I’d done this to myself.
The universe hadn’t done this to me.
I’ddone this to me!
“Are you okay?” Athena asked, her voice suddenly concerned. “You’re very quiet. And you’re breathing funny again. Do you need to meditate? I can guide you through a breathing exercise. The universe responds really well to intentional breathwork—”
“Please,” I said quietly, my voice muffled by my hands. “Please stop talking about the universe.”
“But the universe is—”
“Please.”
She was quiet for a moment.
Then: “Okay. I can do that. For now. But eventually we’re going to need to talk about it because the universe is a big part of who I am and if we’re going to make this marriage work—”
I looked up at her.
She stopped talking.
Maybe it was the expression on my face. Maybe it was the way my hands were shaking. Maybe it was the fact that I looked like a man who’d reached the absolute limit of what he could handle and was teetering on the edge of a complete psychological breakdown.
Whatever it was, she finally—finally—stopped talking.
We stared at each other.
Her: wearing a wrinkled dress, hair still damp, eyes bright with cosmic certainty.
Me: fully clothed, hungover, wearing a wedding ring I couldn’t remove, married to a stranger, having a panic attack.
“So,” she said eventually, very carefully. “Breakfast?”
I closed my eyes.
“Sure,” I heard myself say. “Why not? What’s one more terrible decision at this point?”
She clapped her hands together, delighted.
And I realized, with horrible clarity, that I’d just made another mistake.
Because now we were going to breakfast.
Together.
As a married couple.
And she was going to talk the entire time.
About the universe.
And destiny.
And our cosmic future together.
I was trapped.
Completely, utterly, cosmically trapped.
