The Past Needs No Looking Back, Pain Left Behind

The prize voucher in my hand read "Rockies — Six Days, Five Nights, Two Travelers."

On the companion line I'd written Neil Delgado's name in neat, careful print.

I'd earned this trip: six straight months without a single day off, the year's best design proposal, and the company's reward for it.

I was about to head into security when Karen Swanson came through, hooked on Neil's arm, walking fast toward the first-class gate.

She pressed her face against his chest. "Neil, you're so good to me. I'm not intruding on your alone time, am I?"

Karen dropped her head and bit her lip, her voice going smaller and smaller, but her fingers held tight to his sleeve.

"What if Felicity Henson sees us later, though? She'll be jealous. I don't want you two fighting over me."

Neil ruffled her hair, soothing. "Don't be silly. So what if she sees?"

"I know her better than anyone. Once the plane lands, a couple of soft words from me and she'll fall right in line."

Six years together. Every time I said I wanted to stand on that alpine lake up in the Rockies, Neil told me the Rockies were too far, the tickets too expensive.

And now, without so much as a blink, he'd bought Karen a ticket. First class, no less.

That was the moment I finally understood.

It wasn't that the tickets were too expensive. It was that I wasn't worth it.

Three people made for a tight fit. This trip, I just wouldn't go.

I took out my phone slowly and dialed HR.

"I'm not going on the Rockies trip. Convert it to cash instead."

...

"Sorry, Felicity."

"The company already submitted it. It can't be changed."

My chest went tight around the phone, and the arms I'd wrapped around myself pulled in another inch.

Neil had just finished pacifying Karen. He turned and came straight for my phone, his tone edged with accusation.

"Felicity, I've been looking for you all over, and here you are on the phone telling someone you're not going?"

"This is the trip you've been dying to take. I put in for annual leave early just to come with you. What in the world is it now that you're not happy about?"

"If it can't be refunded, then it can't. A perfectly good trip, and you have to go and make everyone miserable."

I turned my head toward where Karen stood, tears close to falling.

"You know better than anyone how long I worked to earn this trip. I didn't want anyone else on it."

Maybe he realized he'd gone too far, because Neil reached over and pulled me in by the shoulder.

He murmured in my ear, "Karen just lost her job. The doctor says she has depression."

"Getting out and about will be good for her."

"Besides, Karen isn't just anyone. You've always been the understanding one."

"I figured you wouldn't mind, so I brought her along."

Every time it came to Karen, the childhood friend he'd grown up with, he pinned that same tall label on me: so understanding.

Calling it discussing it with me was generous. It was closer to being told.

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I didn't say a word.

Neil half-coaxed, half-dragged me through the boarding gate, and before he left he dropped a kiss on my forehead.

"Good girl. Once we land, I'll make it up to you properly."

That line again.

On Neil's tenth birthday, his father brought home a soft, simpering woman.

The next day, his mother filed for divorce without hesitation and never came back.

The day the mistress moved in, he flipped the dinner table over.

Ever since, the thing Neil hated most was a woman who played helpless.

So in all our years together, anything around the house I could handle, I never troubled him with.

A bulb burned out, I climbed the ladder and changed it myself.

The toilet clogged, I put on gloves and cleared it myself.

To anyone who'd listen, Neil praised me: so easygoing, so sensible, so capable.

In first class, Karen sat by the window, Neil on the aisle side beside her.

He fitted a pink neck pillow around her throat and reached up to smooth the loose strands of hair by her ear.

The next second he pulled a black Gucci cashmere scarf from his bag and draped it over her.

That scarf was the one I'd saved three months for, twelve hundred dollars, our third-anniversary gift for him.

For half a year, I'd stayed up every night on overtime, racing to finish proposals.

Eyes fixed straight on the screen, never sparing myself a moment's rest.

Over time my neck stiffened worse by the day, and my shoulders with it, until every movement hurt.

When the weather turned cold, it hurt even more.

Turning over at night, my neck and shoulders felt like needles going in, and the pain pulled a sound out of me.

"Hsss..."

Neil slid one arm around my waist and rubbed my shoulder with the other hand.

"It's just work. If you can't manage it, do less. I'll buy you a neck pillow one of these days."

The "one of these days" he promised never came.

And the neck pillow he bought never came to me.