Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around by Pagán, Camille (top novels of all time txt) 📗

right after Dad died, and I felt . . . well, dead inside. Charlie was in the middle of filming and he wasn’t around a lot. When he was, he was tired, and mostly I felt like he didn’t get it. He’s never lost a parent. So I started going to a grief support group.”

I startled. “You did?”

Paul took a sip of his wine, then said, “There’s a reason I asked you if you were depressed. I was, and meds weren’t cutting it. My therapist suggested the group, and I decided to give it a try.”

“Which is where you met—what’s this guy’s name, anyway?”

“Andy,” he said, wrinkling his nose like it was a bad word. “His wife had just died and, well, I guess the whole wife thing made me think it wasn’t a big deal when we grabbed a drink after the group was over.”

“Paul Ross! Didn’t Tom coming out teach you anything?”

“I know!” he said, throwing his hands in the air. “But it was just so nice to talk to someone who listened and understood. Then one night, Andy and I ordered a second round of drinks and he told me I had nice eyes. Before I knew it, we were texting several times a day.”

We sat in silence, and not the comfortable kind. I wasn’t sure if I was more upset that I was just hearing this now, after the decision had already been made, or that he wasn’t trying harder to save his marriage. “Oh Paul,” I finally said. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. Obviously, it’s over with Andy—I cut it off once I realized that I was in too deep.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “But I don’t really understand how you got to that point in the first place. You and Charlie love each other!”

“We do,” he said morosely. “But our chemistry just isn’t there anymore, though.”

My face grew warm as I thought of the previous night. “How can it be if you’re paying attention to other men?”

“Touché. Still. Chemistry isn’t something you can fix with willpower or wishing—which, by the way, I know you’re going to suggest. I know things look fine from the outside, but that’s because we thought we could fake it until we made it. The truth is, we’ve been unraveling for a very long time.”

Maybe I would have suggested willpower, even if I would have phrased it differently. But mostly I was too shocked to form an articulate sentence. Shiloh and I had dinner at their place not two weeks earlier, with all four of our kids there, and they’d seemed like any other long-married couple. Were they playing footsie under the table or meeting in the middle of a strand of spaghetti? No—but they weren’t hollering at each other, either. Faking it or not, as Paul’s twin, I should have been able to sense this so-called unraveling.

“Holy Shih Tzu,” I muttered. “This makes zero sense to me. If you still love each other, why don’t you find a way to make it work? Isn’t love about compromise?”

He pursed his lips and looked across the restaurant for a moment before responding. “Our compromise is to divorce amicably. We’re even going to both stay in our place until next year when the boys are in college. Honestly, Libs, I’ve been thinking about this since Dad died. Life is so stupidly short.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’re having a midlife crisis?”

He shrugged. “Did you know that a recent study revealed that existential dissatisfaction peaks at forty-seven?”

We would be forty-seven in two months. “Is that factoid intended to spark joy? Because it sounds more like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me,” I said, even as I considered my flatlined emotional state at Dr. Malone’s office. Was my ennui age related? Maybe that was also what was going on with Shiloh. How long until we, too, decided that the only way to deal with our existential dissatisfaction was to ditch our hard-earned union? But no, that was ridiculous. Emotional states were contagious—I’d seen the studies myself. And I was in the middle of catching a case of the Pauls.

“Personally, I think it’s great to know, because we can prepare for it,” said Paul.

“I don’t need to prepare for anything. My life is already good, and I intend for it to stay that way.”

He lifted his glass to me. “Please don’t stop snorting fairy dust on my account.”

I knew he was trying to get me to laugh, but I couldn’t. All I could think about was how absolutely heart-wrenching it had been to separate from Tom, even though our marriage truly wasn’t salvageable.

He took another sip of his wine, then said, “I, for one, am not leaving my future in the hands of fate. I’m going to take action even though it’s going to be hard, because I want to be happier than I am while I still have the chance.”

“Define happiness, please. Because from where I stand, your life checks all the boxes. I fail to see how you’re going to be ‘happier,’” I said, putting the word in air quotes, “by leaving your partner of nearly twenty years.”

He eyed me. “You should want the same thing for yourself. Happiness, I mean.”

“I want what I already have,” I said evenly. “That’s the definition of happiness.” Then I reached across the table and helped myself to his wine. It was as dry as a camel’s back and made me cough a little, but I took another swig after I’d swallowed the first.

Paul, who hadn’t even blinked at my pirating his booze, said, “Libby, it’s not just that Charlie and I aren’t on the same page. It’s like we’re not even reading from the same book anymore. Listen, if anyone’s immune to divorce, it’s you and Shiloh. But don’t make the same mistake we made, okay?”

I was almost afraid to hear what he was going to say next, though I wasn’t sure why. “And what’s that?”

He turned toward the window at the front of the restaurant. On the other side of the