No Strings Attached(62)

“I’ve met someone as well,” she blurted out.

Darren set his glass down. “That’s great.”

Was he really happy for her? Micky was so glad Darren had already met Lisa and had been the first to go through this ordeal of telling the ex-spouse about the new person in his life. But she shouldn’t focus on that. She should concentrate on getting the words out. Her heart was full of them, so why was it so hard for them to spill from her mouth?

“Who’s the lucky fella?” Darren asked.

Micky could tell his smile wasn’t entirely genuine, but he was doing his best. Darren always did his best.

“It’s not…” Micky expelled a sigh. “It’s not a fella, Darren. Her name is Robin.” Being able to say Robin’s name emboldened her slightly, but not enough to look her ex-husband in the eye.

When Darren didn’t say anything, she had to look away from her hands, otherwise she’d never know what his first reaction had been. He sat there staring, his strong jaw slackened, as though frozen in time just before he was about to say something.

“She works at Goodwin Stark, just like Lisa,” Micky said, just to fill the dreadful silence hanging between them.

“You know—” Darren had apparently found the power of speech again. “—I have to say, Micky, this doesn’t entirely come as a surprise to me.”

“I know you quizzed Amber about my, er, sexuality”—why was that such a hard word to say?—“when things were going south between us. She told me a little while ago.”

“Because I didn’t know what the hell was going on with you, with us. I know our marriage could have been better at the time, and I was willing to take most of the blame, because you always did all the hard work at home and I was away so much. When you first told me you wanted a divorce, I truly thought we could fix it, but I had to run through all the options first. That’s why I approached Amber.” He narrowed his eyes a little. “So I was right.”

“No, I mean, yes. I’ve only just recently come to grips with it myself, but I guess, if I’m truly being honest, it was part of the reason why I wanted the divorce.” Micky owed Darren as much honesty as she could muster.

“When did you know?” If this information was riling him at all, Darren did an excellent job of hiding it. Perhaps because a year had passed since their divorce, Micky felt more like she was talking to an old friend rather than to her ex-husband.

“I can’t pinpoint it exactly. All I can say is that, on some subconscious level, I’ve known I’ve been attracted to women for a very long time, but I buried that knowledge so far in the back of my mind, I was successfully able to brush it off as a quirk, as a frivolity, as something unimportant to the life I was leading.”

“In a way, I’m glad you’re only telling me now. I’m not sure how I would have taken it if you’d given it as the sole reason for our divorce.” Darren twirled his fork between his fingers, although, Micky suspected, neither one of them would be eating anymore.

“I was in this strange, almost fugue state, of knowing and not wanting to know at the same time. It was just so hard to admit it to myself because it didn’t mesh with who I was. A wife. A mother. Being those two things defined me for eighteen years. They were all I had. I couldn’t possibly imagine pulling the rug from underneath the core of my being just because of what I forced myself to think of as a mere frivolity.”

“But you did, though. We’re divorced. You telling me you no longer wanted to be married to me was quite the rug-pulling. For all of us.”

“I know, but what was I supposed to do? Stay and become increasingly unhappy? Because I wasn’t happy in that life anymore. I needed to do something, despite the children only being in their teens, and our, to the outside world, perfect life. I knew the identity I had clung to for the past two decades of my life, all my life really, would need to be shattered before I could… I don’t know, find my true self. God, I’m beginning to sound like Amber.”

“Speaking of Amber. She’s your best friend. She’s godmother to both our children, and she has always been out and proud. Didn’t that… give you a nudge?”

“It’s not as simple as that. I loved you, Darren. Twenty years ago, I fell madly in love with you. That was never something I could push to the side so easily. How could I possibly be attracted to women when I was married to you? When we had two beautiful children. It took a long time for that to make sense in my head, for me to allow myself to even think that this could happen to me, that this could happen to anyone.”