I couldn't take my eyes off what Skyla had brought home.
For a few seconds, I forgot how to breathe properly.
She stood on the other side of the table, her shoulders lowered, her face pale with exhaustion.
I looked from the object in front of me to her hands.
Then I looked back at her.
"Skyla, please tell me what this is."
She lowered herself into the nearest chair.
"I did what I could."
Her voice was quiet.
That was all she said.
I had spent five days imagining all the reasons she might have left me.
Not once had I imagined that she would return looking like this.
I wanted to ask another question, but my throat had tightened.
She looked at me for a moment, then down at the table.
I could see that whatever she had been doing during those five days had taken something out of her.
I had no idea what.
And for the first time since I had invented my illness, I felt something stronger than curiosity.
I felt ashamed.
Not enough to tell her the truth yet.
That would have required more courage than I had shown so far.
But enough to make it difficult to keep looking at her.
She had asked me how much money I needed.
I had given her an impossible amount.
I had watched her try to find answers.
Then I had called her absence proof that she didn't love me.
Now she was sitting in front of me, exhausted, after five days away, and I couldn't make my assumptions fit what I was seeing.
I wanted her to explain.
I also wanted to take back every accusation I had made in my head.
Neither desire gave me the right to demand anything from her.
"Did you eat today?" I asked.
She looked up.
For a moment, she seemed surprised by the question.
"A little."
I knew that answer.
Skyla had a way of saying she had eaten when she meant she had managed something small between responsibilities.
Normally, I would have asked what she had eaten.
This time, I couldn't bring myself to press her.
I went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water.
She accepted it with both hands.
Her fingers looked tired.
I sat across from her and tried to understand what I was supposed to say.
I had prepared myself for an argument.
I had prepared myself to hear that she couldn't handle my supposed illness.
I had even prepared myself to tell her that I understood if she wanted to leave.
What I hadn't prepared for was the sight of her sitting quietly with a glass of water while I struggled to meet her eyes.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
She gave a small, uncertain nod.
"I'm just tired."
I believed her.
I could see it in the way she held herself, in the way her shoulders seemed to resist every movement.
I wondered how many hours she had slept during those five days.
I wondered whether she had been eating properly.
I wondered what she had given up to do whatever she had done.
Then another thought came.
What if I had misunderstood everything?
I pushed it away almost immediately.
I had spent too long defending my suspicions to surrender them without an explanation.
That was how stubborn I had become.
Even when reality stood directly in front of me, I still wanted it to provide the answer I expected.
"Why didn't you answer my calls?" I asked.
Skyla looked at me.
"I told you I needed five days."
"But you knew what I was going through."
The moment I said it, I heard the accusation in my voice.
She didn't respond immediately.
She simply looked at me, and the silence made me feel smaller than any argument could have.
"I know," she said at last.
Those two words were not defensive.
She didn't sound angry.
She sounded tired.
I looked down at the table.
I had wanted her to panic.
I had wanted her to prove she couldn't bear the thought of losing me.
Yet when she showed up after five days, I was still asking why she hadn't made herself available to me.
I had treated her fear as something I could summon whenever I wanted.
And I had treated her silence as a personal insult.
The realization didn't arrive all at once.
It came in small pieces.
The first was her exhausted face.
The second was the fact that she hadn't walked through the door demanding an explanation for my behavior.
The third was that she had brought something back with her.
Whatever it was, she had chosen to place it in front of me instead of beginning with a fight.
I didn't know what that meant.
I only knew that I could no longer pretend her absence told me everything.
I looked at her again.
"Did you do all this because of what I told you?"
She nodded.
I felt my stomach tighten.
I wanted to ask how.
I wanted to know where she had gone and what she had done during every hour I had spent assuming the worst.
But I also knew that every answer would make my lie more difficult to maintain.
I had built a story about being ill.
I had built a story about not having enough money.
And I had built a story about the woman I loved abandoning me.
Now all three stories were beginning to collapse.
Skyla set the glass down.
"I needed to figure something out."
She paused.
"I couldn't do it from here."
I stared at her.
For five days, I had imagined her walking away from me.
I had pictured her deciding that the relationship wasn't worth the trouble.
I had imagined my parents hearing about it and telling me they had warned me.
Now I was sitting across from the same woman, trying to understand why she had returned when I had already decided she wouldn't.
I wanted to ask whether she still loved me.
The question felt ridiculous.
I had spent nearly two years with her.
I had seen how she treated me when there was nothing to gain.
And I had still needed to create a crisis to force her into proving herself.
I looked at the table once more.
My eyes burned.
I rubbed them with the heel of my hand, embarrassed by how quickly the tears had come.
Skyla didn't laugh.
She didn't tell me to stop being dramatic.
She simply waited.
That made it worse.
Because she was giving me the patience I had refused to give her.
I drew a shaky breath.
"Skyla, I don't understand."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"I know."
Then she reached across the table and rested her hand beside mine.
Not on top of it.
Beside it.
She wasn't forcing me to take it.
She was leaving the choice to me.
That small gesture hurt more than I expected.
I had spent five days deciding whether she deserved my trust.
She had returned and given me room to decide whether I could even face her.
I looked at her hand.
Then I looked at her face.
I had never felt so uncertain about what to say to someone I loved.
And for once, I knew that the uncertainty was mine to carry.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: The More I Learned About Those Five Days, the Harder It Became to Defend the Man I Had Been
I Had Everything Money Could Buy, Yet I Was Afraid the One Person I Loved Might Only Want What I Owned
Part 5 of 8
