Chapter Text
“Honey, I thought Australia was your dream,” Brian said as they waited for their luggage in Melbourne.
“It is,” Honey answered. She knew Brian was about to ask her the same question everyone else had: if this was a dream come true, why wasn’t she excited? Honey tried to pull her thoughts together to give Brian an honest answer. It was past time they stopped tip-toeing around the problems in their relationship and actually talked about them. “I don’t know how to explain how I feel about this trip,” Honey admitted, “except to say it feels dishonest somehow.”
“We’re a young couple on vacation, visiting somewhere you’ve always wanted to see. What’s dishonest about that?”
All of it, Honey thought. “Brian, most couples that take a vacation half way around the globe manage a date more than once a month—and are truly in love,” Honey added softly.
Brian accepted her words thoughtfully. It was on the tip of her tongue to draw a comparison between his reaction (or non-reaction) and Jim or Mart’s reaction if Trixie or Di said something like that to them. However, Honey knew she didn’t want either of those relationships so drawing comparisons wouldn’t help her and Brian. Therefore, she didn’t speak.
“What?” Brian asked, watching her face. “What are you thinking?”
“Just that Jim—or Mart, for that matter—would have had a bit more to say in this situation.”
“I’m not Jim,” Brian said fiercely.
“I know. I’m not Trixie, either, and I don’t want their relationship.”
“What do you want?”
“To matter to someone,” Honey answered, having given the question some thought. “Affection. Attention.”
“Honey, I love you. All of the Bob-Whites do.”
“And I’m just another Bob-White?”
“Honey…” Brian protested.
“What, Brian? What am I to you, really? Do I truly mean more to you than, than Di?”
“Honey! Of course you do. You’re special to me.”
Their bags arrived then and neither Honey nor Brian had any interest in making a scene in the airport, so the conversation dropped until they were settled in their hotel room.
“I’m ‘special’ to you,” Honey stated, sitting in a chair by the window.
“Of course you are,” Brian insisted. “How could you not know that? We’ve been dating for almost a decade!”
“How could I not know?” Honey asked incredulously. “How could I know? I’m lucky if we go on one date a month. We hardly see each other. We’ve been dating for ‘almost a decade’ and that’s all! We’ve never even talked about the future, getting married, starting a family, or anything like that.”
“Honey, we both knew it was going to be difficult,” Brian said reasonably. “We both knew what the schedule was going to be like for me with medical school and residency.”
“That’s what I told myself,” Honey agreed. “I told myself it would all get better when you finished the residency and I just needed to put up with it until then because it was your dream and didn’t I love you enough to want you to achieve your dreams? But, Brian, it’s been four months since you finished the residency and I don’t feel any better about our relationship than I did then.”
Brian wasn’t sure what to say. Nothing Honey had said came as a particular surprise, but he wasn’t ready to give up on them yet, and it sounded like Honey might already have given up. “What do you want, Honey? To break up on the first night of our vacation?”
“Is that what you want?”
“No, it’s not,” Brian insisted.
“Then we need to sit down and have a long conversation about this relationship and what we both expect of it, because it’s not working for me the way it is.”
“Right now?”
Honey shook her head. “I don’t think that’s wise. We’ve been traveling all day and we’re both tired. I don’t think this is the most productive time to have such an important conversation.”
“I agree but I want you to know I’m willing to do what it takes for you, Honey.”
“I hope so,” Honey replied wearily. “I really do like you, Brian.”
🔍
Brian tossed and turned, despite his travel fatigue and jet lag. This wasn’t what he’d expected. Honey had always wanted to go to Australia. She was supposed to be excited. She was supposed to be grateful. He’d saved for over a year for this trip. Didn’t she understand that? Didn’t she care? He hadn’t thought she was so aware of her family’s wealth that she had no appreciation for the effort of saving.
What did he want from this relationship? Did he really want to fight for this, if, even after all this time, she didn’t even know he cared about her? If she couldn’t or wouldn’t appreciate the effort he’d gone to for her to make this dream of hers a reality, was it worth fighting?
Was it fair to Honey to not fight? She had supported him in his quest for his dreams, stuck with him through all the years of residency. Could he walk away from her, and all they’d been through, now?
There was a time when he had thought everything was simple. He would finish his residency, propose, get married, and he and Honey would live happily ever after.
Two out of three ain’t bad, but one out of four sucks, he thought to himself, punching his pillow.
🔍
Honey and Brian walked down the beach together the following morning. This early in the day, it wasn’t hot enough for either of them to be interested in swimming in the ocean or lying in the sun.
There was a tumble of rocks extending into the ocean. They climbed up on them, walking carefully toward the water. They sat on the rocks just beyond the waterline. Honey enjoyed the views of the shoreline extending in both directions. She also noticed that the waves crashing against the rocks would cover the sound of their voices.
“Are you ready to talk?” Honey asked Brian.
Brian glanced around, realized the beach was deserted and the crashing waves would give them privacy, if they kept their voices low. He nodded slowly. “What do we need to talk about?”
Honey raised an eyebrow. “What don’t we need to talk about, Brian? We’ve been together for years and we’re not going anywhere.”
“I know the schedule’s been rough, with school and the residency.”
“Brian, when did you finish your residency?”
Brian looked surprised. “Honey, you know exactly when I finished the residency. We all went out to dinner that night.”
“Four months ago,” Honey continued. “And what’s changed since then? I waited this long, because I thought it was the schedule. I thought you loved me and you just didn’t have time, and that once you got past the residency and had time, there’d be time for us and it would all be okay, or at least better. But it’s not.” Honey paused, taking a deep breath and blinking back tears. She wasn’t sure her relationship with Brian had a future, and either way she knew they were long overdue for this conversation, but that didn’t make it any easier. “I told myself it was med school. And then I told myself it was the residency. Brian, I’m out of things to tell myself that I can live with. The only thing I have left to tell myself is that it’s the job. You know my history, Brian; I’ve been less important than the job before. I won’t be again. I promised myself my children would never feel that way.”
Brian gulped. “Children? When did we start talking about kids?”
“I want kids, Brian. Any man I marry needs to be okay with that. I know the next question – when did we start talking marriage? You said it yourself, Brian; we’ve been dating for over a decade. Where are we headed, if not toward marriage?”
Brian could only nod. He had the ring. He’d planned to propose on this trip. The past twenty-four hours had thrown everything into question, but he certainly couldn’t argue Honey’s point. If they weren’t planning to get married, after dating for ten years, what were they planning?
“Your job is important, Brian. There will be early mornings, late nights, and emergencies. My job is important to me, if nothing else. There are times when the case will require an early start, or an evening shift. I understand that; I’m okay with that. But I need to know I’m more important than the job, that our kids will be more important than the job. I need to know that when I need you, you’ll be there, no matter what. And I just don’t.”
“After our conversation yesterday, I thought a lot about us,” Brian admitted. “I asked myself if this was worth fighting for. I love you, Honey. I worked really hard to save and surprise you with this trip to a place you’ve never been but always wanted to go – to make your dream come true, to thank you for helping me make mine come true. And I asked myself last night, if you don’t know how important you are to me, which means you clearly aren’t seeing everything I’ve been trying for a decade and more to show you, is there anything to fight for?”
“I’ve been asking myself similar questions for the better part of two years,” Honey said quietly.
“I know my answer, Honey. You are important to me. I love you. I will do what it takes; I want to fight for us. Tell me what I have to do.”
“I wish I knew, Brian. Or maybe I do know and I just don’t have words to explain to you what I need from you. I know you’re not Jim. I’m not Trixie, either. I don’t want their relationship; I honestly don’t. But I do know that I want what they have. I want can’t-live-without-you love. I want partnership. I want to want to call you, even when it’s not good news, even when I know you don’t want to hear what I have to say. I want to want to fix things when we fight, instead of just walking away.”
“We never fight,” Brian protested.
“Because we don’t tell each other what we’re thinking,” Honey countered. “We just…separate. We go off, annoyed at each other, feeling unheard, unvalued, and nothing gets resolved. At least, that’s how I feel every time we disagree. And then the resentment creeps in. I start thinking ‘at least, if we fought, I could know I was right, and he was wrong, and I was justified for being angry at him’. I know that’s wrong and I always feel bad when I find myself wishing we’d just fought, but I don’t think ignoring our disagreements is any healthier for either of us, or our relationship.”
“And we don’t get stronger,” Brian murmured. “I asked Dad once, after he and Moms had a fight. He said sometimes even good people, even people who love each other, disagree, and they both think they’re right so hard that they can’t see the other point of view. But when two people love each other, like he and Moms do, they eventually take a step back, calm down, and then come back to their common ground and build a solution, and they end up stronger than they were before.”
“And we take the step back and calm down, but we never come back together, so we never get to build anything stronger,” Honey observed.
Brian nodded. “So I guess that’s part of my answer.”
“What answer?”
“What I have to do, if I want to fight for us. I have to get better at talking to you—about the things we agree on and especially about the things we don’t agree on. And I had better get better at listening to you, whether you’re talking about something that’s important to me or something I honestly couldn’t care less about. If we communicated better, you’d at least know that you’re important to me. That I care about what you think. That I value your opinion. I do—I don’t know if you can believe that right now, but I do.”
🔍
Though both of them were jetlagged and neither had slept particularly well with turbulent thoughts about their relationship, each other, and the trip itself, their first day in Melbourne showed Honey that the reality was even better than all of her dreams of this trip. The landscapes were unlike any in New York; the city was smaller but alive in a whole different way.
Honey loved it every bit as much as she thought she would, and more. If her life, family, friends, everything, wasn’t in New York, she wondered if she wouldn’t fit right in to this city.
They explored the city without any real plan or destination in mind, enjoying the warmth of summer instead of New York’s mid-winter. If they were lucky, the first hints of spring would be coming to New York by the time they came back.
Well, not by the time they came back, but in short order anyway. Late February was a little too early to hope for spring, but by March there would be reason for optimism. Maybe, like the seasons, she and Brian could blossom this spring; regrow what she’d thought they had when they were teenagers, before the responsibilities of adult life put distance between them.
Was this just the winter of their relationship, with spring on the horizon? Or was their relationship as dead as she feared? Even if it was just winter, did that imply there were going to be seasons in their relationship? Regular cycles of good times and bad? And if winter was this cold and lonely, if she was this unhappy during the low points, was it worth it? Were the summers warm enough, bright enough to carry her through the winters?
She wasn’t naïve; she knew there was no such thing as a perfect relationship, one that didn’t have its ups and its downs. But she was still trying to figure out whether another relationship might suit her better; if she might, in another situation, find herself still certain that she was in love with her partner—still feeling like she was in a partnership and a relationship—in the down times.
She felt guilty for her doubts, but when she snuck looks at Brian as they navigated the city, she saw doubt and pain in the back of his eyes, too, enough to make her believe he might be thinking through some of the same puzzling emotions. If he was wondering too, then her wondering wasn’t a betrayal. If she just wanted to believe he was doubting it too, because that absolved her of feeling bad for her doubts, then it was a betrayal. And if she couldn’t figure out which was true, and couldn’t—despite having thoughts like these for years now—bring herself to ask Brian which was the truth, what did that say about her, not to mention their relationship?