“And I just want to survive brunch without pretending I’m someone I’m not.”
Because I’d already learned what pretending cost.
I’d watched my bank balance become a measuring stick. My future reduced to a question mark that made people hesitate before choosing me. I could handle disappointment. I could handle rejection. What I couldn’t handle was being quietly assessed and foundlacking because I didn’t come with the right kind of numbers attached to my name.
She stared at me. “No one’s asking you to pretend. I’m asking you to try.”
Try. Like this wasn’t already trying.
I rolled onto my side, facing away from her, needing distance before I said something I couldn’t take back. “Great. I’ll try not to breathe wrong.”
“Oh, my gosh,” she muttered. “You’re impossible.”
She seemed to say that a lot to me.
“Funny,” I said. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
She let out an exaggerated sigh. “I just want you to not poke the bear.”
“I don’t poke bears.”
“You absolutely poke bears.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then stopped. Because … yeah. Okay. I probably did when it came to people with the last name Montgomery.
“Just—smile. Be polite. Let me steer the conversation.”
I shook my head in annoyance. “I don’t need coaching.”
Her voice sharpened. “You do withthem.”
Something hot sparked in my chest. “I’m not some charity case you have to dress up so your parents don’t clutch their pearls.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
I huffed out a breath. “Then what are you trying to say?”
This time her sigh sounded tired. “I just want to get through tomorrow without blowing everything up?”
I stared at her over my shoulder. At the determination in her eyes. At the anxiety she was pretending wasn’t there.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll behave.”
She nodded once. “Thank you.”
The sheets rustled as she lay back down.
Silence fell between us, stifling and brittle.
I could still feel her there, though. The awareness of her didn’t disappear just because we stopped talking. If anything, it got louder. The quiet stretched, and my body stayed painfully alert, every small shift of the mattress registering like a flare.
“People always say you shouldn’t go to bed angry with your spouse,” I said eventually, voice flat.
She didn’t answer right away.
“Good thing this isn’t real then,” she said softly.
The words shouldn’t have hit the way they did, but they still sliced through me with a surprising sting.
