Amber and I were always good at having a party face. Behind closed doors too. We kept our party faces on until the day we signed our divorce papers. Only then did our masks fall off.
What would we have been if we hadn’t lied to each other from the start?
Faith stands opposite him, hands trembling slightly as she passes the bouquet to Perry, then folds them at her waist. Thetrembling would read as nerves to anyone else. To me, it reads as effort.
The officiant continues. “…a union built on trust…”
Trust. The word threads through me like a splinter. I force myself to inhale slowly. Control the body. The mind will follow.
But it does not follow. It returns to that hallway. To Perry’s face when she said it.
You’re the father of my twins.
No tremor in her voice. No apology. No cushioning. Just fact.
I replay it in fragments. The way the fluorescent light flattened her features. The way the hallway smelled faintly of floral arrangements and perfume. The way I stood there holding cocktails like a man unprepared for his own life.
I shift slightly in my seat. The fabric of my suit is too tight across my shoulders. The boutonnière brushes my lapel lightly when I move. The rose’s outer petal has curled further inward.
Detail. Fixate.
The officiant invites the reading. Faith’s college roommate steps forward with a folded card. She smiles too brightly before beginning. She speaks about destiny and timing. About how Jason once drove six hours in a snowstorm just to surprise Faith with hot chocolate and a scarf she’d forgotten at school.
I have two more sons. Two boys I have not held. Not in any real way. The thought erupts over and over again. Two lives unfolding in a small apartment across town while I sit here in pressed linen and polite applause.
I ache to hold my sons. It’s undeniable now that I know.
The reading ends. Applause ripples softly. The officiant moves into the exchange of rings. Jason’s hands are steady. Faith’s are not. He slides the ring onto her finger with practiced assurance.
I should feel pride, so I attempt to manufacture it. Instead, I feel displacement. The future I imagined for my son now intersects with something far more complicated.
Perry stands behind Faith’s shoulder, bouquet held precisely, expression serene. A word that feels like mockery.
She knew. She sat across from me in that barbecue restaurant. In my truck. In her kitchen. The nights at her place. And she said nothing.
Not when I asked carefully about the father. When I asked whether he was involved, and she said, “Not really.”
Not really, my ass. I made it clear I was invested. I was involved, dammit. She let me fall in love with her without the full picture. How could she?—
Love. There it is. The feeling I have avoided naming. It doesn’t feel dramatic. It feels factual. Like the sun sets in the west. And that realization unsettles me more than the twins being mine. Love snuck up on me and betrayed me.
The officiant asks if anyone objects. A ceremonial pause. Silence. The world does not implode publicly. It does so privately in my mind.
“By the power vested in me…” The words float upward and dissipate into the open pavilion air.
Jason leans in and kisses Faith. The applause erupts on cue. It’s a full-bodied sound. Chairs scraping lightly against grass.Programs snapping shut. The string quartet swelling into something triumphant and rehearsed.
I stand with everyone else. I clap. I smile. Perform. My face does what it has been trained to do for decades.
Inside, I am rearranging my entire life.
My sons. The phrase feels heavier now that the ceremony is legally binding. As though Jason’s marriage rips something else open.
They’re definitely not his. Perry wouldn’t blurt out that they were mine if they were actually Jason’s. She might have lied, but she’s not a sociopath.
I lower myself back into my seat as the newly married couple turns to walk down the aisle. Faith beams. Jason looks satisfied in the way he always does when he believes he has secured something.
He glances briefly toward me. Our eyes meet. He gives me a prideful smile, and I give an approving nod. I do approve of Faith—she seems like a lovely, smart girl who will throw dinner parties for the right people to advance Jason’s career, which is all he’s ever really wanted.
