our Weeks – Episode 24– “Thirty Five”
Written by J.D.Denisson.
A sequel to the movie “This is Where I Leave You”.
Characters and back story based on the novel “This is Where I Leave You” by Jonathan Tropper.
Copyright 2016 J.D.Denisson.
Previously…
She takes me in her arms and holds me, rocks me gently. She kisses my forehead, pulls my face to her and kisses my lips. I feel my tears wet our lips as we kiss, harder by the second. I taste the saltiness of my tears. I feel her hand reach around and cup the side of my face tenderly.
She pulls away and takes a deep breath. “I’ve got to stop doing that to myself.”
“Why?” I ask her.
“I keep telling myself that this is right and that everything is going to be fine. Then I kiss you and I feel my love for you get stronger and I can’t make love to you and it hurts. It hurts so much.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that, but you’re still not in my bed. You keep promising that you’ll make love to me soon, and you don’t. And every day I just need you more and I’m going to burst.”
I say nothing. I want to say that we’re walking through the consequences of our actions, but she’s not going to hear that. She’ll hear that I’m blaming her for my mental impotence, but I’m blaming myself more for putting us here. If I’d looked after my wife and my marriage a little better I might be in bed with her right now, making love to her like crazy, and there would be no need to replace the bed and the mattress and maybe even the whole damn apartment because I know he’s been in here and touched my wife and my things. And I’m still so damn angry at myself.
“Fine,” she says to my silence. “Let’s go to dinner then.”
I leave the room to let her change and she returns in a stunning top and pants. Her ass looks good in those pants, and she knows it and I wonder if she’s not punishing me in some way. Maybe she’s trying to inspire me. If she is, it’s working.
As we’re leaving she sees the envelope on the kitchen bench, ready for her signature to doom us. She knows what it is immediately, but she doesn’t look inside it. She picks it up and dumps it in the trash and passes me like nothing happened. She didn’t look pleased with me at all, but she disposed of one of the things that stood between us without a thought.
…
And so I empty the cupboard of my things. It sits in the hallway now while I paint Racheal’s room a pretty shade of pink. There is not enough room to walk down the hallway now without bumping into something, and Quinn’s dimensions are a little enhanced at the moment. I carry my clothes in batches down to our room and find a place for them in my empty side of the wardrobe. The doors are sticking as I open and close them. One or two hinges have broken, come apart. It’s a metaphor of neglect, I suppose. She asked me to fix them many times and I never got around to it. I had other things to do. And so they remained that way, broken like us, barely functional. I wonder why Wade hadn’t fixed them in my place. Maybe that’s not his thing. Maybe she didn’t ask him. I don’t know. Maybe this is my job, not his. Maybe I need to fix the things that only I can.
She wraps her arms around me from behind and I’m startled a little. I’ve been thinking too hard and was distracted, didn’t hear her. She leans her head against my neck.
“Finally,” she says.
…
“The other day, when we were at the farewell, you asked me some questions and I kind of answered them, but not fully. I said we’d talk again and we need to. But before I could talk to you I needed to talk to Mary.”
I nod my head.
“I told her what you asked me and we talked through it, and we’ve come to a pretty frightening conclusion.”
I sit up. My face is pulled into a frown.
“I’m an addict, Judd.”
…
I take a deep breath. “But you’re done with him right? It’s completely over? There’s nothing left of him in your heart?”
She shakes her head. “It’s over. I’m with you, totally, absolutely. I’m completely in love with you, Judd. And it’s like I’m addicted to you now, but in a good way, a healthy way. And I don’t ever want to let you go.”
…
“What’s that?” she asks me.
“This,” I say, passing it to her, “is a contract to join Wade in his new show.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“But you said they didn’t want you.”
“They didn’t, but after what happened last week, Wade convinced them to take me. And I actually believe that he doesn’t think he can do it without me.”
She flips through the pages while she drinks her soda, and settles on the one that I had settled on. There is a number, bigger than I have ever seen. She almost chokes on her drink.
…
I don’t get that people risk pulling down all of those things for some fleeting feeling. The cost is too great for me to pay, and I thought that it was the same for Quinn, but obviously not. But that is the complexity of addiction – that the behaviour is hated and yet enacted over and over again regardless of the cost. I know she loved me then, but the call to forget the pain that I had caused her was too great for her to ignore.
She jumps, jumps me out of my musings.
“You okay?” I ask her. We’re almost back into the city, half an hour from home.
She rubs her belly, breathes slowly, evenly, like she’s been taught.
“Contraction,” she says.
“What?” I’m suddenly having visions of us delivering another dead baby and I almost run us off the road.
“She’s not coming,” Quinn reassures me. “Not for another month. These are test contractions. They just kind of hurt.” She catches her breath. “There,” she says exhaling deeply.
Thirty Five
Monday
My contract sits on the desk next to me as Wade raves on about something. I’m not listening. I’m looking at the document, as yet unsigned. It’s talking to me, telling me to caress it with my pen.
I’m in two minds. On one hand it would be good to have my short term future secure, but on the other hand I didn’t necessarily want to be indentured to Wade for another two years. It was a quandary, to be sure.
The show ends and I queue in the music to play us out. Wade pulls off is phones and joins me in the control room.
He’s looking better. He’s looking like he normally does and there is a smile on his face. We fist-pump like we’ve done countless times before and he takes a seat in front of my contract.
“You haven’t signed that yet,” he observes.
“No,” I reply.
“Is there a problem?”
“No.”
“So...?”
“I don’t know.” I sigh. “It’s a big decision.”
“Really? More money. Better hours. A new direction in your career. What’s there to decide?”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I am right. Sign the damn thing.”
I nod. I take my pen and do as I’m told. I pass it over to him.
“I’m going over to the network straight after this. You should come along, now you’re part of the team.”
“Sure. I’ll call Quinn, tell her I’ll be a little late. Hey, have you and Chloe got yourselves sorted out? You drove home together, so does that mean...?”
He shrugs. “I’m not home yet,” he tells me. “I drove her back to the apartment and she told me she still needs a little time. You did this thinking apart thing, right? It blows.”
&nb
sp; “I does. But I think you need to do some thinking too. Otherwise it doesn’t work.”
“I know that,” he says sharply. “It’s just killing me to be apart from her.”
I nod. “And have you thought about getting some help.”
“We talked about it, but I’m not so sure.”
“Can I give you some advice?”
“Please.”
“Don’t wait until your marriage completely falls apart to talk to someone. When Quinn and me were having trouble she suggested it and I said no. Worst decision of my life. I think that was the final straw. And you know what happened after that.”
He grimaces. “All too well.”
“I think you want to avoid walking in on her screwing another man. Trust me, that blows.”
“You make some valid points.”
“The wisdom of experience,” I tell him with a smile.
We drive down to the network in his Maserati. The suits meet us in their conference room and Wade slides over the contracts, mine freshly signed. The deal is made. The show will go on. We nail down the production schedule and set an air date. I won’t be there then - I’ll be on my paternity leave. I’ll be plenty busy, but I’ll stop in to follow things so I’m not completely in the dark when I return.
Wade drops me back to the station and I drive back home, park my car next to Quinn’s in the carpark under our building.
She is waiting for me when the lift doors open with a smile.
“How did it go?” she asks me.
“Great. It’s all done. I signed it.”
She comes into my arms. “I’m so proud of you,” she says. “The way you turned things around.”
“You’ve had a lot to do with that.”
“I don’t think so. I think you had a great deal