She thinks, no, she knows he's doing this on purpose. The past three weekends when Luke came to get the kids, he's worn halfway buttoned shirts, or denim jackets and tight pants. They're not twenty-two anymore. It's not like just because he decides he's ready to pay attention now that she's going to bend over backward for him. She did that too much. She doesn't need Luke to try and make her forget what he did. She just needs him to be there for their kids.
It's not like Luke wasn't ready for kids. It wasn't like they rushed into getting married either. But something happened. They went on date nights and really didn't have much to talk about. Things felt like they had reached a halting stop. Neither one could pinpoint why, but it just had. Neither one of them wanted to admit that things weren't working either.
It was probably salvageable. If they hadn't been so stubborn. The house began to bubble with acid. They began spitting words at each other. Never in front of the kids, but they knew something was wrong. And everything came to an ugly head. She slapped down the manila folder in front of him after dinner one night. She hadn't meant to be so nasty about it. But she was just sick and tired of being sick and tired.
So now, a two and a half years later, through a particularly clean divorce, they hand themselves here. Luke let her keep the house. Not wanting to uproot his kids from their life, and he moved out, mostly on weekdays while they were at school. The kids took it hard but bounced back harder. She and Luke figured it would happen. But it didn't stop her from calling late night, crying. It didn't stop his chest from hurting when his kids clung to him, begging him not to go.
Maybe calling him has been a bad idea. Maybe him answering was a bad idea. Maybe things had all been a bad idea. But she remembered the fact that had started sleeping in separate rooms, didn't eat at the same time. They did everything they could to avoid each other in the very house they both lived in. Luke took to projects in the gargage or the backyard. She took to running errands, including the kids sometimes.
It left both of them kind of hollow, admittedly. While the house was thick with tension, it was still full in a way. And maybe that was the brain's twisted away of trying to avoid change, by making you think the way things it was wasn't so bad. And it wasn't helping that Luke was trying to now weasel himself back in. At first, it wasn't working. She could see right through it.
But god, when he cut his hair and it falls just like it did when they were twenty-two, her heart flutters. Fuck, she wants to hate herself for feeling that flutter fall to her gut. But she's gotta be real with herself, with two kids, her sex life is basically nonexistent. She could barely squeeze in time to masturbate if she's going, to be honest. It was hell, but one that she has resigned herself to because she sure as hell wasn't going to meet anyone that would be understanding of two kids and the stress that entails.
But if she could curse Luke to not be so good looking in his late thirties, she would. But he did. He looked more a man than he did in his twenties. The weight had settled in, the bone structure had finally settled and his ever-present jaw had nearly sharpened. She wasn't sure how it worked, or how it happened. But god, he did look good.
Forcing air out through her nose, she shakes her head. The kids are over at her sisters for the day. She has more important things to focus on, like her glass of wine and the movies she wanted to catch up on. And if a nap happened between movies, she wouldn't be upset about it. Halfway through the first movie, the doorbell rings. It's not an unusual noise, her house had always been the hotspot for the kids to come hang out.
She's all too prepared to tell the poor kid that her kids weren't home, but they would be home tomorrow to play. What she was not prepared for was Luke's damned blue eyes staring at her. "The-the kids are at my sister's," she whispers, noting the tucked back hair and plain white t-shirt behind his leather jacket.
