The Truth Read online

  Caroline nodded slowly and shut her eyes as if she was thinking. “I want to talk about this more during our next session, but I would like to end on a more positive note since I can tell today has taken a toll on you.” She opened her eyes and looked into mine, a smile spreading across her face. “So, tell me, what is your daughter dressing up as for Halloween? Will you be going trick or treating tonight?”

  This made me smile. “We certainly are. She’s going as Wonder Woman and insisted that my wife and I go as Batgirl and Supergirl.”

  Caroline’s eyes lit up at this information, and she let out a slight chuckle. “I guess we know who’s in charge. Which one are you going as?”

  “Supergirl. My wife is a much better Batgirl.” I was about to say that the dark costume played in perfectly with her dark hair and light skin, but stopped myself. I had made a vow to myself when I started therapy that I’d never give away any personal details about my wife. With her job as a nurse, she tended to be pretty well-known by a bunch of people in our town and the surrounding communities, and I didn’t want to tarnish her reputation in any way. I knew Caroline could never reveal this information to anyone outside of our sessions anyway, but on the off chance she knew who Diana was, I didn’t want her to get a bad impression of her either. I cleared my throat and looked at the clock across the room. “Speaking of trick or treating, I have to get home. It starts in a half-hour, and I need time to get into character.”

  By the time I arrived back at the house, both Ava and Diana had their costumes on. The two twirled in circles showing off their outfits. “Well, don’t you guys look terrific?” and they really did. Ava was the cutest little Wonder Woman I’d ever seen, and my wife filled out that Batgirl costume quite nicely. Even in the midst of all of our problems, I hadn’t lost sight of the fact that my wife was a complete bombshell. Sometimes I wondered if that was part of the reason things had gone sour between us. I hadn’t changed at all since high school. I was still the same freckle-faced, awkward girl with plain brown hair and glasses that Diana had fallen in love with our junior year. Diana, on the other hand, had come a long way from the tall, lanky girl with braces that she had been. Granted, I found that girl to be unbearably cute, but I didn’t complain when college came, and she ditched the braces, at the same time gaining perfect curves. She also went from having average skin and hair, to having flawless skin and hair that fell perfectly at any time of day. All the while, I stayed average.

  In the beginning of our marriage when my insecurities crept in, Diana constantly reassured me that she still saw me as the most beautiful girl in the world, but that had stopped a few years ago, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I just wasn’t good enough anymore.

  I shook these thoughts from my head and looked to Diana again, who seemed to be sad today. As I leaned in to place a kiss on her forehead, I softly whispered, “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she answered quickly—so quickly that it made me believe that she was anything but fine. I decided not to push it and instead headed to my room to put on my costume.

  Diana was quiet most of the time while we were trick or treating, only smiling when Ava would say or do something funny. Maybe I had jumped the gun to assume she was cheating. If she was with someone else, wouldn’t she be happy? Maybe she had pulled away simply because she was sad. I wasn’t sure if this was a legitimate conclusion or just wishful thinking. Not that I wanted her to be sad, but I figured that would be easier to work through.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked again, as Ava ran from us to join her friends at the next house.

  Diana looked annoyed by my question. “I told you I’m fine.” After a few seconds, her face softened a bit and she added, “I guess I just have a hard time with the fact that you’re going to therapy. I don’t like the thought of you talking to a complete stranger about our marital problems.”

  “I wouldn’t have to talk to a complete stranger if you would actually talk to me about things.”

  Diana paused and seemed to be considering my words, then a cute little smile played upon her lips. “What if I tried a little harder?” she asked. When Ava skipped back to us, Diana bent down beside her. “Hey, princess, how would you feel about spending the night with grandma on Saturday? Your mommies could use a date night.”

  “Will this date involve kissing?” Ava asked, scrunching her nose up in a look of total disgust.

  “Oh yes. Lots and lots of kissing.” Diana stood and playfully attacked my lips with hers as Ava covered her eyes and yelled for us to stop. It was moments like these that actually made me feel like everything was going to turn out okay for our little family.

  Chapter 18

  The rest of the week went by quickly, and soon it was Saturday night and Ava, Diana, and I were in the car headed over to Diana’s parents’ house to drop Ava off for the night. Ava bounced up and down excitedly. She loved slumber parties with her grandparents. When we arrived, she hopped out of the car and skipped down the sidewalk. After Diana’s mom greeted Ava, she asked Diana if the two of them could talk in the other room. It only took a few minutes before I heard raised voices coming from that room. I knew that they were arguing about me because it was a constant battle between the two of them. After a few more minutes, they both returned with forced smiles on their faces. Mrs. Cox wrapped me in a tight hug, then sent us on our way, urging us to have a good time and not to worry about what time we picked up Ava the next day.

  “What was that about with your mom?” I asked Diana once we were back in the car.

  She reached across the center console and entwined her fingers with mine. “Same old. She thinks I need to try harder to make sure everything is good between us, and I reassured her that is exactly what I’m attempting to do with this date night.”

  I decided not to push the fact that their raised voices made it seem a bit more complicated than that and enjoyed the fact that Diana was showing me physical affection. She was so back and forth with the amount of affection she shared with me that I’d learned to cherish little moments like this.

  “So, where are we off to?” My tactic to change the subject worked as Diana’s face lit up in excitement.

  “I was thinking we could go to the skating rink for old time’s sake.”

  Diana was definitely pulling out all of the stops this time. The skating rink was where we shared our first kiss and where we had returned to a lot during high school when we wanted a dark place to sit and make out.

  I raised an eyebrow at Diana. “Old time’s sake, huh?”

  We both burst into laughter at the same time, knowing what she had in mind for the night.

  After a few minutes spent in a corner booth in the food court area of the skating rink doing exactly what Diana had planned for us to do when she picked our date location, I forced myself to sit back. “This is wonderful, and I’m really enjoying myself. Honestly, I feel happier than I have in a long time. But the whole point of this date was to talk things out, and we haven’t been doing any sort of talking.”

  Diana shot me a cocky grin. “I think we found something much better to do with our mouths though, don’t you? I also have a few other ideas of what my mouth could do a little later.”

  Although her words caused me to feel like a teenager again, I knew I couldn’t completely give in to her advances. This is what Diana did. She found any way she could to avoid acknowledging the issues we had. I used my hand to push her away a bit and create some space between us. “I think maybe it’s for the best if we hit the rink so we can cool down a bit, then we can talk once we’re back home.”

  Diana looked disappointed, but still agreed. We spent the next two hours holding hands and talking about nonsense topics like TV shows we needed to catch up on, while we did laps around the rink. Once we were both exhausted, we headed home. Our front door had barely closed when Diana pushed me up against it and started kissing me again. I gave in for a few minutes, before pushing her away.

  “We really do need to tal
k,” I urged.

  Diana let out a low growl. “Why won’t you just let loose every once in awhile? We can talk anytime. I can’t remember the last time we actually had sex.”

  “There’s a reason for that, Diana. You’ve been distant again lately.”

  “I’m not the one who refuses to be intimate,” Diana fought back.

  I closed my eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want to be intimate with you, Di. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel right. I don’t want us to use sex as a way to solve our problems. I want us to work together in other ways to fix this. Sex should be used to express our feelings, and I honestly don’t even know how you feel anymore. We’ve had so many ups and downs ever since Ava was born, and it’s starting to seem like the ups are coming less and less often these days.”

  “Ava is not the problem,” Diana bit back.

  “I didn’t say she was. But I’m trying to get to the bottom of what is the problem.”

  “This is the problem,” Diana said, motioning between us. “We just had a great night together, and all I want to do is spend some quality time with my wife in bed, and you won’t even let that happen. It’s like we’re roommates instead of wives.”

  I moaned and rolled my eyes at her. “Oh, come on, Diana. It’s not like that at all. All I’m asking is for you to open up a little.”

  Diana stopped as if she was considering my words, but after a few seconds, she began shaking her head. “I can’t do this right now. It’s too much stress.” To my surprise, she turned around and opened the front door.

  “Where are you going?” I felt tears beginning to sting my eyes as I watched her attempt to leave.

  “I don’t know, Hailey. I might go to a friend’s place or head over to the hospital and see if they could use any extra hands tonight. I just can’t be here anymore. I can’t handle all of the pressure.”

  Before I could even think about begging her to stay, she was already walking down the sidewalk to her car. I watched her pull away and disappear into the night. As soon as I’d closed the door, I sunk down against it and cried. What were we going to do? How could we ever make this better if Diana wasn’t willing to try?

  I spent most of the night sitting by the door, hoping and praying she would come back. Around the time the sun was rising, I couldn’t take it anymore and dragged myself to bed. I woke just a few hours later to the feeling of Ava jumping up and down on top of me, talking at a mile a minute about everything she did with her grandparents. Diana was standing in the doorway to our room, smiling over at Ava with adoring eyes and a wide smile. When her eyes met mine, her smile faltered and she mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.” But was that really good enough? How many times was she going to say that before I stopped believing it?

  Chapter 19

  Things felt weird over the next week. Diana seemed to be trying harder, but had yet to acknowledge the way she’d walked out the other night. I’d come to realize that I would probably never find out where she spent the night and prayed that my inklings about it being another woman’s house were wrong.

  Instead of attempting another date night, we decided to do a family outing that Saturday since Diana had the whole weekend off. Per Ava’s request, we went to see a late afternoon movie, then went to our favorite diner and followed it up with ice cream. During the movie, Ava leaned into me, holding tightly onto my hand, and Diana reached across from the other side of her and placed her hand on top of both of ours. Moments like this restored my faith that we could make this work and that Diana actually wanted to. I tried to keep myself from getting too excited when we had moments like this, but I always found myself clinging on to that glimmer of hope.

  That glimmer didn’t stick around for too long. Once we were home, we both tucked Ava into bed. After we left her room, Diana flashed me the smile that used to make me weak in the knees.

  “Today was a great day.” She then dropped her voice and added, “What do you say we make it a great night as well?”

  Before I could respond, she was placing kisses down my neck and across my collarbone. I knew I should suggest talking before sex. Unlike Diana, I didn’t believe that physical intimacy was enough if communication wasn’t present. I was human though, and the way she was currently holding me while her lips played on my skin had my body on fire. I tried to fight the desire, but it had been way too long since I had this type of release, and my body was begging for it. Plus, why should I feel guilty about having sex with my own wife?

  I allowed Diana to lead me back to our bedroom, where she immediately undressed me, before removing her own clothes as well, not even giving me a chance to do it for her. She lifted me up and carried me to the bed, crawling on top of me and grinding her hips into mine. She moved one hand between my legs and used her other hand to direct mine in between hers. I followed her lead as she touched me in all the places that she knew would turn me on the most. Her hips and fingers moved faster as we both got closer to the edge.

  “Oh yeah, baby, right there,” Diana moaned, as she stared up toward the ceiling. “I’m almost there.”

  She picked up her pace, until we both screamed out as the orgasm hit us at the same time. She rolled off of me and soon we were both lying on our backs staring up at the ceiling and enjoying post-orgasm bliss.

  Diana rolled onto her side so she was facing me and ran a hand through my hair. “See. It’s not so bad when you allow us to enjoy ourselves a little.”

  She had a point. Although it had become much more sporadic throughout the years, there was no denying that our sexual chemistry hadn’t suffered at all. Unfortunately, I wasn’t dense, and I knew that sex could easily be deceiving. The fact that Diana didn’t look at me the way she used to when we were intimate wasn’t lost on me. There was a difference between having sex and making love and no matter how good it felt, what had happened with Diana belonged strictly in the sex category. For that reason, I knew I couldn’t put off our talk any longer.

  “It was nice.” I smiled, before becoming serious again. “But could we talk about what happened last week?”

  Diana’s face immediately soured. “Look. I told you I was sorry. I don’t know what you want from me.”

  I threw up my hands in frustration. “I don’t know, Diana. Maybe some type of explanation. Like, where did you go after you stormed out last weekend and why can’t you just hold a simple conversation with me?”

  “Do you really want to know what my problem is?” Diana asked, raising her voice just enough to show her annoyance while not waking up Ava. “THIS is why I’m annoyed. You have to turn everything into a big deal. I can’t take it anymore. We can’t even have a nice time without you finding a way to turn it into a negative.”

  For a moment, I questioned if this was really what I did. Did I complicate things for no reason? Was I really the reason for our problems? I quickly shook these thoughts from my mind. Given our history, I felt like I put a lot of effort into staying positive. I didn’t think it was that much to ask for Diana to open up to me.

  “I’m not trying to be negative, Di. I’m just trying to make things better between us. You have to understand that.” Before I could stop myself, I started to cry again.

  Instead of offering any comfort, Diana just shook her head. “If you really wanted to make things better between us, you’d give me some space to breathe.” With that, she stood up from the bed and threw her clothes back on, before heading toward the door.

  “Are you seriously going to walk out again? Where are you even going?” I cried after her.

  Diana turned around, and I could see that she was hurting too. Part of me wanted to stand and wrap her into a hug. I’m not sure how she still managed to have that effect on me, but somehow she pulled it off. “I’m going into the hospital. Someone asked if I could cover their shift tonight, and I said no because I wanted to spend time with you. But now I feel like I might as well go in. I need to get some space anyway.” Even though she didn’t falter over her story
at all, I still had a feeling she was lying, which again brought me back to the question of where she was going. Had I been right about the cheating? Was she leaving our bed to crawl into someone else’s? I shut my eyes and prayed that this wasn’t the case.

  Chapter 20

  During the following week, things only got worse. We didn’t fight, but that was only because we barely talked at all. She spent more hours working, and when she was home, the only time she seemed present was with Ava.

  That’s why I was surprised when I was awoken on Saturday morning to Diana telling me that she had scheduled us a last-minute Christmas photo session.

  “Do you really think this is a good idea right now?” I asked, as we rushed around the house to get ready.

  “Trust me, I don’t want to do this right now either, but the last thing I need is for my mother to start questioning why we didn’t send out Christmas cards this year.”

  “I hadn’t even thought about Christmas cards,” I admitted. “I do love sending them out. Ava is always such a hit.”

  Diana smiled triumphantly. “Good. It’s decided. Christmas card pictures, here we come.”

  She marched out of the room and into Ava’s room, where she scooped the little girl up and put her on her shoulders. “Off to the photo studio we go.”

  “Off to the photo studio,” Ava repeated, while pointing us toward the door.

  I laughed and shook my head at the two of them. Even through the struggles, there would always be a soft spot in my heart for how those two interacted together.