Violeta Noir

Your husband was always on his way somewhere.

Toward divorce.

Toward independence.

Toward his own home.

Toward me.

He just needed time.

There was always a reason for time.

In the beginning,

he told me he didn’t want to be married.

He had been tricked into it.

He was unhappy.

He was going to leave.

Not today.

Someday.

I listened.

Sometimes I believed him.

Sometimes I wanted to believe him.

Sometimes I simply enjoyed hearing the story.

But I wasn’t waiting.

That distinction seemed difficult for him.

Because while your husband described the life he might eventually have,

I was living mine.

And every time he made a real move toward me,

I gave him the same answer.

One year.

If he wanted something real with me,

he had to be single first.

Not separated while building a life with me.

Not leaving your house and slowly moving into mine.

Not ending one relationship with another already waiting to catch him.

Single.

For one year.

Live alone.

Make his own decisions.

Discover who he was when neither woman was defining the next move.

Miss me.

Get over me.

Date someone else.

Fall in love.

Decide he never wanted to see me again.

Any of those outcomes would have been acceptable.

Because the year was never a promise that I would be waiting at the end of it.

It was the distance I required between your marriage

and anything real with me.

I had already heard the story of his father.

I knew how that one went.

A man.

A marriage.

Another woman.

An exit.

Then another family built directly beside the wreckage of the first.

I found that story disgusting.

I would sleep with your husband.

I would love him.

But I would not become the next woman in that story.

If he left you,

he left you.

Not for me.

Not because of me.

And certainly not directly into me.

He had to spend a year belonging entirely to himself.

Then,

if he still wanted me

and I still wanted him,

we could see what remained.

Back then,

having his child was something I had considered.

Really considered.

I had imagined it.

I had considered what it might mean to have his baby.

To give him the family he talked about wanting with me.

But consideration was not consent to do it under any circumstances.

There was still the year.

One year single.

Then,

if we both still wanted the same thing,

a child was one of the futures we could have discussed.

He knew that.

There had been a window.

He waited too long.

Because while he kept postponing the year,

I kept learning him.

And by the second year,

I knew too much.

I had watched him in conflict.

I had watched disagreement become accusation.

I had watched accountability disappear beneath arguments about tone,

intent,

memory,

and who had wounded whom more.

Deny.

Attack.

Reverse victim and offender.

DARVO.

I knew the rhythm.

I could survive that rhythm with a lover.

A child couldn’t.

I knew that if I had his child,

there might eventually come a day when I would have to choose between protecting our relationship

and protecting the mental health of my child.

There would be no choice.

I would choose my child.

Every time.

And eventually,

that would cost us

us.

So why create a child who might someday require me to make a decision I already knew how I would make?

I was also almost finished raising mine.

In truth,

I had raised children for most of my life.

I loved being a mother.

That didn’t mean I wanted to start over.

I wasn’t going to spend another eighteen years raising his legacy too.

Pregnancy wasn’t an abstraction to me.

It wasn’t a surname.

A bloodline.

A little face carrying pieces of him into another generation.

It would be my body.

My health.

My risk.

My life.

And by then,

I did not believe your husband respected women enough for me to put my life on the line to give him a child.

So the answer changed.

The year didn’t.

He could still become single.

He could still spend that year alone.

He could still come find me afterward.

But he could no longer come find me for a child.

He had waited too long.

Then he decided he wanted one.

He told me that meant he was leaving both of us.

You,

because he said he didn’t want to have a baby with you.

Me,

because I no longer wanted to have a baby with him.

He wanted a child.

Not necessarily a particular woman.

A child.

For that moment,

apparently neither of us fit the plan.

So we left each other.

Ten months.

Almost a year.

But not the year.

That distinction matters.

The year I had always required began with him actually leaving his marriage.

This wasn’t that.

He was still your husband.

We had simply stopped being lovers.

Still,

we were both supposed to use the distance.

To grow.

To move on.

He was supposed to get over me if getting over me was what his life required.

I was supposed to get over him too.

And sometime during those ten months,

according to your husband,

your father came down from Pennsylvania.

This was before you became pregnant.

Before there was a baby.

Before custody.

Before all the complications that would eventually be folded into conversations about leaving.

Your father asked your husband whether he wanted him to take you back to Pennsylvania with him.

There it was.

A direct question.

A choice.

An opportunity to say something definitive.

Yes.

No.

Stay.

Go.

I want this marriage.

I don’t.

According to your husband,

he told your father

it was your choice.

Of course it was your choice.

You were an adult woman.

But that wasn’t the question I heard hiding underneath it.

What do you want?

That was the question I kept waiting for him to answer.

Not what did you want.

Not what did your father want.

Not what did I want.

Him.

What did he want?

Later,

he told me more about those ten months.

He said he dated once.

Then stayed home.

He told me the two of you could remain married

so you could keep his benefits.

And then he told me something else.

According to your husband,

he told you

he would try to love you

as much as he loved me.

I remember that.

Not because I know whether he actually said it.

I wasn’t there.

You were.

I remember it because it was what he told me he had said to you.

Maybe you remember that conversation differently.

Maybe he never said it at all.

I only know the version he gave me.

And while all of that was happening there,

I was changing here.

I went to therapy.

I dated.

I worked.

I went to school.

I worked on certifications.

I fixed my house.

I learned my triggers.

I learned what happened inside me before the reaction.

I learned what belonged to old wounds

and what belonged to the person standing in front of me.

My life got bigger.

So did I.

Not perfectly.

Not completely.

Growth is rarely that theatrical.

But enough that when I looked backward,

I could see I was no longer standing exactly where I had been.

Ten months passed.

Then I sent your husband one line on Instagram.

One.

Apparently,

that was sufficient.

Within a day,

we were together at a wine tasting.

He told the bartender

we were exes.

I corrected him.

Ex-lovers.

We had never been boyfriend and girlfriend.

He had never been my boyfriend because he had never been available to belong to me that way.

He belonged somewhere else.

Whatever we had been,

lover was the most honest word for it.

Then we kissed.

By the time we reached the parking lot,

his hand was already back in my pants.

Soon,

he was begging me to let him taste me in the backseat.

Again.

Ten months apart.

Therapy.

Growth.

New relationships.

New lives.

And somehow,

we were back in a parking lot negotiating access to my vagina.

Some things never change.

He told me his feelings for me came back immediately.

Mine didn’t.

Not then.

That surprised me.

I could kiss him.

Want him.

Recognize the old chemistry sitting exactly where we had left it.

But I wasn’t in love with him.

I was falling for someone else.

I told your husband I was happy.

I was.

My life had become larger while he was gone.

I asked about him.

He was okay.

He told me he was still actively trying to have a baby.

He didn’t mention you.

Not then.

And I didn’t ask.

We drank wine.

We kissed.

We remembered each other’s bodies much faster than we remembered whatever we had once believed we were supposed to become.

The attraction was still there.

Obviously.

His feelings,

according to him,

were there too.

Mine would return.

But not that day.

That day,

I was happy.

I was falling for someone else.

And your husband was standing in front of a version of me who could want him

without being in love with him.

Then you became pregnant.

Later,

he explained that too.

According to your husband,

you happened to be around.

He was horny.

He was actively trying to have a child.

Not with you specifically,

he explained.

In general.

I remember that distinction because apparently he believed there was one.

A pregnancy had occurred inside his marriage,

with his wife,

while he was intentionally trying to become a father,

and somehow even that could be narrated as something that had happened almost incidentally.

You were there.

He was horny.

He wanted a baby.

And now there was one.

There it was again.

The peculiar grammar of your husband’s life.

Things happened.

Circumstances changed.

People made choices.

Women stayed.

Women left.

Women became pregnant.

Life moved.

And your husband,

somehow,

was frequently standing in the middle of the consequences

while describing himself from the edge of the decision.

That was what I kept noticing.

Not whether he chose you.

Not whether he chose me.

I didn’t need him to choose me.

I needed him to choose

something.

And then stand beside the choice without explaining how everybody else had helped him make it.

Because explanations were something your husband had in abundance.

What seemed much rarer

was ownership.

Still,

he was moving.

Toward divorce.

Toward his own place.

Toward me.

After the baby.

After things settled.

After custody.

After school.

After money.

December.

January.

There was always another point on the horizon where he would finally become the man making his own decisions.

There was always another

then.

Someday.

And yet,

there is something else I refuse to rewrite.

The pull.

His feelings came back immediately.

Mine didn’t.

But desire?

Desire hadn’t gone anywhere.

He wanted me.

I wanted him.

That part had always been easy.

And don’t mistake the fact that I can see all of this now for some grand immunity to him.

I know the pull still exists.

If your husband called me today,

and my heart did not already belong somewhere else,

I would run toward him.

Absolutely.

I won’t insult you by pretending otherwise.

And I won’t insult myself by pretending desire disappeared simply because wisdom arrived.

I was never tricked into him.

I have a feeling neither of us was.

We saw too much of each other too early for that.

He showed me his contradictions.

I showed him mine.

He told me things that should have sent me running in the opposite direction.

I stayed.

I gave him plenty of reasons to leave me alone.

He stayed.

We weren’t attracted only to the beautiful parts.

We liked the shadows.

Maybe we recognized something in each other’s darkness.

Maybe there was freedom in meeting someone who didn’t require the lights to stay on all the time.

Whatever it was,

neither of us required innocence from the other.

The shadows were where we wore our crowns.

After years of loving each other there,

we knew the terrain.

I knew where to kiss him.

I knew what to say.

What to whisper between the sheets.

I knew all his spots.

He knew mine.

That matters.

Because I could make this story much cleaner now by pretending I alone understood the machinery.

I didn’t.

He knew me too.

He knew how to reach me.

He knew which words could find places I kept hidden from everyone else.

He knew when a look was enough.

We had learned each other.

Not only our bodies.

Our shadows.

I knew the architecture of him.

He knew the architecture of me.

And yes,

there were times you pissed me off.

The fighting.

The whining.

The declarations.

The insistence that this time he would never see me again.

Sometimes I reached for the deck for no better reason than wanting to watch the cards fall.

I knew what I was doing.

I knew which card to touch.

I knew which direction the others would fall.

I knew where to kiss.

What to say.

What to whisper.

And sometimes,

I touched the deck because you annoyed me.

Not because I wanted your life.

I didn’t.

Not because I needed him to choose me.

I didn’t.

Sometimes I simply wanted to remind you that the structure you fought so hard to protect was not nearly as stable as you wanted it to be.

Petty?

Absolutely.

Kind?

Not particularly.

Honest?

Finally.

I won’t reach backward through the Archives and make myself nicer because I know better now.

Sometimes I was hurt.

Sometimes I was curious.

Sometimes I was theatrical.

Sometimes I was being an asshole.

And sometimes,

I enjoyed it.

That’s true too.

But don’t mistake my ability to move him

for immunity from his ability to move me.

He knew which cards to touch in me too.

That is why,

even now,

I know I could run toward him.

Not because I have forgotten.

Because I remember.

Every bit of it.

Some relationships end without becoming powerless.

Some people leave behind a gravitational pull long after you stop mistaking gravity for destiny.

Your husband is one of mine.

I know I am one of his.

We didn’t keep finding each other because one of us couldn’t let go.

We both kept coming back.

Willingly.

Again.

And again.

Sometimes knowing perfectly well what waited for us there.

I wasn’t dragged.

Neither was he.

I was never tricked.

I don’t think he was either.

Sometimes I knew exactly what I was running toward.

And I ran anyway.

There was a time when you could irritate me enough that I would touch the deck simply because I knew I could make it fall.

I already ran that experiment.

I already know what happens.

I don’t need to knock over your cards today to prove gravity still works.

I’ve already watched them fall.

And perhaps that’s the strangest thing about all those years your husband spent talking to me about someday.

Someday he would leave.

Someday he would be free.

Someday we could discover what we might become.

Someday he would be my husband.

Someday I would be his wife.

Someday.

But the thing between us never lived there.

It lived in parking lots.

Under trees.

Between sheets.

In arguments.

In laughter.

In shadows.

In the present tense.

We never had trouble wanting each other now.

Our trouble began whenever we tried to turn now

into someday.

Because while your husband kept imagining himself in my future,

I was watching him in my present.

And the longer he waited,

the more I learned.

First,

the possibility of having his child disappeared.

Other possibilities would follow.

Not because I stopped loving him.

Not because the pull disappeared.

Sometimes the cruelest thing about learning someone deeply

is discovering that you can love exactly who they are

and still know exactly what they cannot be for you.

Eventually,

whenever your husband described the life we might someday have,

a sentence began appearing in the back of my mind.

Quietly at first.

Then more often.

Then so reliably that it became almost funny.

My future husband would never.