Go to What’s Next

The night before my wedding, I called my ex to ask him if he ever thought about us getting back together.

“No. Not anymore.”

I can’t imagine why I’d asked the question. Clearly, if I’d intended to reconcile with my ex, I would have already done it. Six years gone is a long amount of time to be indecisive.

We talked for a while. I remember sitting on my red loveseat, the one we’d bought in an antique store outside of Flint and had reupholstered with a red wooly tweed that has lasted now for forty years. Back then, when I made the call, it was already getting worn, helped along by my cats’ loving its backside as a scratching post.

I sat looking out the window of my second floor flat, with a cigarette in a glass ashtray balanced on the arm of the loveseat, the smoke curling to the ceiling. My daughter was sleeping in her 11-year old’s bedroom, any hope she might have had of her parents living together again slipping away in the night.

“It’s a good thing you’re getting married again. It means more stability for her.”

It surprised me when he said this. It felt like a blessing. And a release. And trust in my judgment.

It’s what I needed from him.

And he gave me what I needed that one last time. I’m grateful for that though I’ve never told him. What he said let me go.