that they had met each other while still married to former spouses. The public lambasted the bride for whining about her feelings of being “punished” for having failed to meet the love of her life earlier, but that’s exactly how I felt while I was with Gregg. To avoid feeling like a horrible person, I elevated Gregg (he’s my soul mate), derided Jack (I deserve someone who is more of a challenge), and turned myself into the victim (I met Jack too young, he’s suffocating me). When I hear other people talk about how infidelity “just happens,” I know how lame it sounds, but at the time, those words became my mantra.
I worked later and left home earlier. I gushed when Gregg landed a clerkship with the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, which would make him a front-runner to land a Supreme Court clerkship.
And then when Gregg graduated, he dumped me. No, he didn’t dump me. He just moved—to D.C., to his fiancée, to his real life. He had used me. And the thing is, I felt more right with him for months than I ever had with the man who loved me. One night the following summer, Jack saw me staring into space and asked if I missed Gregg. “I mean, you guys were pretty good friends, is all.”
He knew. All that time, he had known. He just didn’t want me to know that he knew. And now that it was over, Jack was still there. He even wanted to comfort me. I felt so guilty that I started to hate him for it.
I would look at him and imagine the scene play out in my head.
We need to talk.
I love you, but I’m not in love with you.
You deserve someone better.
I’d picture myself giving back the ring—his mother’s engagement ring—and I’d hear him telling me, once again, that we belonged together, that he knew me better than anyone else, that we were perfect. I could almost hear my mother: I knew it was too good to be true.
No, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t marry him, but I couldn’t be the one to say I wouldn’t marry him. He would have to be the one to see that we were all wrong. I wasn’t a good person, and I certainly wasn’t good enough for someone as accepting and forgiving as Jack.
I WAS RECOUNTING BITS AND pieces of this history when Don interrupted. “The case, Olivia. What does this have to do with Jack’s arrest?”
“You need to know about the last time I saw Jack before today.”
Law school graduation was a month away. We had a wedding date eleven weeks out. The plan was to keep it simple—vows in Central Park with a reception to follow at a French restaurant on the Upper West Side called La Mirabelle. The honeymoon was more of a splurge, a week at Lake Como. My signing bonus at the firm would barely cover it all.
You know how gamblers keep adding good money after bad, unable to walk away with a loss? That was me. Nearly a year had passed since my thing with Gregg ended, but I found more where that came from. Hours spent at the library. Late nights at bars. Unexplained phone calls. I was never home, and when I was, I would bark at Jack constantly, all in the hope that he would be the one to walk away. I needed him to walk away. What did I need to do to make him leave me?
In my head, there was no alternative. Not after all this time. I became reckless to the point of inevitability.
Until that night, I had never brought another man into our apartment. But I crossed that final line in the biggest possible way. I knew Jack would be home any minute; his writers’ workshop could have only so much to say about the dozen pages he’d managed since the last meeting. It was only his phone call from the corner that kept us from being caught in flagrante. Need anything from Duane Reade? If I don’t get some Q-tips, my ears might start to sprout.
My companion made it to the staircase before Jack stepped off the elevator, but I hadn’t even bothered to make the bed. If I had, I might have noticed the Seiko watch, unmistakably male, resting next to my pillow. I’m the one who’d slipped
I worked later and left home earlier. I gushed when Gregg landed a clerkship with the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, which would make him a front-runner to land a Supreme Court clerkship.
And then when Gregg graduated, he dumped me. No, he didn’t dump me. He just moved—to D.C., to his fiancée, to his real life. He had used me. And the thing is, I felt more right with him for months than I ever had with the man who loved me. One night the following summer, Jack saw me staring into space and asked if I missed Gregg. “I mean, you guys were pretty good friends, is all.”
He knew. All that time, he had known. He just didn’t want me to know that he knew. And now that it was over, Jack was still there. He even wanted to comfort me. I felt so guilty that I started to hate him for it.
I would look at him and imagine the scene play out in my head.
We need to talk.
I love you, but I’m not in love with you.
You deserve someone better.
I’d picture myself giving back the ring—his mother’s engagement ring—and I’d hear him telling me, once again, that we belonged together, that he knew me better than anyone else, that we were perfect. I could almost hear my mother: I knew it was too good to be true.
No, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t marry him, but I couldn’t be the one to say I wouldn’t marry him. He would have to be the one to see that we were all wrong. I wasn’t a good person, and I certainly wasn’t good enough for someone as accepting and forgiving as Jack.
I WAS RECOUNTING BITS AND pieces of this history when Don interrupted. “The case, Olivia. What does this have to do with Jack’s arrest?”
“You need to know about the last time I saw Jack before today.”
Law school graduation was a month away. We had a wedding date eleven weeks out. The plan was to keep it simple—vows in Central Park with a reception to follow at a French restaurant on the Upper West Side called La Mirabelle. The honeymoon was more of a splurge, a week at Lake Como. My signing bonus at the firm would barely cover it all.
You know how gamblers keep adding good money after bad, unable to walk away with a loss? That was me. Nearly a year had passed since my thing with Gregg ended, but I found more where that came from. Hours spent at the library. Late nights at bars. Unexplained phone calls. I was never home, and when I was, I would bark at Jack constantly, all in the hope that he would be the one to walk away. I needed him to walk away. What did I need to do to make him leave me?
In my head, there was no alternative. Not after all this time. I became reckless to the point of inevitability.
Until that night, I had never brought another man into our apartment. But I crossed that final line in the biggest possible way. I knew Jack would be home any minute; his writers’ workshop could have only so much to say about the dozen pages he’d managed since the last meeting. It was only his phone call from the corner that kept us from being caught in flagrante. Need anything from Duane Reade? If I don’t get some Q-tips, my ears might start to sprout.
My companion made it to the staircase before Jack stepped off the elevator, but I hadn’t even bothered to make the bed. If I had, I might have noticed the Seiko watch, unmistakably male, resting next to my pillow. I’m the one who’d slipped
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