I know. She looked at him directly. But discreet hasn't gotten me anywhere. I've been discreet for four years. He leaned back, looked at her.
She was doing it again. That thing where she said the true thing plainly without dressing it up or apologizing for it. It was the thing about her that made the conversation feel different from most conversations he had. Tell me something. She said your divorce.
You said it was necessary. Yeah. What did that mean? He considered it. He didn't talk about this.
Not to co-workers. Not to his mother who had enough opinions about Melissa already. Not even to his brother in Atlanta who'd asked twice and accepted the deflection both times. Melissa and I got married young. He said 24.
We both wanted the same things or we thought we did. Stability, a house, a family. And then we had Amara and stability meant something different to each of us. He paused. To me, it meant steadiness, showing up, being where I said I'd be.
To Melissa, it meant more, more money, more house, more lifestyle. And I couldn't give her more fast enough. So, she started filling the gap other ways. Drinking. Yeah, he said it without drama.
And other things, other people eventually. He looked at his coffee. By the time I found out about the other people, I was mostly just relieved because it meant I could stop pretending the marriage was fine. Lauren said nothing. She let it sit.
He noticed again that she didn't immediately reach for the comforting phrase, the I'm sorry, the automatic social response. She just waited to see if there was more. There wasn't more. Not today. You said you stopped taking risks after that, she said.
I did. What kind of risks? Any kind. He looked up. I stopped wanting things I might not get because the wanting is the dangerous part.
The having and the losing, I can handle that. But the wanting and not getting, that's what breaks people. I'd seen it break Melissa. I didn't want it breaking me. Lauren looked at him for a long moment.
That's the saddest thing I've heard in a while, she said. Not unkindly, plainly. It worked, he said. Did it? He didn't answer.