60
Grace
“Every time I hear the story,” the interviewer told me, “it just seems crazier and crazier! I mean, between marrying a man you never met, and then it turns out he was actually the guy who pretended to be poor, it’s insane! My husband is a TV producer for Netflix, and he can’t stop raving about creating a show based on your article!”
I smiled, my cheeks hurting. The last two weeks since the taping of the season finale had been a whirlwind of editing meetings, interviews, and talk shows. The publishing company already was working with me on plotting the memoir, and then I was still working on producing the coffee-table book in time for the new bridal season. I barely had time to go home, which was great because a family of pigeons had found an opening in the plywood over the window and Zeus had taken it as his sworn duty to protect the house against pigeons at all costs, even if it meant screeching at three in the morning.
“Just one more question,” the interviewer asked, taking a sip of her cocktail. We were in the bar of a swanky tower, though the décor was a little early two-thousands. It needed some love. But the cocktails were good.
“Was there anything good about your time as a married woman?”
“It wasn’t all terrible,” I said, reflecting on it. “Chris wasn’t a bad person. He was funny and nice.”
“And sexy!” the interviewer quipped.
“That too.” I smiled. “He was just flawed. But then we’re all flawed. He respected my work, and if I was out all night on a photo shoot, it didn’t faze him at all. Sometimes we would just have a quiet morning where I’d make us tea, and we’d sit at the table and just work on our laptops together. Normally I don’t like working in the same room as other people. I’m a bit weird that way. But being with him, it was comfortable and easy.”
“Aside from the lying and hysterics,” the interviewer commented, “it actually sounds like an ideal marriage.”
“Yeah,” I mused. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Do you miss him?”
I looked down at my glass. Stupid thing was empty.
“Sometimes. It’s nice to come home to someone, to be hugged at the end of a long day, for someone to hand you a drink and say, ‘Hey, lets go grab Italian,’ or just to lounge around in bed with and look at stupid memes on the internet.”
I gazed wistfully toward the entrance, remembering.
“Anyways,” I said, clearing my throat, “maybe you don’t want to print all of that. People will think I’m too sappy!”
“I think it’s nice,” the interviewer said. “Marriages are complicated, even if they’re short.”
“That’s the thing though,” I said. “It actually wasn’t that complicated. Someone was like, okay, you’re married! And then we just had to make it work. We were both on the same rickety boat and had to start rowing. It does build a strange sort of camaraderie—you both against the crazy situation.”
“Sounds like the marriage maybe could have worked,” the interviewer remarked. “If things had gone a little differently.”
The heartbreak that would wash over me at odd times crashed into me. I blinked, willing it away.
“I’m just romanticizing it,” I said. “I am a cautionary tale to not marry someone you don’t know.”
But it felt like I knew him.
“I do wish Chris well,” I told the interviewer, not wanting to sound like a harpy. “I hope he’s happy.”
“Very generous words from you, Grace,” the middle-aged woman said. “I will probably be back once your TV show is off the ground and the most-watched program on the internet.” She laughed and gave me a hug.
“As much as I would love to stay for another drink, I do have to get back to my husband!”
“Sure thing,” I chirped.
I felt weirdly empty after she left. I had no husband to go back to, obviously. I didn’t even really have a home to go back to.
My heart clenched. I wished I were going home to Chris. He would have thought all my interviews were hilarious, but I bet he would have shown up at every taping. I looked down at my empty glass. My shoulders ached with sadness. I missed Chris. I had loved him. Probably still did.
Maybe you should give him another chance.
That would be stupid.
