Kevin’s mouth opened, then closed again. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I were.” I sank into my chair, rubbing my temples. “It was supposed to be simple. Straightforward. Emotionally sterile.”
“Sterile,” he repeated. “Right. Totally normal word to use about marriage.”
I groaned. “I wasn’t supposed to feelanything. That was the deal. But now I can’t look at him without—God, I don’t even know. Without wanting to apologize, or say something real, or crawl into a hole and stay there forever.”
“Wow. So...you’re catching feelings for your fake husband.”
I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like it’s the world’s worst reality show.”
He smirked. “What exactly happened?”
“I brought him lunch,” I muttered. “Like a pathetic, smitten idiot.”
“Lunch doesn’t sound terrible.”
“Hisfavoritelunch,” I said, burying my face in my hands. “From hisfavoriteplace. And he sort of smiled, Kevin—the kind that makes your stomach feel like it’s on a rollercoaster—and not in the fun way. And then he went all alpha male and physically defended my honor against a guy who barely understood the fundamentals of calculus and has the upper-body strength of a spaghetti noodle.”
“Okay, that’s...objectively hot.”
“Don’t make it worse.”
He let out a low whistle. “Oh, it’s already worse,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re doomed.”
“You know,” I said, looking up, “this is all his fault.”
Kevin raised an eyebrow, mid-yogurt scoop. “Your husband?”
“Yes. When we first met, he was rude, and boring, and short.”
“Five eleven isn’t short,” he protested.
“Five eleven anda half,” I corrected.
“Five eleven and a half isn’t short,” he repeated, indignant now.
“It’s shorter thanme.”
He pointed his spoon at me. “Barely. And not in a way anyone would even be able to notice.”
“Inotice.”
He choked on a laugh. “Fine—he was rude, and boring, and short. And now?”
I glared at him. “And now he’sstillrude, and boring, and short—but he’s also secretly nice. Which is worse, by the way. He cooks me dinner, and cleans up after me, and leaves me these stupid sticky notes—” I dug into my purse, pulling out thesmall mountain I’d been collecting for months, colorful squares of guilt and tenderness and confusion. I threw them on the floor, the tiny scraps fluttering down like confetti from a parade I hadn’t agreed to attend. “—like some deranged stationery fairy,” I finished, out of breath. “If I had known another person was lurking behind his cold, color-blind exterior, I never would’ve married him.”
Kevin crouched, picked one up, and read aloud in a mocking voice, “‘Eat this.’” He picked up another. “‘Lunch for work.’” His tone softened. “‘Picked up your favorite dessert on my way home.’” He glanced at me, the corners of his mouth twitching. “This is so cute.”
“It’snotcute, Kevin! It’smanipulative. It’s—it’s emotional trickery. He’s lulling me into a false sense of affection with Post-its and properly seasoned food.”
Kevin sat back on his heels, laughing now. “So, let me get this straight. You’re mad because your fake husband istoo niceto you?”
“I’m mad because he’sconfusing,” I said, pacing again. “He spends weeks pretending I don’t exist, refusing to tell me a single thing about him, and then he goes and does things like this, and suddenly I’m in a Wes Anderson movie about domestic yearning.”
