’t want to go. But forcing my company on a woman who wasn’t sure she even wanted me around would only make things worse. So I left.
Rosa said good-bye to me on the way out like it was an apology. Then she handed me a casamiento and egg sandwich wrapped in a paper towel and told me I needed to eat. I left holding that and feeling more despondent than when I got here.
I did what I could to stay centered for the rest of the day. I journaled. Watered my plants and packed my hospital bag. Forced myself to eat. Got the house ready for me to be gone for two weeks since I’d be recovering at my parents’。 I could see that Briana wasn’t in any place to take care of me while I recovered, and I didn’t want to burden her with it. I went to drop off Lieutenant Dan with Mom. When I came into the house, I found her in the living room, reading, a moment after Lieutenant Dan found her.
She smiled up at me over my excited dog. “Jacob. Are you ready? It’s the big day tomorrow.” She closed her book. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come?”
I dropped on the couch next to her. “Don’t come. I’ll be home in a week and you’ll be spending plenty of time with me then. I need to stay here after the surgery.”
She looked confused. “You’re recovering here? Is Briana taking care of Benny? I thought Rosa was doing it.”
“She is.”
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
I rubbed my forehead. “No,” I said.
She set her book down on the coffee table and waited. And I told her about everything except the fake dating—how Briana changed after she saw Kelly and Nick, what Nick did to her, that she’d lost a baby last year. That she said she’d never marry me or live with me, that she was distant and despondent.
And pregnant.
Mom sat and she listened. When I was done, she let out a long exhale. “How do you feel about the pregnancy?”
I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees, staring into the cold fireplace. “Happy. Excited. Wishing she was excited too. But she’s not.” I looked at her. “What do I do, Mom? I think she’s going to leave me.”
“Jacob, she’s traumatized.”
I stared at her.
“She’s in the first serious relationship since her divorce, she has an unplanned pregnancy, and her last pregnancy ended in a traumatic miscarriage that she went through alone. She comes from a broken family where she was abandoned by her own father while her mother was expecting. She’s terrified and she’s trying to protect herself—and she might be so scared that she’s willing to sabotage the relationship so that it ends.”
I shook my head at her. “Why?”
“She’d rather things end on her terms than have the rug pulled out from under her again. It’s the only way she can feel in control of the outcome. It is a very common trauma response, Jacob.”
“But…but I would never do that to her,” I said. “Never.”
She looked at me gently. “I know, sweetheart. But sometimes the hardest thing isn’t trusting the next person. It’s trusting yourself. She doesn’t trust herself to choose well. Given her history with important men in her life, she may even feel that severing her relationship with her child’s father is in the best interest of the child. None of the fathers in her life have ever stayed, Jacob. Seeing Nick moved on with his new pregnant wife must have been incredibly difficult, given the circumstances. Had Briana not lost that pregnancy, that man would have been the father of her baby. And it was clear he didn’t want Briana or the baby he almost made with her. Why would you be different? Why would you be the one who sticks around?”