The Conversation
      Chapter 14
 

Her dress, burgundy in color, hugged her tightly. Her hair, long and straight, surrounded her ethereal face. Her hand, small in his, followed him to the dance floor. He remembered the dance. He remembered that night.

"You looked beautiful."

"I felt beautiful. You made me feel beautiful. The way you held me, I felt so protected, like nothing could touch us."

"I remember. For just a couple of seconds, I felt like I… like I belonged in your world, like maybe I could survive in it. I had never felt like that before. Nobody gave us a second look, we were just like any other couple, dancing."

Their heads drop, almost in unison, as they realize that the night of their beautiful dance was the same night that they paid each other back, in full. He paid her back for every time she talked back to him, for every time she turned him away, and ultimately, for calling the FBI. She paid him back for taking her away from Jesse, for forcing her into his family, and ultimately, for loving her.

Regret fills her heart. Disgrace fills his. They remember.

The moment was perfect… his hands cautiously enveloped her, careful not to find refuge on any inadmissible surface. Slowly, her small frame blended into his as their arms and bodies awkwardly became familiar with the other until finally joining as one on the dance floor. She felt his hand gently possess the back of her neck, bringing her to him, her yin to his yang, causing her to lose any semblance of reality. This was their moment. She didn’t need to look in his eyes, it wasn’t necessary anymore as their bodies created a language of their own. Could she make this work? Could she leave behind her entire life to love him? In this moment, the answer was clear. She would do it without hesitation. She would end the life she knew to begin a new one with him, in his arms, in his heart.

The moment was perfect… he held her as one might hold an unborn child, with love and caution. She was his, if only for this dance. But soon, he felt it change. She wanted to be there with him. He remembers feeling her arms around his shoulder and back. Not loosely fit, but firmly, with a possessive quality of its own. She allowed him to pull her closer, and in fact, pushed her body against his at will. Had his mind deceived him all along? Did she want him as much as he wanted her? Did she truly love him? His mind raced with these feelings of confusion, only to be offset by the part of his heart that she had nourished in these few months… the part of his heart that was beginning to learn about hope. He allowed himself to be consumed by this perfection. If only for a moment.

For the first time in their short marriage, neither felt ashamed or afraid to give into the feeling. They accepted the other into their lives as they swayed to the music that neither could hear beyond the thunderous beating of their own hearts.

She grabs his hand, lovingly cuffing his sleeve out of habit.

"I'm sorry.”

“What? For what?

“I caused that feeling to end. I saw how worried you were…"

"I was… I just wanted the best for you. I wanted you to feel safe and taken care of, protected. I hated the idea of never seeing that look in your eye again."

“What look?”

“You know what look.”

She shyly smiles as she brings his hand up to her mouth and kisses his wedding ring. Yes, she knows.

“I know you just wanted to help me… I saw it in your eyes and that made me… well, I had to tell you the truth."

“You had to.”

“Yeah, I did. I didn’t want anything hanging over us. For the first time, I felt like we really had a chance. Dancing with you, seeing how much you loved me, knowing how much I was loving you, more and more every day… I didn’t want any secrets.”

"Do you ever…? Well, sometimes I wonder…sometimes I think about what it would've been like if you had never told me, if I had never found out, if I had just thought that Carmen and Dietz did it all."

It's happening again. Her head shoots up and her glare cuts through him like ice.

"Don't, Danny."

"What?"

"You're doing it again."

"What am I doing? What did I do?"

"You're making it my fault again."

"No I'm not, Michelle. And I never did before."

She shakes her head before burying it in her hands as she rests her elbows on her knees. She knew this part of their history was coming, but somehow, she had hoped that her memory was deceiving her, that this night, his deception, never happened.

He jolts up from the ottoman and walks away from her, mumbling under his breath.

"I knew it. I knew you had never forgiven me."

He turns to face her as she picks her head up to look at him. She has no words for him… not yet.

"Michelle, I was a wreck after you told me about the call you made. Do you know how I felt?"

"No" she whispers.

"I felt like you might as well have killed me, that's how rotten I felt. Whether it was right or wrong, looking back now, it doesn't matter."

"It doesn't matter? What!?"

She picks herself up from the chair and walks towards him, both standing in the middle of their bedroom.

"How can you say that it doesn't matter if what I did or what you did was right or wrong? It was wrong, Danny! It was wrong! You don't sleep with another woman just because you feel rotten, ok? You don't get to justify it with that same excuse! You don't get to feel sorry for yourself that much."

"You think I'm feeling sorry for myself? Do you? I hated myself for doing it. I wanted to take away every bit of humanity I ever felt with you, and who better to do that with than Drew?"

He turns away from her, but has no destination. His guilt, anger and sarcasm are all becoming one now and he has to try and control himself, to control the situation.

"Don't! Don't try and be funny, Danny!"

She takes a deep breath and calms down a bit. She knows he's trying his best to keep this conversation from getting any deeper than it already is. She knows he's trying to pull himself together as he turns his back to her. She decides to do the same. She leans up against the footboard of the bed, holding her baby. Her voice is calm as she continues.

"You know… you know, that night in the lighthouse when I found out about this, and afterward, I guess part of me thought we had gotten through this, but you know, the more I think back, the more I remember that we never really did. You kept apologizing and apologizing and then, bam, the next crisis in our never-ending string of drama happened. So, you know what? Let's do this… let's really do this."

He swung around, unsure of what words would fly out of his mouth.

"Do what? Why do you want to hash this out so much?"

"Why? Maybe because the night that I found out about your little indiscretion was the worst night of my life! Maybe because… because of what you did, because you couldn't handle your feelings in a more productive way, I had to suffer the consequences. Not you! Me!"

For the first time in their life together, he ignores her tears. He'll be damned if he's going to let her crucify him without hearing his side of the story, without defending himself.

"Why are you making yourself out to be the only victim here? Yes, I screwed up. I never said I didn't! But…"

They're standing toe-to-toe now. With only their daughter between them.

"And that's it? You screwed up? And so… you admit it and that makes everything ok?"

His exterior breaks down and frustration abounds. His words aren't making sense, he's not saying what he wants to say, she's not understanding. His face winds up before loosening and he turns and walks over to the bed to sit down. She walks around, ending up at the mantle where pictures of their past remind her how hard they had to fight to get here, to get to the honesty, no matter how much it hurts to hear. His head in his hands, he tries to make sense of it all.

"No. No, honey, I don't mean that. I just mean… dammit. I don't know. I guess all I'm saying is that I guess I thought we were past this…"

"Of course you did. Well… maybe part of me was past this. Maybe part of me accepted this as one of those many bumps in our road, as a little test of our love… one that we got over, one that we passed… but now I'm not so sure that we did."

He lifts his head to see the back of his small wife. From behind, he thinks, you wouldn't be able to tell she was pregnant. He has flashes of times that he's snuck up behind her to her delight. He suppresses that urge now, no matter how much he wants this part of their lives to disappear.

"I know I hurt you…"

"Is that what you wanted?"

She turns to meet his gaze.

"What?"

"You heard me, is that what you wanted? To hurt me…"

"That night?"

She nods. He gets up slowly and starts to walk toward her, however making sure to keep his distance. He thinks of how to tell the love standing in front of him that he wanted to hurt her. Not physically, but emotionally. He wanted to make her feel the pain that he knew in his heart. The pain of betrayal. And that was the only way he could do it.

"Yeah. I did. In my own way… but at the same time I never wanted you to find out."

"Why?"

"Because I knew…I knew how much it would hurt."

The irony smacks her in the face as the marches past him putting all of this together. She's not sad now, she's getting angry, and cocky.

"How did you know, hm? According to you, you thought that I didn't care about you, that I betrayed you. Why would you think that your sleeping with another woman would upset a woman who cared nothing for you? A woman who wanted to hurt you? Huh?"

"I… I don't know…"

"See, I'm curious about this, Danny. I'm curious because your logic only seems to work to your advantage, but you know, it doesn't really make sense."

He hates when she's right. But is she? Why can't she step out of herself for a moment to think about how he was feeling at the time, to step into his shoes to look at herself from his point of view? His anger at her lack of understanding was building.

"And your feelings at the time did? Tell me, Michelle, tell me how you felt when I was holding you in my arms as we danced!? Tell me, tell me how you felt when you told Drew to call the feds on me?"

"I told you! I told you before! I wanted your mother out of my way, not you! It was never you!"

Her teeth clinched, she was getting a flashback of all the arguments they had had in the past. The fights where neither claimed victory, the fights that lasted for hours…

"And like I told you, how in the world was I supposed to know that? I didn't! Try and put yourself in my shoes, really in my shoes. What if after everything that we had been through up to that point, all the confused feelings and the miscommunication and everything, what if you found out that I had done something that would put you in jail for a very long time. What if you found out that I had turned on you?"

"You seem to be forgetting Danny, you did turn on me. I know exactly how that feels."

Defeat.

"Fine. Fair enough. Let's just say then, for argument's sake, that my feelings don't count here, ok? Let's just say that you found out about that night and you went and did the same thing back, to hurt me."

"W-w-wait a minute here. You really are comparing the two, aren't you? A choice that I tried my damndest to change, to keep you safe from, and you sleeping with another woman because you found out about it? Because you wouldn't let me speak to you, to explain it all to you? You're incredible!"

She turns to storm off to the bathroom. He takes a few large steps, pulls at her hand and she turns around, anger brimming from every pour.

"Don't leave, come on… listen, Michelle, will you just listen to me? See, in your mind, no, they're not the same. But, please look at me… to me, at the time, they meant the same. It was pain for pain… betrayal for betrayal. Nothing more."

She releases her hand from his and sits back down in her chair.

"I don't believe this. I can't believe that you think sleeping with someone else, having sex with another person while we were married, while you said you loved me…"

"I did love you!"

"I can't believe that you think that gave me the same amount of pain that I gave you."

Before he could rebut, she continues…

"Tell me, Danny. Tell me what it would've felt like, at the time, if you had found out that I had slept with someone else? That I… that I was just… mad at you and decided to get drunk and sleep with your best friend. Tell me how that would've made you feel."

"That's not fair, Michelle."

"Oh, it's not? Why isn't it fair? Are you saying that that wouldn't be the equivalent of me finding out about you and Drew? Huh?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying."