Dionisia's words were difficult for him to grapple with, but her suggestions on how to proceed were infinitely better than the question that followed. He let out a long, heavy breath and let his eyes fall to the table. He still hadn't looked at her since she'd started cajoling him to open up to Melody about their past.

Did he love her? He'd thought he did. He'd said he did. She had said it too before, but that didn't mean it had been true then or remained true now. He'd always cared about her, but for much of their relationship he hadn't been comfortable with the word love, and sometimes he still grappled with whether or not it was the right way to describe his feelings for Melody.

"Doesn't matter," he said, lifting up his glass again and considering the liquid. "She doesn't think I do."

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MJ made this <3

His silence spoke volumes, but it didn’t give her a clear answer. Love was such a fickle thing, she thought—not that she’d had much of a chance to experience it in the way many husbands and wives had. Dionisia couldn’t pretend to know what existed between Ben and his wife, but she doubted it was anything similar to the unromantic, passionless, and yet unwavering love between she and Ari that had been forged by shared secrets and a mutual love for a child.

Still, it spoke volumes that Ben couldn’t speak with any certainty.

“If you do,” she said, voice void of judgment, “I think you need to revisit that past. If she’s lost her memory, reliving that past—even if it’s bad—might make all the difference in her willingness to move forward.”

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That wasn't what Ben wanted to hear, and he nearly said as much. He slouched against the back of the bench and tipped his glass towards him, watching the light play off the top of his rum with glassy eyes.

Was there a chance Dionisia was right? Ben couldn't see things working out the way she'd described. Revisiting the past with Melody would mean fighting. There was no other way that conversation could go. There was too much baggage in the past for them to talk through it all without picking off scabs on wounds that were still raw. How was fighting going to lead them to be happier in the future? It had never worked for them in the past. Airing grievances and slinging blame had only made things worse — for her, anyway. Ben had eventually gotten to a point where he wanted to move forward, when he'd heard about the baby, but he didn't know that Melody ever had.

"There's a lot you don't understand," he said. "No one really understands. We're — fucked."

Was that it, then? No way forward? Lately it felt that way. He'd thought he could get them back to where they'd been in the aftermath of Nora's birth if he could convince Melody to have another child, but he couldn't even convince her to touch him, so that didn't seem to be in the cards. He'd been keeping it from her because he wasn't sure what she would do when she learned the whole truth, but — what was the worst case scenario, really? Could it be any worse than their current state of affairs?

Nothing could be worse than the current state of affairs. Even if she left him, at least they'd have the finality.

He was going to talk to her.

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MJ made this <3