Chapter 6: So Predictable
Andrea stands in front of the sink with her back to the entryway of the kitchen scrubbing vigorously at the dishes that she already cleaned once and had set out to dry. She needs something to distract her from the looming conversation of her hidden pregnancy. She and Justin watched the movie with Tessa in near silence. The only sounds heard besides the voices from the screen was that of Tessa giggling and randomly commenting on the funny characters. Saying the air was awkward and tense was an extreme understatement. So the moment the credits began running Andrea grabbed the dirty dishes and rushed to the kitchen where she stands now.
She hadn’t meant for Justin to find out the way that he did, but she was going to tell him. This is his first day home and she wanted to wait until things were a little better or more back to normal before she sprung the news on him. She was afraid that if she told him about the baby that they would make up and stay together for the wrong reasons.
She turns her head to look over her shoulder at the sound of feet scuffing on the floor. Justin’s eyes connect with hers for a brief moment before his lips set into an angry frown. Andrea quickly breaks the contact and once again busies herself with the dishes.
“How many times you gonna clean those?” Justin mutters with a definite attitude. Andrea rolls her eyes, though he cannot see her face and only scrubs harder and more deliberately.
Justin bores his gaze into the back of his wife’s head, waiting for her to turn around and face him…to face their marriage. She doesn’t so much as flinch in his direction or make a single sound to acknowledge that she even knows he is still in the room. He is angry and so is she and neither wants to be the first to give in and begin the apologizing. To Justin, he had already apologized more times than he could count and he knows that adding another to the already long list would simply fall to deaf ears.
Andrea, on the other hand, can’t bring her self to apologize for something that her mind seems so trivial compared to the wrong doings of her husband. She feels he didn’t deserve to hear those two words of, ‘I’m sorry,’ come from her mouth. If anything a few hundred more I’m sorrys were in order on his part—not that it would really change anything. No number of apologies would ever erase his infidelity.
“I’m gonna put Tessa to bed.” He says to Andrea’s back. Again he waits for her to respond or at least look in his general direction. When she remains stationary he lets out a frustrated sigh and with a final fleeting glance leaves the room.
Upon his exit Andrea lets out a loud breath and drops the glass she was cleaning back into the sudsy water along with her sponge. Not caring or maybe just not thinking about it she runs her soapy, wet hands over her distraught face. She takes the time to breathe deeply and remind herself that she’s done with crying, that she has no tears left to cry, that crying won’t solve anything and most importantly won’t fix her broken marriage. But when she lowers her arms she’s really not all that surprised to find the all too familiar feeling of tears rolling down her cheeks.
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“I’ll be in the guest room across from Tessa.” Justin states from the entryway of his and Andrea’s bedroom. She looks up at him from her spot on the edge of the bed where she applies her lotion. “I just thought you might want to know.”
Though her mind is screaming at her to stop him and just talk to him she lets him walk away without a single word. Unbeknownst to Andrea, Justin is standing just to the right of the door waiting for her to call out to him to come back into the room. He waits for a total of eight minutes before he finally gives up and comes to the realization that she’s not going to come after him. With his spirits severely dampened, Justin slowly makes his way down the hall and into the guest room.
His first instinct is to pick up the phone and dial his mom so he does just that. She answers after four rings with a sleepy hello. It’s not like Lynn to be asleep so early. It’s only 10:45 and she’s normally a night owl.
“Did I wake you?” He asks quietly, though he already knows the answer.
“I just fell asleep in front of the television.” She says. “Is everything alight?”
“Not really.”
“What happened?”
Justin lets out an aggravated sigh as he tries to swallow the tears rising in his throat. It has always amazed him how just hearing the sound of his mother’s voice could conjure up such strong emotions from him. He’s usually the same way with Andrea even when he thinks he has full control over them.
“Rea’s pregnant and I’m sleeping in one of the guest rooms.”
Lynn is struck speechless at her son’s quickly spouted revelation and sits with the phone pressed tightly to her ear as she tires to regain her speech. She bites down hard on her bottom lip when she hears him sniffle in the background. He’s crying and trying his best to hide it. Nothing in this world is more painful for a mother than to hear or see than their child in pain or suffering.
“She won’t even talk to me.” He wails, no longer trying to mask the sound of tears in his voice. He’s openly crying into the receiver and silently begging for his mother to make his pain disappear. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Sweetie,” Lynn swallows, “you just need to give her time. I know it’s hard, but Andrea needs to cope with all this in her own way and time.”
“But she’s the one that asked me to come home!” Justin wipes at his eyes with the back of his free hand as more tears steadily fall. For some reason he thought that getting Andrea to invite him home again would mean that they would be taking a step in the right direction to fixing their relationship. He thought things between them would have progressed much farther by now.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” She says. “You need to talk to Andrea.”
They both sit in silence for a few moments, neither knowing what else to say. Suddenly the news of Justin saying that Andrea is pregnant sinks in f Lynn.
“Wait,” She breaks the silence, “did you say Andrea is pregnant?”
“Yeah,” Justin answers back incredulously with a loud and rather unattractive sounding sniff, “and she wasn’t even going to tell me. I found the ultrasound picture hidden in the kitchen drawer.”
“How long has she known?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t really talk about.”
“Then what I’m going to tell you to do is hang up the phone and go talk to your wife.”
“But—.” Justin tries to argue.
“No buts,” Lynn cuts him off sternly. “I’m hanging up now. Goodnight honey.”
With that said Lynn clicks off the phone. Justin stares down at the dial tone sounding phone with a frown before hanging up as well. He can’t believe his mom actually hung up on him. Okay so he can believe she would do that—she has before. She has many times before when he’s being stubborn and won’t listen. A small smirk graces his lips as he thinks back to the many late night calls to him mom for advice. She’s always been there for him and he’s pretty sure she always will be.
He pushes himself off the bed and hesitantly makes his way out of the room and down to the one he shares—or previously shared with his wife. The door was left ajar and the flashing of the television just barley illuminates the room. There is no sound coming from the TV—she has it on mute. He can clearly make out the figure of his wife sitting up in bed, scribbling in her journal. For a moment Justin loses his courage and begins to back away from the room; that is until his mother’s voice resonates in his head.
“What are you writing?” He voices as he pushes the door slowly open.
Andrea jumps at the sound of his voice and quickly closes her journal. She dispenses the book in her nightstand drawer and sits up straighter in bed. She stares at him expectantly as he slowly inches his way farther into the room and closer to his side of the bed.
“I thought you were sleeping in the guest room.”
Well that wasn’t exactly the response Justin was hoping for.
“We need to talk and I know you well enough to know that if we don’t neither of us will be getting any sleep tonight.”
She watches him closely as he comes to sit on the left side of the bed—his designated side. The bed dips slightly under his weight, but more noticeable to Andrea is the way his intoxicating scent fills her senses. It’s been nearly a month since they were last in the same bed and they both found themselves wishing that they were doing a whole lot more than just sitting next to one another.
“I suppose you want me to apologize.”
“I want you to explain why I had to find out like that.”
“I could ask you to do the same.” She bites back, picking up the remote to flick off the television. She tosses the clicker to the foot of the bed and then looks over at Justin with a fierce glare.
So much for a tender moment of mutual apologies.
“This isn't about me. You’ve gotta stop throwing that in my face,” He growls out in frustration, running a hand over his nearly bald head. “or we’re never going to get past this.”
“Well I’m sorry, but it’s a little hard to forget.” Andrea hisses back before adding, “At least for me it is.”
“What the f**k is that supposed to mean?”
“You act like you didn’t do anything wrong!” She screeches. “You broke your vow to me and you act like just because you said you’re sorry that everything should just magically go back to normal. That’s not how it works Justin!”
“I know it’s going to take work Andrea.” Justin snarls, again showing his frustration with his wife. “You’re the one that’s not trying. All you want to do is dwell on the past.”
“Don’t you think I wish that I could forget what you did?”
“Andrea—”
“Don’t.” She cuts him off and climbs off the bed.
“Where are you going?” He asks almost frantically. He knows exactly where she’s going. She walking away from him. It’s as if she’s given up and just doesn’t feel like trying anymore. The moment the conversation started to take a turn for the worse she checked out of it and mentally prepared for an exit. “Don’t walk away from me Andrea.”
“If you won’t sleep in the guest room, then I will.” She grabs her robe off the hook on the back of the door and throws it on haphazardly. Justin rises from the bed and takes purposeful steps towards her. “We are not sleeping in the same room, let alone the same bed.”
“Why won’t you talk to me!”
“I don’t know what else to say to you.” Andrea says, her tone defeated and shoulders slumped. “I don’t know how to get past this Justin. Tell me how to forget and I will, just tell me how.”
Her previously defeated sounding voice changed over to one full of tears and pleading. Justin looks to her with tears forming in his eyes, but no words are able to form on his tongue. He shrugs his suddenly lifeless shoulders and lowers his head so that his chin is nearly resting on his chest.
“I don’t know….”
TBC.....
