Tanner and Esme

Chapter 22 (Tanner): You Had To Give Up

It turned out that Esme couldn't, or wouldn't, give me an answer for several months about whether she'd be willing to date me.

And as much as I hated that feeling of being in limbo, I knew that winning Esme back would take patience. It wasn't something one gesture would accomplish; it wasn't even something that ten or twenty gestures would even accomplish. I had to overcome four years of being an asshole and if it took years to prove I was no longer that man who hurt her, I was willing to wait as long as it took. It would take perseverance and dedication, showing up day after day with no hope of anything more from her. And she deserved that after what I'd put her through. The timeframe was in her hands and the decision was completely hers.

As long as I didn't get a fuck off, Tanner and don't contact me ever again except through a parenting app, I could work with that. It meant she hadn't completely ruled me out.

After a couple of months, as she was approaching her final exams and I was over at her place just about every night when it wasn't one of my nights to have the children, something told me to step back.

"Esme, I think when I asked if you'd consider dating me again, I put pressure on you that I shouldn't have."

"So, you got tired of waiting for an answer from me?" Her look was all-knowing. "Or maybe a better offer on the table?"

I knew she was talking about Mindy, but I hadn't talked with her since the day I confronted her at her hotel and told her we weren't happening. If she tried to get past her blocked contact on my phone with other numbers, I never answered unknown callers. My assistant had strict instructions to never put anyone through unless she had a name and a company.

"No. Not at all. No offers and even if there were, you're the only one I want to date. I want that more than anything, but every time I come over, I see this look in your eye, like you're dreading me bringing up the subject again, and I don't want you feeling any pressure from what I asked. So, let's leave it at friends for now and someday, I'll ask you for more again. But right now, I think I could be a friend."

Esme looked relieved, which stung like a bitch, but everything in me felt like this was the right move.

"That would be good for the children, too," she agreed. "Even though we already do pretty well being civil."

Civil.

I wanted a hell of a lot more than civil.

So I set out to show her how good of a friend I'd be to her. When I went over to her place on the nights she needed to study, before she headed for the library, I handed her a caramel latte from Starbucks and little bag of snacks -- some healthy, some not. And I always included little red and white peppermint candies in the bag.

"Eating those is supposed to help with improving your memory and focus," I told her the first time she looked in the bag and pulled one out with a quizzical expression. "So they help you retain information when you're studying."

"Well, in that case, I'll eat a whole bag of them because I need all the help I can get," she laughed, popping one in her mouth after unwrapping it.

I drank in that image, realizing just how much I'd missed that ease about her. Missed the sound of her laughter, missed being the one who could make her laugh. I'd lived off that picture she made laughing for weeks, hating that I'd lost the ability to make her laugh after I'd betrayed her. It'd been a privilege I'd taken for granted until I no longer had the right to bring her laughter.

Then, with that laughter in mind, it became finding more things I could do for her. Once the children were down for the night, I'd take care of chores around the house. When the children were awake, I'd take her grocery list off the refrigerator and Liora, Jude and I would go grocery shopping. Esme always protested when she got home and saw the groceries, but there was also relief in her eyes.

That just made me want to do more for her, so I looked for other ways I could lend a hand, make her life easier. I did the children's sheets and laundry, watered her plants, handled the dishes -- if there was a way to help her, I found it and took care of it.

Helping Ez helped me look outside myself. I'd been working on that for more than a year in therapy, but much of that had been theoretical discussions about turning my self-centered focus outward. This was the practical application of that and it felt right. It felt like I was behaving the way a human being should.

And wasn't that a bitch to come to terms with? Here I was on the downside of my twenties and only now realizing just how much I'd failed as a person in ways both big and small. 

I'll keep doing better, I promised myself.

Slowly, without the looming threat of having to give me an answer about dating, Esme relaxed around me and we began talking. At first, she would give me a brief, noncommittal sentence or two about her study sessions or her classes when I asked about them, and then she began answering in more detail, her enthusiasm beginning to shine through, making it past her reserve around me.

When she got home from her study sessions or classes, I always made sure I had a snack out for her because I knew she couldn't sleep on an empty stomach. When we'd been married, she'd always eaten something before bed.

"Otherwise I can't sleep, Tanner," she'd told me.

Gradually, our talks became longer, and I was getting to know more about her and her goals, all the things she wanted to accomplish.

"I know I have another year and a half of school," she said one night with a smile, "but I feel like my dreams are getting closer."

That was a stab in the heart, even though I know she hadn't intended it that way.

"I took them away from you." I hadn't been planning to say that, but my brain overrode my filters and that came tumbling out of my mouth.

Brilliant, Tanner. Way to ruin the conversation with shitty memories of the fucked up shit you pulled.

"What are you talking about?" she asked. "You didn't take anything from me."

"Feels like I did," I said simply. "You had your own dreams and they all disappeared when we found out you were pregnant with Jude."

"Children were a dream of mine, too, Tanner. Jude was just...way earlier than I expected so things shifted for a while."

"Yeah, but you adjusted, Ez. You didn't fucking whine about it or think in terms of what you'd had to give up. You didn't hang onto the past. You got on with it and threw yourself into a life you hadn't expected but accepted."

"I didn't have much choice."

"Yeah, you did. You could have acted like me. Sometimes I think I'll be apologizing to you for the rest of my life with all the many and various ways I fucked up with you and our marriage. But I am sorry, Esme; sorry I didn't think about all the ways your life changed when I got you pregnant, sorry I didn't think more about your dreams and what you had to give up."

"It's good to hear you acknowledge it," she said at last. "I didn't realize until now just how much I needed to hear that."

"I should have acknowledged it a long time ago, Esme, and I'm sorry I didn't."

Liora squawked loudly on the monitor just then, breaking the mood. But I carried that conversation with me for weeks.