Page 130 of Demo
“I need you to answer my questions. I need you to tell me, are you and Jenny together?” She hugged her arms around her middle, and in that moment, she looked so small.
“No! I swear, last night was the first—and only—time. I … Shit, Lizzie, please sit down on the couch for a second, you look like you’re going to pass out.” I reached out to her, just to usher her to the couch, but she pulled away so fast she stumbled.
“Don’t touch me!” she shouted, and Kennedy barked.
I froze. A piece of my heart broke right off. She couldn’t stand my touch.
“OK,” I said. “OK. Just, please, sit.” I rushed over to the kitchen, took a glass out of the cupboard and filled it with water from the sink. “Here,” I said, putting it on the coffee table. “Please. You’re gonna make yourself sick—”
“I hate you.” She said it so simply. She didn’t scream it. Didn’t say it somberly. It was simply a declaration. “Nine years we’ve been together. Almost ten, now. All those years, wasted.”
“No, Lizzie.”
“I could have been loving someone else.”
“Listen, this isn’t—”
“I’m so fucking stupid. All this time I knew you two were close. I knew … She’s beautiful, obviously. She has a connection to you I never did.”
“No, Lizzie, you couldn’t be farther off—”
“I wish you died,” she gritted through her teeth. “I wish you died in that fucking accident. Both of you. I swear to God, Knox, I wish you were dead.” And then she started sobbing so hard she was practically choking.
I took a step toward her, then stopped. Pulled at my hair with both hands, my own breathing ragged. Tears were building behind my eyelids. I walked over and picked up the glass of water and slowly, steadily, approached her, as if I were approaching a bear out in the wilderness. “Please, Lizzie, take a drink of water and try to slow your breathing. You’re scaring me.”
In a flash, she ripped the glass from my hand and threw it just past my head, and it shattered as it hit the wall behind me, causing Kennedy to bark some more and then retreat to a corner where he cowered, tail between his legs. Lizzie then grabbed a framed picture off a nearby shelf and flung that in my direction, as well, followed by a decorative clay vase we had gotten while on vacation somewhere warm a few years back. It crashed loudly as it broke into tiny pieces.
“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!” she screamed, then reached for another picture frame, but I lunged for her before she could get it. I wrapped my arms around her as she yelled and writhed. “Don’t touch me! Don’t you ever touch me!”
She was absolutely feral. Broken. And her strength was unbelievable, and unexpected.
She was able to pull out of my grasp and turn around and smack me. It wasn’t a graceful slap. It was an open-handed strike with her fingernails clawing at the tail end of it. And then another with the opposite hand. And another.
Kennedy barked some more as Lizzie pounded me. My face, my chest, anywhere she could land a hit. And I took it. I welcomed it. I wanted it. But then I grabbed her wrist as she came in for another blow and swung her around so I could wrap my arms around her from behind. I curled over her, with her back tight to my chest and my face next to hers. “Breathe, baby. Just breathe. And listen to me. I love you. I’m so fucking sorry, and I love you.”
“Stop it!” She shook her head back and forth, wildly. “Stop it.”
“I love you. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. I love you,” I just kept repeating.
But she just kept shaking her head, trying to pull her hands up from under my grip to cover her ears as she sobbed. “Stop! Just stop!”
I felt a blow to my shin as she kicked her foot back, then she elbowed me in the side and pulled out of my grasp, and I stumbled. She pushed me so hard I fell backward, catching myself on my hands before my ass hit the floor.
Kennedy came rushing over to me making sad noises I had never heard him make before, as Lizzie stood over me and continued her verbal assault, repeatedly stabbing her pointer finger down at me as she cut me with her words. “Don’t you dare tell me you love me. Don’t touch me. And don’t ever call me baby again.”
I had to stop myself from crawling backward.
“I need you to understand this,” she said as she stormed into the bedroom, and I heard a drawer open. I stood up just as a pile of clothes came flying in my direction. “Get out of here,” she said as she went back into the bedroom, and I heard another drawer. “Don’t ever come back.” Another pile came flying at me. I just stood there, breathing heavily. Frozen. I didn’t know what to do. I stared at her. At my beautiful wife, the love of my life, destroyed.
“GO!” she screamed, and I actually jumped. So did Kennedy. “I SAID GO!” she screamed as she reached down and picked up a pile of the clothes she had thrown at me and marched toward the door, opened it, and threw it out into the hallway. Then she stared at me.
I swallowed hard and said in a whisper. “I can’t.” I felt the tears well in my eyes. “I can’t leave you.”
Lizzie looked me dead in the eyes, then slowly stepped closer to me. “You already did.” Keeping her eyes locked on mine, she pulled at the wedding rings on her left ring finger.
“Lizzie, please, don’t,” I begged as the first tears fell.
She had to work at it, twisting her hand this way and that as the fingers of her other hand tugged at the rings until they finally slid free and popped off. Then she tossed them at me the way someone would toss money at a stripper. They hit me in the chest before falling to the floor. The engagement ring landed on the area rug, but the wedding band hit the hardwood and rolled under the refrigerator. When my eyes came back up to meet hers, she looked resolute.
