Beneath the Surface(31)

“I just wanted you to know that this opportunity was offered to me. I’ve known for a while, but I didn’t tell you because I could so easily predict this. Let’s not discuss it for a few days while you mull things over. Talk to me when you’re ready and when you’ve calmed down.” Kristin briefly considered not adding the next part, but ignored her instinct. “But please keep in mind that this could be very lucrative for us.”

Sheryl stood there, looking at Kristin for a while longer. Not for the first time, a sense of loss swept through Kristin. Like they were taking a step back in their relationship instead of forward. Would this proposition make or break them? Kristin recognized that they had, pretty rapidly, been reaching that breaking point. After ten years, and an anniversary spent apart, were they still going in the right direction?

Kristin watched Sheryl deflate in front of her. She sat down at the other edge of the sofa Kristin was perched on. “I just want you to choose me again. That’s truly all I want.”

Oh shit. Tears stung behind Kristin’s eyes. Sheryl was always so strong, so boisterous. The way she sat there, all broken and ready to give up, made Kristin’s stomach tie itself up in knots.

“I do. I do choose you.” As she said the words, she knew they were a lie. She could have chosen to stay in Sydney for their anniversary, that would have been a start.

“Then where have all our good times gone?” Sheryl’s voice broke. Would she cry? Kristin had never seen her cry. “Because if this is you choosing me, then I’m not sure it’s enough.”

“Oh, babe.” Sheryl’s bristling was so much easier to take than her breaking down. Had Kristin done this to her? Turned her into this woman who was about to lose all faith in their relationship? Kristin rose and sat next to Sheryl, throwing an arm around her. There used to be a time, not even that long ago, when they were always touching. Even when they went out to dinner, they would scoot their feet close together and bump their shins together, just as a little reminder of what they had between them. That whirlwind romance that had started ten years ago and had now turned into this. “I love you,” Kristin said, as if it could solve everything. “I love you so, so much.” Feeling the weight of Sheryl’s body in her arms, her cheek pressing against her chest, reminded her of how much she loved Sheryl, how that love had grown and changed over the years, and how, perhaps, she’d let her ambition chip away at the beauty of it.

Kristin kissed Sheryl on the crown of her head. A couple of strands of hair had turned gray and she wondered if she was to blame for that too. Or perhaps graying hair ran in Sheryl’s family, but if it did, neither of them knew.

She felt suddenly protective of Sheryl, of her pain—the one she’d lived with her entire life and the one Kristin had been causing her by being an absent partner. But hard work was all she had ever known. Kristin had been spoon-fed the sort of work ethic that didn’t tolerate introspection. Both her parents had worked equally hard, while raising a child.

“I’m sorry,” Kristin said before pressing another kiss to Sheryl’s scalp. “For not being here.” Sheryl didn’t have many pictures of when she was a child, but Kristin suddenly saw an image, based on the few photos that had been rescued, of Sheryl home alone as a little girl, abandoned by everyone she held dear.

Maybe this was Sheryl opening up to her, reaching out. Showing a side of her that seldom surfaced. Kristin folded her arms around Sheryl a little tighter, hoping the fierceness of her embrace could say what she couldn’t put into words. I will never abandon you the way your parents did. It wasn’t that Kristin had lost the power of speech or couldn’t find the words, but this subject was so unspoken between them, to broach it now might make Sheryl shut down, make her pull away that outstretched hand, close up the little crack she showed in that ever-strong facade of hers.

Kristin couldn’t tell her in words, but she could show her with actions. Kristin felt a protectiveness toward Sheryl that was contrary to their relationship dynamic. Sheryl was always the strong one, so unflinching, so sure of everything she said and did. Sheryl wasn’t the type to cry in Kristin’s arms. Yet, there she sat.



Kristin probably thought Sheryl was crying because of the state of their relationship. While that certainly deserved its fair share of tears, the tears Sheryl was shedding, moistening Kristin’s blouse in the process, were not solely born from grief over having to tell her partner she didn’t want to move to Hong Kong, but because of what Sheryl feared it might do to her.