Page 69 of Marriage and the Midlife Crisis

I debated how to reply, then sent a simple, “I have, too. Goodnight.”

After a busy day at the office on Friday, he called that evening to invite me to breakfast the next morning.

We met at a diner that we’d used to frequent when the boys were younger. Ryan was already seated in a booth when I arrived, and he rose to greet me and help me slip off my coat before I slid into the opposite side of the booth. Those gentlemanly touches – walking me to my car, opening doors for me, helping me with my coat – were all things that the “old” Ryan had always done. Things that had slowly disappeared over the past eighteen months.

They were little things that I was perfectly capable of doing on my own, of course, yet I still appreciated the thoughtful gestures.

As we had Thursday evening, we kept the conversation light, skimming the surface of our lives so that we didn’t wade into deeper, more murky waters. Once our plates had been cleared and we were enjoying a refill on our coffees, Ryan cleared his throat and leaned forward slightly. Dropping his voice so that we couldn’t be overheard, he asked if I would come home with him.

“I have some ideas I’d like to run past you, and I think it might be better to do it in private. Nothing too heavy,” he assured me with a quick smile. “Just some thoughts I had for rebuilding our foundation.”

My lips quirked as I replied, “Well, you are the foundation expert.” I paused then added, “Yes, I’ll come to the house for a bit.”

He gave me a wide smile then, the one that showed his dimples, then sat back to finish the last of his coffee.

When I stepped across the threshold a little while later, I detected the faint scent of lemon and subtly glanced around the living room. The wooden end tables and the coffee table gleamed from being freshly polished, and the pillows on the couch appeared to have been recently fluffed.

Ryan hung his coat in the entry closet, then stood next to the couch, rubbing his hands together and rocking back slightly on his heels. His uncharacteristic nervousness had the reverse reaction on me, and I relaxed a little as I slipped off my coat and draped it over the back of the chair before sitting down.

Ryan dropped down onto the edge of the couch cushion, leaning forward and resting his arms on his knees. He stared at his clasped hands, and I broke the silence by commenting on house nice the house looked.

He glanced around, as if just now noticing the room. “Thanks, I, uh, did some cleaning last night and early this morning. That reminds me that I’ve been meaning to ask you, who did the repairs around here? I got my toolbox out the other night to work on your to-do list, but it was all done.”

I shrugged. “I did most of it, except the garbage disposal. Justin’s nephew is a plumber’s apprentice, and I hired him to replace that.”

His brows rose. “You fixed the toilet in the boys’ bathroom, and replaced the bulb in the entryway?”

I snorted a laugh. “I watched a YouTube video on how to replace the toilet flapper. It wasn’t that hard, and Jen helped me with the ladder in the entryway.”

“I appreciate you doing it, but I’m sorry that you had to. I shouldn’t have kept putting it off.”

Before I could say anything, he rushed into what was clearly a prepared speech.

“So, as I said at the diner, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to Kim’s idea about rebuilding our foundation. I made a list of some things that we could do that might help.” He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and tapped at the screen, then swiveled it around to give me a glimpse of the list he’d made on his notes app. The list was bullet-pointed and highlighted, and appeared to be pretty lengthy. I hid a smile, because it honestly looked like something I would have written.

“I think we should take Kim’s advice literally and start our courtship all over again. Dates, long talks where we get to know each other again.” He lowered his phone, then looked at me pleadingly. “You feel in love with me once, and I’ll do everything I can to make you fall in love with me again.”

“And what about you?” At his look of confusion, I hesitantly asked, “Do you think you’ll fall in love with me again?”

His eyes closed and he dropped his chin to his chest before looking up and pinning me with a serious look. “I don’t need to, because I never stopped. I know I had a shitty way of showing it, but I never stopped loving you. You mean everything to me. I lost sight of that for a while, but I remember it now, and I’ll never take you for granted again.”

“I’m still working on forgiving you for going to that strip club.”

“And I haven’t even begun to atone for that. I will prove that you can trust me again, and I’ll keep proving it until you’re able to forgive me and believe in me again.”

He hesitated, then shook his head and sighed. “I always considered myself to be strong-willed, and I was always a leader, not a follower. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that I allowed myself to be fooled and manipulated by Mitch, to just blindly follow his lead, especially to the extent that I did. That’s something I’m going to work on with Kim during our grief counseling. I know you and she both think that I was using him to fill the space left when Grady died, and maybe there’s some truth to that, but I never let Grady lead me around by the nose, so why did I do that with Mitch, especially when it hurt you?”

He ran his hands through his hair and sat back on the couch, his gaze focused on the ceiling.

“Maybe because Mitch preyed on your emotions, and your vulnerability after losing Grady? He swooped in at your lowest point and manipulated you – both of us – and created this chasm between us to suit his own twisted purposes.”

“I’m not sure I’ll ever understand why he did it,” Ryan admitted quietly.

“We may never understand it. We may just have to be satisfied with acknowledging that it happened, and that neither of us responded to it in the way we should have.”

“I should have kicked his ass.”

“And I should have helped you,” I chimed in, making Ryan laugh and look at me.