“If I wasn’t such a bad person, I would let you get on with your life.”
Eliza exhales slowly, eyes cast down for a moment before she lifts her head to glance towards where Alex is sat on the couch. He’s got his elbows resting on his knees, hands locked together and head down. She’s seen her husband in various arrays of emotion. She’s seen him happy, giddy, annoyed, angry. God, she’s seen him angry -- at the people he works with, at politicians and celebrities and random people on the street. At himself. But sad, that’s an emotion she’s rarely gotten to see. Every now and then, the self-doubt would break through but Alex always took care to seal it again quickly and Eliza never wanted to push too hard and end up pushing him away.
So seeing him like this, so completely distraught with all of his walls down, shakes her to her very chore. it breaks her heart. But she also knows he has a reason, doesn’t let her sympathy and the need to nurture and comfort get the best of her.
Things have, naturally, been more than tense ever since things... exploded. Eliza’s had to block just about everybody but her sisters from her phone for a solid week because everybody having an opinion was too overwhelming. For a while, she thought this would be it. She’d considered getting a place somewhere, at least for a little while, But after spending three straight days at Angelica’s, she had known she couldn’t do that. She missed him. She seeing how passionate he got about whatever went wrong at work and chatting about things that actually matter over dinner. She even missed him getting up at the break of dawn because he’d gotten an idea he had to write down.
So she went back. She loves Alex, despite everything. He’s made a mistake, a big one at that, and she’s sure as heck not going to downplay it but it doesn’t change the fact that she loves him and that she sees the world when she looks into his eyes. That with him by her side, everything seems a little easier. And so, she was willing to work past this.
It’s not as easy as this, though. While Eliza is willing to forgive, Alexander seems to have a harder time with it. He doesn’t eat as well anymore, he barely sleeps. If they touch each other, it’s because Eliza initiates it. Alexander keeps a respectful distance, likely because he doesn’t want to overstep. Eliza doesn’t like that there’s boundaries still when she’s ready to start taking them down again. If they really want to move past this, they need to be on the same page, not on opposite sides of a brick wall.
So she crosses the room slowly, sits down next to him. Her hands reach for his face, tipping it up and turning his head until she can actually look at him. “You made a mistake, Alexander. We’ve acknowledged that, we’ve felt that. But a mistake does not make you a bad person and it’s not going to break us, not if you don’t let it."
Her thumbs brush over his cheeks for a second before she pulls back a bit. Her hands settle on Alex’s instead and her shoulders square, though her eyes don’t leave his. “I love you, Alex. But I don’t need you to let me do anything. If I would have wanted to move on, I would have. Regardless of whether or not you would have liked to let me. This is my choice.”
She pauses, lets the words settle with Alex before she allows her fingers to curl around his, tugging his hands into her lap. “And I’m choosing this. I’m choosing you. Us. So I need you to stop thinking that you’re hurting me just by being because if I couldn’t do this, I’d be gone. I want us to be okay again. I don’t want us to live like strangers.”
Shifting a bit closer, she lets her forehead tip against her husband’s. “Can we be in love again?”
