Seven Years and a Sunflower

Seven years of marriage, and every morning Reuben James made two cups of coffee.

One for me. One to take to the university.

I always thought the second cup was his own.

Until the day he forgot his phone, and I brought it to him at the university.

I pushed open his office door.

His colleague, Bonnie Locke, took the coffee from his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world, smiling as she said,

"Let me guess. Today's latte art is a little doe — just like me."

She looked down. She'd guessed right.

I stood in the doorway, watching the two of them laugh and talk.

And it hit me that these seven years of marriage were a lot like that cup of coffee I was allergic to.

Not worth much at all.

...

"Excuse me, who are you looking for?"

I turned around. Another one of Reuben's colleagues.

Seven years married to him, and his colleagues still didn't know my face.

I opened my mouth to answer.

"What are you doing here?"

Reuben crossed the room fast and steered me to the corner of the hallway.

"I told you, didn't I? Don't come to the university unless it's important. It looks bad."

He turned his face away, barely hiding the irritation in his eyes.

"You left your phone."

He took it and turned to go.

Then he seemed to hesitate, and after a long moment he looked back at me.

"Why aren't you at work today?"

There he went again.

Not one word I'd said had stayed with him.

I'd started my time off three days ago.

He had no classes this month, and I'd saved up a year of vacation. We were supposed to go to Iceland together.

I'd brought it up with him six months ago.

He'd said he knew.

A month ago I reminded him again, told him to clear his teaching schedule.

He was in the study at the time, talking poetry collections with Bonnie.

He didn't even look up. Just said he knew.

Last night I told him the tickets were already booked, that we'd leave in three days.

He froze and asked me where we were going.

To Iceland, I said. Did you forget?

Only then did he scramble to apologize, saying the university had suddenly added a lot of classes, that he couldn't go, that we'd do it next time.

I looked at the schedule posted on the hallway wall.

He had no classes.

None for the entire month ahead.

Right beside his, Bonnie's schedule was packed full.

Before that, Bonnie had called him in the middle of the night to complain.

"I'm completely buried, Reuben. You can't just run off and have a great time on your own, that's not fair. You have to keep me company."

He'd laughed, his voice fond and helpless all at once.

"All right, all right, whatever the great Professor Locke says."

I hadn't called it out then.

Now, standing here, my chest went tight.

Seeing the look on my face, he softened for once, which was rare for him.

"I really can't get away this month. Bonnie's swamped with her project, she came to me for help, I can't just leave her hanging."

I held back the sting in my eyes and said, low,

"But you promised me. How many times has it been now?"

He frowned, an edge of impatience in his voice.

"We've been married how many years now? Why do you have to have this honeymoon?"

"Marie Gilbert, you're thirty-three, not some twenty-three-year-old girl. Can you be a little more grown-up about this?"

My heart dropped to the bottom.

He must have caught the tears in the corners of my eyes, because he reached up and ruffled my hair, then sighed.

"Next time, I promise I'll set aside time just to take you. Okay?"

Next time. Next time. With him it was always next time.

The honeymoon we'd planned when we married was Iceland. Three days before we were supposed to leave, Bonnie got dumped and threatened to jump off a building, so he flew off to be with her.

Three years ago he said he'd make it up to me. A week before we left, Bonnie got sick, and he spent the better part of half a year nursing her at the hospital.

Last year we'd even booked the flights for the holidays. On the twenty-eighth, two days before, Bonnie said her family was pressuring her to get married, so without a word he refunded the tickets and drove over six hundred miles to play her boyfriend.

And now this.