The First Husband by Laura Dave Page B

school girlfriend. I never said that to you.”
    “What do you mean? Yes, you did.”
    I racked my brain for the information I was holding on to, until I recalled the conversation I’d been thinking of, the one in which he mentioned her: the two of us sitting next to each other at the hotel bar, my fingers on his half of the tattoo, Griffin talking about the night he got it.
    “You said you got that tattoo at eighteen, right?”
    He nodded. “Right.”
    Then I started to get it, what apparently I’d missed. “You and Gia were together longer than that?” I said.
    He nodded again. “Right.”
    “How much longer than that?” I said.
    He looked behind himself toward the workers, a few of whom were looking our way, waiting for him. “Maybe we should go outside for a minute. Let’s go outside and have a real discussion about this.”
    “How much longer, Griffin?”
    He looked right at me, looked right into my eyes. “Thirteen years,” he said.
    “Thirteen years? ”
    I was dumbstruck. I’d always hated that expression—still hate it—someone being dumbstruck. And, yet, in writing a travel column, one would be surprised how many times Peter thought it was appropriate for me to be so: dumbstruck at the Burj Al Arab hotel, dumbstruck at the Big Ben. Dumbstruck at the Milan Duomo. I never was—or I never wrote that I was, at least. But standing in front of my new husband and learning he had been with someone before me for close to a decade and a half, I wasn’t sure how else to articulate the feeling. No other word seemed to do it.
    “Look, it’s all a little complicated,” he said. “And I really didn’t want to burden you with it, for all the reasons I told you in California. I don’t think it’s helpful in a new relationship to get into it all too much.”
    “How about getting into it just a little? Just a little might have been good,” I said. “And what do you know about new relationships anyway? You’ve had the same girlfriend since you were a fetus.”
    He ignored me, which was probably wise right then.
    “I can’t believe you were with someone so long,” I said. “I can’t believe you were with someone else for that long.”
    I felt it bubbling up inside of me, jealousy, and something like a revelation: if time were at least part of the measure of real love—how long it would take, how long it would have to take—for us to know each other the way we’d known the people who came before.
    “The important part is that we were broken up well before you and I got together,” he said. “We broke up before I even left for Los Angeles.”
    “How long before, Griffin?” I asked. “Six months?”
    “Closer to nine,” he said.
    “Oh, well, then . . .”
    “I was going to get into the details, but I wanted to speak to Gia first. I thought it’d ease things once I knew where she was with everything. I was hoping that by my leaving town for a while, it would put our separation in a better place for her. That she would understand, as hard as it was, that going our own ways was really for the best. For both of us.”
    “So you left her?”
    “I did.”
    “Why?”
    He looked pained. “Annie, it was over with Gia for a long time before it was over,” he said. “I can’t explain it exactly. I couldn’t do it anymore, if that makes any sense. It certainly didn’t to her.”
    I nodded. Because it did make sense—at least the part about Gia’s not understanding. That’s the brutality of a breakup, isn’t it? The people leaving think they did everything possible, the people left behind think what is possible hasn’t even been tested yet.
    “Look, we can talk about this more. We can go into all of it tonight, if that will help. But you need to believe that. You need to believe we were done before I met you. I should have been more forthcoming about how long our history was. But it really is history. I think you know that’s true.”
    I did know that—could feel it, actually—which