28. JACK

Ihad needed some space, some air. I just needed to walk the minutes from the Fitzrovia apartment to the Soho office on my own, alone with my own thoughts, alone with my silence, not with him chattering happily at my side.

And yet, his happy chatter made me happy, too.

I saw Paul arrive in the office and raised a hand to him. He smiled at me, but we did not speak. I had to leave before 11:00 to go to a client brunch in a very fancy Piccadilly restaurant. The brunch went on until 1:30, after which I knew what I had to do.

It was still fairly early in Chicago, and Emma would be at home, not yet gone to work. Walking back from the restaurant through Mayfair, thinking I was heading back toward Soho, which was not a big distance, I made a call.

I heard her voice, tense and surprised. She had seen my name on her phone screen, no doubt.

“Jack!”

“Hey, Emma,” I said. I paused, saying nothing else, losing any words I had to say.

“Jack, hi, thanks for calling,” she said, her voice carrying an unexpected warmth. “How are you doing?”

I hesitated for a moment.

“I’m okay. Just walking back from a meeting,” I replied.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You sound a bit…distant.”

How do you tell your soon-to-be ex-wife that you are seeing someone else and that someone is a man?

How do you tell her that maybe you’re gay now, or at least, if not gay, things are not as clear as they once were, not as…fixed?

How do you tell her that you don’t know where this is going or what it means but you might want to risk going down this route, because the chance it offered felt intoxicating?

And how do you tell her that the sex is so electric, the mutual passion so strong, that you are afraid even to ask those questions because you are starting to be unable to imagine a life without it?

You can’t tell her those things. I did not know if I could tell anyone those things just then.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, a lie, of course. I wasn’t fine. “Just needed some fresh air after the corporate jaw-jaw, you know.”

“What time is it over there?”

“Heading to two o’clock.”

“Right,” she said, and the awkwardness returned. Should I ask her about the text she had sent me?

“What about you? How’s everything in Chicago?”

She began to talk about her work and things she had been doing. She talked as if we weren’t separated and as if she had not texted me in the dead of night to tell me that she missed me.

I found myself drifting, listening to her cool, intelligent voice. I’d always liked Emma as a person, respected her, and, for a long time, loved her. If the love was gone, I could still feel good things, right? But I knew, too, that she could bounce between being direct, sending texts about missing me, and then this awkward avoidance of having just done that.

I interrupted her: “Emma, we need to talk about your text.”

“What?” she asked, crisply surprised.

It irritated me that she did it. It was defensive, and I knew a lot about being defensive in moments like these.

“You said that you were starting to doubt divorcing.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“Yeah, I am. We’ve been married a long time, Jack. Are we really just going to throw it all away?”

I found it frustrating that she would say it.

“But it’s been a long time since we were happy, Em. It was you who said that first.”

“I know.”

“If we get back together, are we doing it because we’re afraid of moving on?”

She paused.

“Are you ready to move on, Jack?”

I sighed heavily, and wondering whether I should or not, I told her some version of the truth.

“I’m not sure what I’m ready for, Emma. But I know I have to be ready. If it is over between us, then I have to be ready for something new.”

“Someone new,” she said, and it wasn’t like Emma to be mean. It wasn’t like her at all. But I called her bluff.

“Yes, of course, someone new.”

Emma’s voice softened on the other end.

“I know you love me, Jack.”

I hesitated, unsure of how to respond. Did I still love her? Was I capable of loving her in the same way I once did? The experience with Paul, whatever it would become, had shown me that Emma and I had long ago moved into comfortable acceptance of each other, but we had lost – if we ever really had – that crackle of connection I had with him.

After a moment of silence, Emma spoke again, and I could hear her emotion.

“I’ll talk to you later, Jack. Take care of yourself.”

“Emma,” I said, but she was gone. The phone went dead. It was as if she had tried to provoke me into being open with her, and when I had been, she had retreated.

But she had offered some kind of olive branch and talked about love. How often in our lives do we get told twice in a day that we are loved, first by a new lover and then by the person with whom you have shared most in your life?

The question was: which way should I go?

***

I decided not to go straight back to the office but instead to keep heading north out of Mayfair. I still needed to think. I needed space and silence.

As I walked, I felt dazed and lost. The prospect of rekindling my relationship with Emma filled me with a sense of weakness and making a mistake because the good thing – to move on – was too hard.

And then that good thing, that moving on, was that directly toward Paul, and all the change that encapsulated? That seemed hard, too.

I continued to wander through the twisting streets of that district of London, crossing Oxford Street and into the pretty terraces and turnings of Marylebone, parts of which were as cute as some fantasy of an English village.

I headed onward until I walked on into a different area, with lots of Arab stores and restaurants, a busy street named Edgware Road. I walked on until I came to a kind of overhead freeway, which I gradually realized was the one we had driven over in the cab when we arrived in London. I had driven over it many times, but this was the first time looking at it from this vantage point. I realized why it mattered: I was seeing something familiar anew.

Slightly choking on the gas fumes from the cars soaring overhead, I turned and walked until I found myself at Baker Street station, which at least had some familiarity. Then I saw Madame Tussaud’s again, and from there, I think I could work out my way back home.

I was heading through the backstreets of Fitzrovia, getting closer and closer to Goodge Street. The light of the early evening had turned to the most gloriously primrose yellow, fine with shades of pink. I stopped on the edge of a sidewalk of a wide road called Mortimer Street. I closed my eyes and let the gentle warmth of the late sun caress my skin.