Acts of Love Read Online Free Page B

understand it when I don’t fully understand it myself. All I know is, it wasn’t all my fault. Sure, I make a lot more noise. And no one’s ever going to tell you that I don’t have a temper. But we both made a lot of mistakes. There were no angels living in that house.”
    She leaned closer. “What mistakes?” she asked carefully.
    â€œLeaving, for one.”
    She watched, waiting, and smiled grimly when she realized that there would be no more.
    Ted looked away. In fact, he had never really meant to leave, had certainly never meant to stay away. He had simply stormed out in the middle of an argument and not been able to figure out a route back until, as the hours turned into days and nights, spent on his partner’s foldout couch, it had hardened into fact, his leaving. When Ann called him at work three days later and told him that if he didn’t pick up his clothes in one hour she was going to take them to the town dump, he had wanted to find a way to admit his mistake, but he couldn’t; proving how little they needed each other had become one of their measuring sticks, though he had never really meant to win. So he had picked up his clothes where she had left them, in two large black plastic trash bags on the front steps, and a few weeks later he was looking for an apartment and a lawyer, and try as he might, he still couldn’t remember precisely what the argument had been about. “Look, things happen between a man and a woman. Things they can’t always control.” He paused. “I think you’re a little young for this.”
    â€œI’m thirteen.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œI know more than you think I do.”
    â€œOh, I’m sure you do.” He picked up a stick and prodded the last piece of wood deeper into the fire. He wanted to tell her how it feels like a ball you just can’t catch, how once it starts rolling away, there’s nothing you can do to stop it, the ball that is the two of you, or what the two of you used to be, and how you keep running and running after it and sometimes you even think you’ve caught it, but then it just slips away again. “It just got away from us,” he said.
    Julia’s eyes remained fixed on him as she squinted from the smoke, listening intently.
    â€œI’ve seen you and Ali argue,” Ted continued. “Sometimes you start off knowing what you’re arguing about but by the time you’re done, you have no idea. It’s about everything. Your mother and I got like that. But it’s different now.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    The other night, resisting and then not. He studied Julia, weighing, balancing each word before he spoke, trying to predict effect and adjust accordingly. “I never meant to hurt your mother.” He paused. “Or you and Ali. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. If I tell you a secret, do you promise not to tell anyone, not even Ali?” He would bind Julia to him yet, bind her with secrets she would store in her hard, riven crevices. Surely she would carry them with her like a prize.
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œI’m trying to get Mom to give us, give me, a second chance. Maybe it’s not too late for us after all. What do you think?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œAnyone ever tell you you’re one tough customer, kid?”
    â€œIt’s a lot quieter without you guys yelling all the time.”
    â€œSee, that’s what I’m telling you.” Ted pounced on this with the instinct of turning liabilities into assets that had helped him build his construction business from scratch, a born salesman. “It won’t be like that again.”
    â€œYou promise?”
    â€œI really promise.” He reached over, his hand hovering in midair an inch from Julia’s back, wondering if he would feel beneath his touch the flinch that had greeted his every attempted caress in the last year. His