“You’re not the jealous type, are you, baby?” my long-term boyfriend asked, smiling.
I was not. I made certain of that.
Then, last spring, on an ordinary Tuesday, Aaron dropped to one knee in our kitchen.
There were no candles, no grand speech. Just him looking up at me with wet eyes.
“I’m sorry it took so long,” he whispered. “Marry me.”
I sobbed into his shoulder until my ribs ached. I thought I had finally won the jackpot, and that every excuse, delay, and “not yet” had simply been the cost of something real.
Megan stood beside me as my maid of honor. Diane sat in the front row, dabbing at her eyes like an actress.
Our first anniversary was last Friday.
I want you to remember that date, because the night I thought would be the happiest night of my life became the night every story I had ever told myself collapsed.
Aaron had been planning it for weeks, or so he claimed. Candles glowed on the table; my favorite pasta simmered on the stove, and a bottle of red wine my husband said he had been saving since the wedding waited beside it.
He kissed my forehead in the doorway when I got home from work.
“Get refreshed. I want tonight to be perfect.”
I floated down the hallway of our little apartment, smiling in a haze of disbelief that this was truly my life.
When I came back, dressed up but still barefoot, Aaron checked his watch and stood.
“I’m gonna change into a suit to match your stunning look,” he said. “You pour the wine. I want to do this properly.”
I laughed because he was being ridiculous.
Before I poured the wine, I decided to surprise him by sneaking over and wrapping my arms around his waist while he buttoned his shirt.
Then I heard his voice through the slightly open bedroom door.
It was not the voice he used with me. It was low and careful.
“Yeah, man. I’ve been pulling the wool over her eyes since school. She has no idea. Tonight I’ll finally do what I planned,” I heard Aaron say.
My knees almost gave out against the wall.
I pressed one hand over my mouth so hard I tasted blood from my lip.
Fifteen years rushed through my mind at once.
The locked drawer, the secret calls, the name “Vanessa” lighting up his screen at 11 p.m. two summers earlier, the way he had looked me straight in the eye and said putting the house only in his name was “just for tax reasons,” and the way he insisted, even after the wedding, that our bank accounts stay separate.
Every small thing I had swallowed because I loved him too much to ask twice.
I could have burst into the bedroom screaming or hurled the wine glass against the wall and demanded answers.
