The Wife Read Online Free Page B

Mike when he says that he’s still in love with me and wants to keep our family together as much as I do. So far, marriage counseling seems to be working in some ways. It’s been weeks since I’ve been able to sleep next to him, but with each of my private meetings with my therapist, I’m able to open back up to Mike more and more. I’m glad she agrees with my need for space this way and isn’t making me feel crazy for wanting to sleep separately while working through my feelings of distrust for my husband.
    There are times when I wonder why Mike doesn’t protest the separate sleeping arrangements, but then I remember there’ve been countless nights in the past when he’s slept downstairs after a late night at the office so he didn’t wake me. This hasn’t really been anything too unusual for us. Truth is, I’ve been working almost as much as he has lately. My interior design business has picked up, and I haven’t had a break between jobs in a few weeks and am too tired most nights to care he isn’t next to me. For people who haven’t been married for as long as we have, this may seem horrible, but when you’re comfortable and secure in a relationship, it doesn’t seem horrible at all, until my suspicions he was cheating on me began.
    Now that we have an actual cause for the separate room, it has more of a cloud of failure over it, although I don’t think Mike actually thinks of it that way. He says he just is respecting my wishes and is trying anything I ask to make our relationship work.
    The past week, I’ve been working frantically trying to finish up the design options for my meeting with Jamie, or C.J.’s restaurants and running back and forth between Liam and Colin’s flag football games. I’m passed out in bed right after I tuck the boys in for bed, and it’s only in the middle of the night, when I hear him in the kitchen rummaging for his late-night snack, that I feel the ping of sadness that his warm body won’t be coming up to keep me warm.
    “All of your ties are up here, where they’ve always been,” I call down to him as I walk over to the drawer and grab his favorite tie from the neatly organized drawer.
    I smile to myself when I twirl his favorite tie in my hand. He calls it his lucky tie that always helps him close a deal. I rub it across my cheek as I remember the day I gave this to him as part of a congratulatory gift for getting his first job out of college. My cheeks heat up, remembering how I waited for him to come home that day, wearing nothing but this tie loosely hanging around my neck. The memory makes me wish we still loved each other that hard. Over the years, we’ve kept an active sex life, but it isn’t hot and passionate like before. It’s different—it’s predictable and obligatory. Ugh, that sounds so pathetic. I need to spice things up for us on the trip this weekend.
    I push the memory away and toss the tie on my bed, knowing he’ll come for it. If I don’t get moving, I’ll never get everything done I need to this afternoon. I have to stop getting lost in my thoughts; it’s all I seem to do anymore. I slip on my shoes so I can head out to the gym before my first meeting tonight with Frank and Tommy later today. I went back and forth on whether or not to take this job, but after Mike’s persistence, I couldn’t say no. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime for me, even if it is for Jamie—or is it C.J.? I’ll have to figure out what I’m supposed to call him. I wonder for a moment whether anyone calls him Jamie anymore.
    I still haven’t seen or spoken to Jamie since the night of the party, and I’m honestly not sure how I feel about that.
    Did I expect him to call me?
    Did I expect him to come and see me?
    Deep down, I knew he wouldn’t call me. I knew he wouldn’t come see me. He’s made no effort to contact me since he broke my heart all those years ago, so why would I expect him to do so after spotting me at a random party? Just the look on his