“Fine.”
Fine?That wasn’t enough. I needed more.
“Are you happy with her? Is she happy with you? Is it serious?”
Pick, pick, pick.
Rip, rip, rip.
“I don’t know. She’s great, and I guess it’s serious. I guess it has to be. She’s not like the other girls I’ve been with. It’s different dating someone older, Jude. I can tell you that much. She knows what she wants, like, all the time. She’ssure of herself. She says she’s dating to marry, not fuck around.”
Turns out, he was right. Selby did know what she wanted and shewasdating to marry, and not only that, she was someone who knew how to get what she wanted.
I hated her more than I’d ever hated anyone. More than I thought I could hate anyone.
I remember them calling to tell me he’d proposed. It was a video call. Selby looked radiant and Romeo looked like a prop on a well-lit stage. I remember the words and the sound of his voice. I remember that when he stopped talking, I said, “Cool.”
I don’t remember anything that happened for a full week after that.
Life took on a strange quality. It was an eerie dreamscape where things were tilted on their side, nothing made sense, and everything hurt all the time. A dark trance that had a distinct beginning and no end. The same snippets of conversations long past played over and over in my mind.
“You’re the best person I know, Tiger.”
“…the best person…”
“…best person…”
“Why the fuck are my feet so fucking big?”
“Is it me, or do they look like boats in these shoes?”
“I’ll kiss you.”
“Youwouldn’t.”
“I will. I’ll kiss you for sure.”
“I was underwhelmed, to be honest.”
“And you won’t tell anyone?”
"…won't tell anyone…"
“…tell anyone…”
“Feels good. Don’t stop.”
“If I have a son, I’ll name him Romeo.”
Drinking to blackout was the only way I could escape them.
Sometimes it worked.
Sometimes it didn’t.
It was that man, the one occupying that mind, who left Cambridge at the end of the year and flew home to attend his friend’s wedding. The best man, they called me.
Time was the strangest it had ever been. A freight train with the wind behind it. It thundered toward me, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do to stop it. Selby was in a wedding planning frenzy, sending Romeo and me around left, right, and center, throwing her father’s money around like it was nothing. Like it was confetti.
