Page 71 of The Husband I Left

“It’s a tantrum. Look what he did last time he got told ‘no’, Evan. He hates losing, and he hates being denied the things he wants. He’s not really here for me.”

Evan shrugs. “You could be right. But he could also have finally figured out he was an idiot.”

“Who’s side are you on here?”

“Yours. Always yours. Forever and ever, amen. But I still say he’s learned the errors of his ways. Seen the light. Turned over a new leaf. I have a sixth sense about these things.”

“And I say he’s going to give up and fuck off. I give him until April and he’ll be gone.”

“I’ll take that bet. Looser buys drinks at Frank’s.” Evan holds out his hand to shake.

“Seriously, Evan?” But he looks so ridiculous, holding out his hand and waggling his eyebrows up and down, that I finally give in and shake on it.

The thing is, I have no doubt that I’ll win. I have no doubt about how this ends. He’ll get bored. He’ll get restless. Some headhunter will call, or some old board member will corner him at a restaurant, and within a month he’ll have a corner office again and this whole strange little detour filed away as a story he tells at dinner parties.

Because that’s just who Oliver is. He lived for his work. He regularly worked fifteen hour work days during the entirety of our marriage. He worked on weekends. He worked on holidays. He took calls in Santorini with the Aegean glittering behind him and his back to it. He worked in the car. He worked in bed. I used to tease him that he’d be taking a conference call on his own deathbed someday. Oliver lived for that shit. He’d never willingly give up being master of the universe. Not permanently, anyway. I’m sure of it.

Mostly sure.

* * *

The problem with my ex-husband living across the hall from me isn’t that he’s there. It’s that he’s there. Every single morning, to be precise. I’m convinced he quit his job solely so he could move here and torment me when I’m trying to get out the door to work every morning. I said as much to his face once, and he looked at me with those eyes that are even more vividly blue than I remember and asked what on earth I was talking about. All he’s doing is saying good morning.

He’s managed to be there every single morning. Not right outside my door, but in the vicinity. He’ll be coming up the stairs with a bag of takeout right as I’m going down. Once he was at the mailboxes in the lobby. One day he was just standing at the window in the hallway, looking out at the parking lot the same way he used to look out the windows of the penthouse. And every single time I get close, he’ll turn, and his face will light up, and he’ll say the same thing. Every morning.

“Good morning, Genny. I hope you have a good day.”

“Good morning, Genny. I hope you have a good day.”

“Good morning, Genny. I hope you have a good day.”

“Good morning, Genny. I hope you have a good day.”

At least he hasn’t tried to give me coffee again.

I asked him once if he was planning to do this every day going forward, and he just grinned and said yes. On day nine, I decided to change tactics. I remembered the mornings during the last horrible months of our marriage when I would get up to make his coffee and he would already be gone, and I decided what was good for the goose is good for the gander. I got up at six and left my apartment almost an hour early. I made it all the way down to the lobby without seeing his stupid face, and I was feeling very smug about it until I saw him walk through the lobby doors holding a newspaper, of all things.

“Good morning, Genny. I hope you have a good day.”

“Maybe he just really wants you to have a good day,” Evan suggests with an amused expression. We are eating lunch together, and Evan has been listening to me complain, yet again, about Oliver.

“He doesn’t care if I have a good day,” I mutter, stabbing at my pad thai. “He’s doing this because he thinks it’s going to wear me down.”

“Maybe it is.”

“It is not.”

“I don’t know. Oliver Sinclair abdicating the throne and dedicating himself to your morning happiness? Pretty heady stuff.”

“Oh, stop it. It is not,” I kick him under the table, and Evan just laughs.

“It’s temporary; he’s going to get bored and give up,” I say a few minutes later.

Evan leans back in his chair and raises a brow. “Genny, he willingly moved into a unit in your building. Where the elevator has been broken since the Clinton administration, if Mrs. Perry is to be believed. He gave up what was probably an obscene amount of money, and quit his job, and now he’s here. That’s an awful lot of effort for him just to get bored and give up.”

“It’s a tantrum. Look what he did last time he got told ‘no’, Evan. He hates losing, and he hates being denied the things he wants. He’s not really here for me.”

Evan shrugs. “You could be right. But he could also have finally figured out he was an idiot.”