The Wave by Kristen Crusoe (ebook reader online txt) 📗

‘I see. And you would rather be here than at home? I don’t understand that, Clair. I need to explain…’ he began to say, but she interrupted him.

Pulling her hands out from between her legs, unzipping her jacket. It was warm and she felt a surge of hormone heat rising up through her core. She ripped her head wrap off, tossing it onto the table. Picking up a pamphlet laying on the table, she began vigorously fanning herself. She could feel her face and neck turning red.

‘I really don’t want to hear any explanations, Adam. I saw what I saw,’ she said shrugging. ‘And, you know, it’s OK. I don’t care. I realize you and Claudia have been together all along. Thinking back to the very first night, it was she that was looking for you. My eyes had followed hers, and found you. My God, no wonder she’s hated me all these years, but acted like she was my friend. What a fool I have been.’

As she spoke, she looked first at Adam then away, out the window, into the woods beyond the parking lot. Birdsong broke through, and she marveled at this, at how birds could sing in the rain. Their simple faith in the end of storm and the return of sun and worm was abiding. She found strength and comfort in this, enough to face Adam again. Her face had cooled. She felt more in control. She glanced at the pamphlet still in her hand. Living Beyond Breast Cancer Support Group. Her group, her new family.

‘Tell me I’m wrong.’

‘You are wrong, Clair, completely,’ Adam said, softly, without force. He leaned forward, clasping his hands together.

‘What you saw was a final goodbye. I had told Claudia I was taking a leave of absence, so I could take care of you. She finally got it that I would never be with her, not in that way.’

Adam stood, walked around the couch, too distraught to sit. He hadn’t slept the night before, missing her, afraid for her, and for himself now that he had imagined a life for them together again. Everything was happening too fast. He had to find a way back.

‘I have never, not once, been intimate with Claudia since you and I have been together. She’s a colleague, friend, and yes, I do admit, she made it clear that she has been infatuated with me, but that’s all it ever was. Maybe I encouraged it, especially in the later years when you were so wrapped up with Devon. And before, it was a silly game. A flirtation. I could always count on her to be my date for faculty events and yes, occasionally sex. But once I met you, and we married, had Devon, all that changed. At least, in my world. Not to her, I realize now. I should have been more honest, forthright with her. But I didn’t want to hurt her and then, she became department chair and things got even more complicated. So, I let it all slide. When you saw us together, in my office, I had told her. She was saying goodbye to me, to her fantasy of me.’

Clair leaned back in the rocker, flashbacks to those early morning feedings with Devon, gently rocking him while he nursed, feeling the tingle of nerves under the taught skin, the erotic pull of milk as it let down, and filled his rosebud mouth with warmth and succor. When she looked at Adam, she could see Devon in his broad forehead, ears that slightly stood out, giving him a perpetual schoolboy appearance. His eyes, so clear and bright, luminous in the rain-shadowed darkness of this retreat, bore into hers, seeking answers to his pain, his fear. She felt her anger release in a flood of compassion. For the first time, she could connect with his suffering. Like quantum entanglement, they had been opposites of each other for so long, his death, her life, his joy, her sorrow. And now, she had to shift again, focus on her path to survival.

‘It may be true, what you say,’ she said, smiling gently at him. ‘It may not. I can’t care about that now, Adam. My life is on the line here. I can’t handle the distraction. All bullshit aside, this is the fucking reality.’

She held out her hands for him to see. Her third round of chemotherapy had been tortuous. The skin was bright red, like a third-degree sunburn.

‘And it’s on the inside too. The cancer is spreading, like a wildfire. I have to work on this every moment of every day, and I have to do it alone.’

‘I knew you were different,’ he said, standing and walking over to the window, hands deep in his pockets.

He turned to look at her, his smile crinkling his eyes for a moment, then the sadness returned. He turned, leaning back against the window ledge.

‘I wanted, needed that difference. I had always been chosen by women, fitting myself into their lives. They needed me to complete them. You, so fearless and believing, in your science, the truth of mathematics. It resonated with you and made you whole. I chose you. And you had my baby. You took it to the limit. You completed me. Old ways and habits, those well-worn neuropathways default our best intentions. But Clair, I never once cheated on you. I felt left, diminished, and I acted poorly. I was weak. I’m sorry.’

Adam’s eyes filled with tears. He dropped his head into his hands. She wanted to go to him, to hold him, to smell his hair, feel the roughness of his face, trace the paths of his tears with her lips.

He looked up, ran his hands across his face, through his hair, started to speak again. She waved him to silence.

‘Quiet now. You will endure, and so will I. Go and live well. If we are meant to be together, we’ll find each other again, after all of this.’

She walked to him, took