Thought I Knew You(31)

Drew nodded, averting his eyes. His face was impassive, but his eyes flickered imperceptibly.

“What happened with you and Greg?” I could never have asked Drew before; the question seemed too violating, a betrayal of Greg. I don’t much care if I betray Greg at this point.

Drew shook his head. “Let it go, Claire. This helps no one.”

“It helps me. Right now, I feel like it’s possible I never knew my husband as well as I thought I did. I’m second-guessing all sorts of things so that I can put together the puzzle. You have a very small piece of this puzzle. I need it, Drew. Please.”



He took a deep breath. “He was insecure about our relationship—mine and yours, that is—and he confronted me about it.”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I literally said nothing. I didn’t deny anything; I didn’t confirm anything. I just remained silent. He was resolute, Claire, adamant in what he was going to believe. I didn’t answer, and he went upstairs.”

I thought back to that night, heat flushing my cheeks. Something had shifted after that. I had tried in a roundabout way to question Greg, who feigned ignorance and scoffed as though I were imagining things. I couldn’t tell him I’d been eavesdropping like a child and heard part of the conversation on the stairs. Before that night, I had never seen Greg jealous. I had never witnessed insecurity in him at all. He seemed above all that, brash in his knowledge that I loved only him. Or so I thought. I even deluded myself into believing our lovemaking that night had been about us. But in hindsight, the sex was completely territorial. He should have just lifted his leg to urinate on me.

I laughed out loud at the thought. Drew looked up in surprise, raising his eyebrows.

“I heard part of it,” I blurted. “I was on the stairs.”

“Ahh, Claire…” Drew stared into his wine glass, swirling the red like a witch doctor looking for answers in a bubbling cauldron.

The silence stretched out between us, taut like wrapped canvas. His face was hidden in shadow, unreadable for so many reasons. I felt nakedly vulnerable and wished I could reach out and pull the words back. Regardless of what Drew said next, they would always be there between us, the suggestion of Drew’s tightly guarded feelings, that up until now, I had perhaps not even acknowledged to myself.

Drew reclined the chair with an audible creak, stretching out his long legs and crossing them at the ankles. In his supine position, eyes on the ceiling, his face went from unreadable to invisible. “Remember the day we played hide and seek?”



I could see only his feet, which gave the atmosphere an aura of a confessional cloaked in such darkness. “We did that all the—” I stopped. He was referring to a specific day. “My first kiss. A first kiss for each of us, I assume. We were ten, so probably a safe bet.”

I’d done a good job of hiding. I played a trick on him, surreptitiously moving to spots he’d already checked. He looked for twenty minutes and began to sound panicked as he called for me, while I lay flat against a long fallen tree, the organic scent of dirt and leaves surrounding me. Then, he stopped calling, and I heard only the resounding silence, the occasional call of a bird, and a woodpecker incessantly tap-tap-tapping in the distance. I stood and crept through the woods. I found him at the edge of my yard, sitting on the rock wall with his head in his hands. I tiptoed up behind him and grabbed his shoulders. When he whipped around, his mouth was open as if about to speak, but instead, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine in a chaste childhood kiss that both intrigued and disgusted me. Vaguely aware of the underlying power of being female, I had laughed and run away.

The memory, dusted off from the catacombs of my mind, felt surreal, as though it had happened to someone else. Is that how long you’ve been in love with me? I didn’t have the courage to ask.

“I’ve fallen out of love with you a hundred times since that day,” he said from the darkness of the chair. “Sometimes by choice, a forced break. Sometimes, especially in college, because you were just so damn infuriating and I was so sick to death of you.”

I tried to remember college: hazy nights of drinking, crackling chemistry when I visited, coy advances I’d later retract. All in good fun. I’d been sure of that. I recalled my piercing jealousy when he’d answer the door, girlfriend in tow, and the drunken fight that would ensue later. Those fuzzy recollections seemed so silly as an adult. I felt embarrassed by my nonchalance, the ease at which I’d dismissed those days.