My Husband Booked Separate Rooms for Our Anniversary. Then He Asked What Would Happen If He Said No.

He pressed his palms against the edge of the table. “Sometimes I do.”

I waited.

“And sometimes I can’t tell,” he continued. “I’m already bracing for a kiss to become a conversation about why we don’t do more. I start thinking about what you’ll ask me afterward, and then I’m not present for the kiss.”

I looked toward the window. A couple hurried across the courtyard under one umbrella. I had hated them briefly at check-in, and now I felt bad about it.

“You think I can’t just kiss you?” I asked.

“I think you try to. Then you get scared.”

“I get scared because I don’t know what anything means anymore.”

“I know.”

“I’ve been trying to make myself easier to want.”

His expression changed. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’ve been trying to remove every reason you might not want me. I keep the house quiet. I wear things I think you’ll like. I don’t bring up the last time you said no because I don’t want you to feel guilty. I pretend I’m relaxed when I’m watching your face.”

“You didn’t have to do all that.”

“I know. That’s the part I can’t blame on you.”

He picked up his fork, then put it down again.

“I never asked you to make yourself smaller.”

“You didn’t have to. You were already somewhere else.”

He flinched. I regretted the sentence as soon as it landed, though I didn’t take it back.

Ben looked toward the empty tables.

“After my dad died, I thought clearing the house would be the hard part,” he said. “I thought once I finished, I’d come home and be myself again. Instead, I kept finding things I didn’t know what to do with. His handwriting. His old messages. Receipts from places he’d taken me when I was a kid.”

“You could have told me.”

“I know.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I don’t have a better answer.”

That was the problem with Ben when he was finally honest. His answers were often too plain to argue with.

I took a drink of wine. “I need affection you choose. I don’t want you to kiss me because I cried or because you think it will keep me from leaving the room. I need to know you’re reaching for me because you want to.”

“I understand.”

“You might not.”

“I do.” He paused. “And I need to be able to kiss you without having to explain what it means before I know what it means.”

“I may still ask.”

“I may still not have a good answer.”

“That’s hard for me.”

“It’s hard for me too.”

He wasn’t promising to want sex on a schedule. He wasn’t promising that one conversation would bring back whatever had gone missing. What he offered was smaller and more difficult to verify.

“I’ll stop disappearing behind ‘I’m tired,’” he said. “I’ll find out what’s going on with me instead of making you guess.”

“You can’t find out just to get me to stop being hurt.”

“I know.”

“And I can’t agree to stop asking for closeness.”

“I’m not asking that.”

“Then what are you asking?”

“For you to believe me when I say no without making it mean you’re unwanted.”

I stared at him.

“I don’t know if I can do that every time.”

“Then tell me when you can’t.”

The restaurant door opened, letting in a gust of cold air. The hostess greeted another couple, and we both moved our plates aside to make room for the server.

We ate after that. The food was good. I barely tasted it.

When dinner was over, Ben walked me to my door. He stopped several feet away, leaving the decision visible.

“I meant it,” I said. “I would have shared the room if I could have trusted myself not to make the whole night atest.”

He nodded as if I had named something he already knew.

“I don’t want tonight to be a test either,” he said.

“Then good night.”

“Good night.”

He went into 316. I went into 314.

Inside my room, I took off the blue blouse and hung it over the back of a chair. I didn’t fold it carefully. I didn’t throw it across the room. I stood there in my bra and jeans, looking at the bed as if it belonged to someone else.

At 11:40, I heard a door close in the hallway. At 12:15, I heard the elevator open and shut. I had no idea whether Ben was awake. I didn’t knock.

I slept badly and woke before dawn with my cheek against the hotel pillow. For a few seconds, I forgot where I was. Then I saw the blouse on the chair.

I dressed and went downstairs for coffee.

When I returned, Ben was standing outside 316 with his suitcase beside him. His bag was already packed.

I stopped several feet away. “You’re leaving?”

“I thought we might go home early.”

“You packed before asking me.”

“I know.”

I held out one of the coffees. “Here.”

He took it. The lid clicked beneath his thumb.

“Please stop packing for answers you haven’t asked me for.”

His face tightened. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not saying that so you’ll apologize.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

He looked exhausted. “I’m trying to.”

We went into his room and sat on the edge of the bed. The second bed had been untouched. His suitcase stood open near the door, clothes folded into the exact sections he used at home.

The hotel could cancel the rest of our stay for a fee. We looked at the amount on the clerk’s screen. It was less than the extra room, more than we wanted to spend, and enough to make the conversation about money if we let it.

“We’ll pay it,” I said.

Ben nodded. “Okay.”

Neither of us argued about the fee. Neither of us suggested that the money meant we had to stay and make the trip worthwhile.

On the drive home, the rain lifted. The road shone in front of us, and the wipers made a dry, regular sound against the windshield.

For the first hour, we talked about practical things. The hotel receipt. The dog’s food. Whether the furnace had been making that strange sound again.

Then I opened the calendar on my phone.

“There’s a couples counselor in town who has an appointment Thursday,” I said. “Six-thirty.”

“Make it.”

I sent the request. Ben kept his eyes on the road.

At a gas station, he took his phone inside while I bought coffee. When he came back, he put the car in gear and pulled onto the highway.

“I called my doctor’s office,” he said. “I have an appointment next week.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll tell you what I want to tell you.”

I looked at him. “I wasn’t going to ask you to report back.”

“I know. I wanted you to know I’m going.”

He said nothing more about it, and I didn’t push. The appointment was his to make and his to discuss. It wasn’t a promise that someone would explain him to either of us.

At home, the dishwasher was still broken.