Then

By four in the evening, I'm a wreck. Josh has been going in and out of the garage for what feels like hours. The camping gear is in the trunk of his car and now he's in the kitchen, making a bunch of peanut butter sandwiches.

I've opened a bottle of wine, because I need something to calm me down.

The problem is the hiking trip, but it's not the hiking trip. It's that all day Josh has been pretending to have told me when he didn't. I know he didn't. I wouldn't forget a thing like that.

It's that I want him to leave, but I need him to stay.

It's that flash of hope when I first saw him packing. Hope that he was leaving me. I don't know what I want anymore.

And yet I do. I want Josh to love me.

Not for the cameras, or amid the glitz, not for the approval of an audience or the pursuit of a dream, but for me, here, now.

Not for the winning of a heart, but for the keeping of a heart.

"You didn't tell me about this trip," I say, taking a glug directly from the bottle of wine, because at this point, fuck it.

"It's just one day," says Josh as he pulls out a jar of jelly.

"We need better communication, Josh."

He bought land without me. He signed up for episodes of The Proposal without me. He made these hiking plans without me. And even though in the grand scope of things, a hiking trip isn't that big of a deal, the common denominator is without me.

"It's one day," he repeats, smearing jelly on bread. He's as handsome as he's always been, but tonight his beauty leaves me cold.

Captain chooses this minute to whine at Josh's feet. He can sense the food preparation.

"Will this fucking dog ever shut up?" Josh snarls. I don't move while he grabs Captain's collar and drags him out the back door. I watch Josh through the window as he attaches Captain's leash to the old doghouse in the back of the yard.

Josh returns. He puts the sandwiches together, sliding each one into an individual plastic baggie. Two pieces of bread that fit together because they were cut from the same loaf.

"Just tell me," I say as he opens a cooler bag and stacks the sandwiches inside. "Do you still love me?"

He doesn't even look at me. "I'm not answering that."

"Why?"

"Because you're drunk, Julia. God. This conversation is over, okay? We'll talk when I get home."

I am not drunk. But I got my answer.

Thunking the bottle of wine down on the dining room table as I pass through the space, I walk into the living room and grab my phone from the side table where I left it. Sinking onto the couch, I open up a text to Andy.

Josh is leaving on a hiking trip tonight. I know you're busy with the conference, but...any chance you're free to drive down and have dinner with me?

I hit Send, then I stare at the message. Yes, I could use a friend right now. But as my feet graze rock bottom, what I most need is to ask Andy a question that only he can answer: What does it really mean that I was made for Josh? Was that just our starting point? Have we wandered too far off course?

I don't notice Josh until he's standing over me, reading the message upside down.

"The fuck?" He grabs my phone. "Unbelievable. The second I leave, you're shacking up with Andy?"

"No!" I stand to face him, shaking not with fear but anger. "You didn't tell me you were going hiking, Josh! And I'm sorry, but I don't want to be alone tonight. So I asked my friend to come over—"

"Do you take me for an absolute moron? A fucking fool?" He's shaking, too, like we're caught in the same earthquake.

In spite of the intensity, I have to laugh, because his jealousy is so misplaced, and this conversation is so ridiculous, and I'm realizing more and more that the fool is me. Me, for believing that his desire to protect me included protecting me from himself. Me, for believing that this relationship could ever be better. Me, for not standing up for myself a hell of a lot sooner.

Me for fucking lying to myself. Twice.

I take a deep breath. My anger washes out in one whoosh, like the crazy ride we've been on has finally, mercifully, come to a stop. All that's left is sadness. With the sadness is also a strange lightness.

Camila was right. There is a big world out there. Bigger than this prison cell of misery we've built.

"Josh? Baby?" I shake my head. "This isn't working."

He says nothing.

"Did you hear me?" My voice is gentle now. Resigned...but free. I see it now. We have to let each other go, because holding on this tight is breaking both of us. "You and me? This isn't working."

He raises his hand. I feel everything slow down, down, down. The back of his hand meets my face. It's almost dance-like, the way my body arches before careening across the living room. I crash into the couch, my head hitting the corner of the side table. One of Rita's things, a stylized brass figurine of a mother holding a baby, probably the only thing of hers I ever liked, falls to the carpet with a muted thud.

Pain bursts through my head like a hundred thousand tiny exploding stars as Josh's face twists with the shock of what he's just done.

There must be some truth to the saying third time's the charm, because it's taken three for me to face the truth that lies like a dark treasure at the bottom of the well where I've poured all my hope and choice and effort and love.

Josh will keep hurting me.

And though tonight Annaleigh is sleeping peacefully in her crib, oblivious to the drama playing out between the two adults she loves best, tomorrow she might not be so oblivious. She'll be a girl of five, six, ten, twelve. Eventually, she will see. Whether it's a direct strike or just a bruise. A cry in the night, a whimper in the day. And though I sincerely believe Josh would never, ever harm our daughter, she will be harmed. Through me, letting this happen.

I can never leave Josh unless he lets me, because I'll never win custody. And Annaleigh will learn that the broken stay. And then maybe one day, she will stay with some man who hits her, and that is the thought that breaks me.

Not the pain shimmering in my head like the cruel dream of an oasis. Not the feeling of being so small under Josh's towering rage.

This future Annaleigh, sitting as I am. Taking it.

Because that's what her mother did.