Such a wiseass. I asked anyway. “What happened in your marriage that you wound up divorced?”
He sighed. “You’re already getting pruney. Sure you want to hear it? You might look ninety by the time I’m done unloading all the shit that went down with Alexa.”
Alexa. I hated her already, just from her name. “Give me the short version.”
“Met her my last year in college. Got pregnant after three months of sleeping together.”
He has a child? “Wow. So you got married?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t the smartest decision, in retrospect. But she seemed sweet and was going to have my baby. She’d also lived a very different lifestyle than I had growing up with money, so I wanted to provide for her and my child.”
“That’s very noble of you.”
“I think you’re confusing noble with naïve.”
“Not at all. I think it’s incredible that you wanted to make sure they had a good life.”
“Yeah, well…long story short, she wasn’t the sweet person she pretended to be in the beginning. But I kept trying for a long time.”
“What finally pushed you to end it?”
Drew was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice cracked. “It ended the night she got into an accident with my son in the car.”
Chapter 25
Drew, New Year’s Eve, Three years ago
I stared at the cross on my son’s wall. It had inspired me to pray exactly a year ago. The crib I’d hung it over was gone, upgraded to a plastic toddler bed in the shape of a racecar. But I’d rehung the cross after God dropped me an early hint that I was shit out of luck wishing for my dad’s health. He died three days ago.
After the service this morning, a few people had come back to our place for lunch. I was grateful they were all gone now—I needed the silence. I also wanted to have a few drinks in peace. I swirled amber liquid around in my glass.
The door creaked open, but I didn’t bother to turn around. Arms wrapped around my waist from behind and hands clasped together, covering my belt buckle in the front.
“What are you doing in here? Beck is at Play Place with the sitter. He won’t be back for another hour or two.”
“Nothing.”
“Come out to the living room. Let me rub your shoulders.”
The last year between Alexa and me had been tough. It’s not that we argued that much, but the novelty had long since worn off of our relationship. We had three things in common: We both liked sex. Money—I earned it; she spent it. And our son. But when you’re working ten hours a day, and then nights and weekends you’re taking care of your father who is literally dying before your eyes, even sex takes a back seat.
Before my father started to decline so fast, I’d tried to take an interest in my wife’s new hobbies, give us something more in common. But other than attending a play one of her classes was putting on, it wasn’t easy. I ran lines with her, but she told me I didn’t put enough heart into my acting. That was probably because I wasn’t a damn actor. I went to watch her play practices, and she told me my presence made her think too much about her performance. Eventually, I gave up trying. Though the last few days, she’d been absolutely incredible.
I turned around and held my wife, kissing the top of her head. “Yeah. Let’s go. My shoulders are knotted. I’d like that.”
After about fifteen minutes, I’d started to relax—until Alexa brought the tension back into my neck.
“We should go to Sage’s party tonight.”
“I buried my father two hours ago. The only parent I had, considering my mother took off with her boyfriend when I was only a little older than our son. I’m not really in the mood for a party.”
“But it’s our anniversary. And it’s New Year’s Eve.”
“Alexa, I’m not going to a fucking party tonight. Alright?”
She stopped rubbing. “You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”
I sat up. “A jerk? You expect me to go to a party on the day of my father’s funeral? I don’t think I’m the one acting like a jerk.”
My wife huffed. Our five-year age difference felt more like twenty sometimes. “I need a party. The last few months have been depressing.”
It wasn’t like she’d helped me with my father or anything. Every weekend while I was taking care of him, she was out with her friends, usually shopping or having lunch God knows where. Her selfishness had finally gotten to me.
“Which part of the last few months was depressing? Living on Park Avenue and spending thousands on shopping every week? Or maybe it was the nanny who watched our son so you could take acting classes and go out to lunch? How about the three week-long trips you took back to Atlanta to visit your immature friends—the ones where you flew first-class and stayed at the St. Regis downtown instead of your brother’s double wide in the sticks? That must have been depressing.”