The Sun Set On That One

I lay the blanket out on the sand, but the wind immediately tries to dance with it. There are two good rocks at hand, about the size of baseballs but shaped and smoothed by the salt water's whims. They serve for two of the blanket's corners. My sandals serve for a third.

“Use your shoes, too?” I suggest to Aiden with a gesture at the loose end.

“Nah, I'll keep them on.” His eyes remain glued to the horizon, where the sky is just starting to darken around a smaller island's silhouette.

“You don’t want to feel the sand between your toes?” It’s a difficult concept for me. He’d suggested we watch the hot summer sunset on the west-facing sandy beach, but his entire outfit makes no sense: a black sweater, dark blue jeans, socks and sneakers.

“This is fine.” He swipes some sand off the blanket and sat down. Finally, his blue eyes turn to me. The left corner of his lip curls up in that subtle way that tells me he is pleased. Maybe, if I say something sweet enough or crack a joke funny enough, I can melt his stoic exterior and see his intoxicating smile.

He pats the blanket beside him. First, my rear lands exactly on the spot he had indicated. Then he pulls me closer to him, which drags a bit of blanket up between us and rolls a previously unseen rock underneath into my thigh.

Aiden puts an arm around me and rearranges my position until my head touches his shoulder. It’s been years since Aiden and I cuddled, and much longer since I’d last visited the favorite beach of my childhood. I can almost get lost in sensory reunions. Both his clean, slightly spiced body and the crisp salt air smell like home. Staccato hums accompany every adjustment he makes to our positions, little “hmm” and “mmph” sounds that I call “Aiden-purring,” now accompanied by evening songbirds and steady waves

I wish I could get comfortable. Every time I try to wiggle free of the rock in my thigh, Aiden’s fingers dig into my shoulder. He reminds me of the way snuggly cats cling to comfortable laps when humans rudely try to stand up. Tension builds in my angled neck. I try lessening the angle by tilting my torso more, but it really doesn’t work.

I giggle.

“What?”

“First date back together with the Love of my Life, in a location I adored even before you made it more special by proposing here, with a sunset and bird song and I am ridiculously uncomfortable.”

I pull away from his grip and he issues a cute, disappointed, “Noooo.”

I roll my neck. It cracks. I laugh again.

A couple of gulls toddle by. They wear stovepipe top hats and caw at each other in avian conversation. One eyes me through an adorable monocle, but passes without comment. The sight makes me grin.

Aiden opens his arms in invitation. “Come back. I’ve waited so long for you to thaw towards me. You’re supposed to be right here, in my arms.”

I absently scratch my cheek as I try to convince myself that the crick in my neck is a small price to pay for being close to Aiden. His arms feel exactly like the place I’m supposed to be.

One of his phrases sticks out in my mind. “Thaw towards you,” I said.

Aiden gives a small, sad smile—the kind that makes my heart break. “I had given up hope that you would come around,” he admitted. “I thought you were lost. I tried so hard to keep you grounded, to keep you here with me where things make sense. When you said the couple’s counseling wasn’t working, I really believed you were just beyond reason.”

Sunset and birdsong fade at the edges of my perception. I feel like I can only access both Aiden and air through a long, dark tunnel.

I say, “You never did acknowledge how much harm you caused, by treating me the way you did.”

He cups my cheek with a soft, strong hand. I lean into it like an affection-starved puppy. He says, “I hate that you hurt so much. It’s really wonderful to see how much you’ve healed.”

He is so close to saying the right thing. I wait for it to come.

I realize I’ve been holding my breath. I release the stale air and revel in the warm evening wind.

He isn’t going to say it. Even now, he won’t acknowledge a causal relationship between his actions and my suffering.

I need this to work. Aiden is my match, my mate, the partner who belongs at my side and in my bed for decades to come. If we’re going to do this, if we’re going to rebuild our marriage, we have to do it right. We owe it to ourselves and each other.

I say, “I wouldn’t describe my state in 2020 as ‘beyond reason.’ I haven’t exactly ‘come around.’ My despair was a perfectly natural response to the given conditions.” I know I’m doing that thing where my words slow down and my elocution gets more crisp. Aiden has teased me for it before, but that’s the less painful option. If he misunderstands and thinks I’m accusing him of bad things, or demanding that he demean himself by begging for forgiveness, then I’ll face his real derision.

The itchy sensation on my cheek has spread to my neck. I start to feel uncomfortable heat and insatiable discomfort in the armpit on that side, too.

Aiden turns fully towards me, twisting the blanket beneath us. He grasps my hands in both of his. “Baby, it is really hard to forgive you for leaving me. It’s going to take time and effort to rebuild the trust between us. I don’t think we can do that if you keep dodging responsibility for what happened back then.”

One of the gull’s top hats rolls by in the wind. I can’t see any birds nearby.

“Is that sweater one hundred percent wool?” I ask. The itch has spread to both underarms, down my sides, pooling between my legs and behind my knees. “Lanolin makes me break out in hives.”

“You’re just a little irritated from the sand,” Aiden says curtly. “Please don’t change the subject.”

The sky takes on incredible orange and pink hues. This moment could be so beautiful, but pressure clamps down on my chest. My left thumb moves through the nervous habit of eleven years, reaching for the comforting bands on my ring finger that mean Aiden and I are Meant To Be.

My finger is bare.

Itchy hives cover my body, clustering at my face and all the most sensitive parts of the skin.

“Baby.” Aiden’s tone is gentle but authoritative. “It’s really important to me to hear you say you understand how wrong you were. I can’t invest my heart or my time with someone who demands I see everything her way.”

“I’d never expect you to adopt my perspective.” My throat is tightening up. My eyes are welling up. My fingers circle my itchy cheek, careful not to scratch hard. “I just want you to recognize that my point of view is as valid as yours.”

I’ve known the sneer on his face for as long as I’ve known him. Still, the cracks in my fragile heart start tearing open with all the sudden violence of the first time he’d directed that disgust at me. He says, “Insisting that your perspective is valid when you are so completely wrong is gaslighting.”

I shatter.

I’m sitting yards away from the bay, but I have all the sensations of drowning. I’m buoyant but falling down, gasping but not breathing. The only sights are directly in front of me.

How on Earth could I ever face my friends and family again, after disclosing everything that happened with Aiden and me… and then going back to him?

Aiden rolls his eyes. “This again.” He leans back on his hands, assuming a relaxed position. He watches the sunset.

Darkness closes around me.

My entire body spasms.

I am surrounded by darkness, but nothing makes sense. I was sitting on an open, sandy beach. Now I’m lying in a comfortable, dark bedroom. My brain tells me I’m fighting with everything I have, desperate to reconcile the reality of my experience with the reality of Aiden’s insistence. My body tells me that I’ve just woken from a dream.

“What’s the matter?” the voice is soothing and sleepy. Vin props themself up on an elbow. “What can I do for you?”

“What’s the date?” I ask between short, shallow breaths.

They answer and add, “At 2:38 in the morning. Wednesday. We’re at my place.”

“Vin.” I forcibly ground myself in the present by saying it out loud. “I’m in Vin’s bed. Aiden is far away. I left. I left five years ago.”

“You’ve come so far since then,” Vin agrees. “Your own apartment, your new project at work.”

“I know what’s real,” I say. “Two-thirty. In three and a half hours, I have to leave for work. I have a spine now. I left. Wednesday. Next therapy appointment is tomorrow.”

I realize that my body is curled into a tight, protective ball. I take the biggest breath I can, filling my lungs with so much air they’re slightly uncomfortable. I release it slowly. The tension drops off me like a wave I refused to drown in.

After a few more slow breaths, I finally look at Vin. They give me a small, encouraging smile. I sidle closer. They lay on their back and let me nestle my face into that delightful spot where their shoulder meets their chest. They kiss the top of my head and gently stroke my back.

“I know this sucks,” they say, “But I think it’s worth noting that your triggers are getting fewer, farther apart, and less intense.”

I sigh. “The EMDR helped a lot.” I’d had months of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help me handle acute mental health symptoms and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) to help me cope with trauma. “I know I technically came a long way, but I still have so much healing to do. Every time I get this way, it feels like the very first time I realized my husband…” I can’t use the phrase emotional abuse. I say, “My ex-husband wasn’t nice to me.”

“Understatement,” Vin says. They kiss my forehead. “Do you want to talk out the dream?”

“Same reunion nightmare, different setting. A beach.” I don’t need to dwell on which beach. I want to let it go. I say, “A beach with fancy gulls.”

“Fancy gulls?” they asked. “So they weren’t just white and gray?”

“No, they looked like normal gulls wearing top hats.”

Vin squawks and bobs their head. “Pip pip, gentlemen. Shall we sample cuisine from the dumpster behind the opera?”

Vin’s joke loosens the last grip of my PTSD trigger. Adrenaline flushes out of my system and relief settles in.

They expand the bit to appeal even more to my sense of humor: “Jolly good caw. We might find clams casino.”

I join in: “Wash it down with a lovely crab-bernet sauvignon.”

“I had to castigate my butler today. Good kelp is so hard to find.”

We continue until our laughter transitions from puns to how ridiculously hard we are trying to force puns.

Vin kisses my forehead. I melt. I’m so grateful to feel seen and safe. I'm building a life with a partner for the second time, but I think it might be the first time I’m doing it the right way.