"I was wondering if I had done something. The last few times we've seen each other, out in public...it's felt weird." Her husband stared at her, not with the usual beaten puppy dog eyes, but with a steady calm gaze.
"It's just...weird...watching other people watch us interact. I feel like nothing I do is right, like I'm on a stage performing for them or something." He nodded at this, understanding where she was coming from.
He caught her up on how he had been doing...working three jobs that didn't pay enough for him to move out of her mother's house...going into debt on the normal things, but paying off the school as he went. He looked at her, and she realized he finally understood how hard it had been on her that year that he wasn't doing anything. How stressful it must have been considering she had been worrying for the both of them.
They both decided to get a move on with the divorce. He didn't want to drag her into his debt..the accident that he had gotten into in March might not be covered by insurance, and then he'd be on the hook for way more than the debt they had paid off with the house. She respected that he didn't want to get her pristine credit involved in his business.
"Does your family hate me?" She asked, a little worried. "They...they just don't understand. They keep asking what happened, what I did or what you did. They don't get that it was a one instance kind of thing."
"Yeah...it would be easier if someone had gotten beaten or something...to explain anyway. We just...stopped being good for each other. It's not like I stopped loving you. But if we had stayed together, I think the love would have been lost. It would have gotten ugly. I didn't want that for us. I value the friendship we have too much."
"I really miss our friendship too. We should sign the papers so that we could get back to that. For today though, I guess it's time to get our phones split up."
They ended up sitting for over an hour at the store getting everything together. At the end of the day, she went to a lower plan, and while also paying for a new phone, she was saving $80 a month. It was a huge weight off of her. Even a measly $80 a month was going to help out so much. She already felt like she could breathe a little easier. They got new numbers in the correct area code, but still one number right next to each other. "I still want us to be close." He said. It both stung and felt comforting at the same time.
They made plans to see each other soon for the paperwork, and for making time to become friends again. It finally felt like it was starting to heal for them both.
They had needed to disconnect to reconnect.
