Everything Must Go by Camille Pagán

Author:Camille Pagán [Pagán, Camille]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2022-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

LAINE

As Ben and I walked back from the coffee shop, I couldn’t help but notice how many of the brownstones were decorated the same as they’d been when we were kids—this one with metal patio furniture that had been rusty since before the dawn of time; that one with a yard full of garish garden gnomes. They may have been exactly like they used to be, but Ben and I weren’t. I guess that’s why I was surprised at how normal it felt to be walking with him. Especially in light of the conversation we’d just had.

“I never answered your question about my marriage,” I said. “I asked Josh—that’s my husband’s name—for a divorce last week.”

“Damn.” He didn’t say anything else for nearly a minute, and I didn’t try to fill the space the way I would’ve with someone else. “I’m really sorry. Divorce sucks,” he finally said, shaking his head. “I’ve been on the other side of it for six years, and it still gets to me sometimes. Feels like a big failure, even when it was absolutely the right decision. Which it was, in my case.”

As I looked at him, I realized I wanted to know everything that happened. But I wasn’t sure I had a right to. “If you don’t want to talk about it, I totally get it,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. My ex, Celeste, she just never really got me.”

Goose bumps pricked my skin, and I glanced away, embarrassed. Why should I be happy to hear that?

Without breaking his stride, Ben added, “I guess I never got her, either, and one day, we sort of looked at each other and admitted that it wasn’t working for us. What’s going on with you and Josh?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“I have time,” he said, but then he held up a hand. “Actually, I’m sorry—I don’t mean to push. If it’s new, I can totally get why you wouldn’t want to get into it.”

The strange thing was that I actually did. “It’s okay,” I said. “The truth is, I want to have kids. I have for a while, and the window for that is closing. But every time I’d mention kids to Josh, he’d tell me he wasn’t ready.”

“Did he know how important it was to you?”

I’d last seen Ben three presidents, one dog, and a handful of gray hairs ago. And yet here he was. Calling it like he saw it—and not being wrong.

“He does now,” I said. “I just told him the other day. And he says he’s almost ready. So . . .”

We’d been walking more and more slowly as we approached our block, and now Ben stopped walking for a second and cocked his head. “Will you move forward with the divorce, now that you’ve talked and he’s considering having children?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “My family loves Josh. He doesn’t want a divorce. And he’s willing to move here to help me care for my mother. We’d take the upstairs apartment.

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