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“Yeah,” I replied, “I’m sure.”

“He’s certainly handsome enough,” Mom continued. “And he seems to be a good man. But this all happened so fast, honey. You barely know each other.”

“I know enough,” I said. “We have a lifetime to learn everything else.”

Mom bit her lower lip. “It’s just…his world is so different from what you’re used to. You know that, right?”

I was already finding out just how different our worlds were. But I was young and in love and still thought we could overcome anything. Later, I would remember my mother’s face that night and I would think: she knew. She knew before I did.

She just didn’t know how to tell me.

Meanwhile, I kept hoping Oliver would join me. I invited him every week. He had a reason not to go every time. A dinner with investors. A conference call with investors. A board thing, a charity thing, a thing thing. Every week I went to my parents alone and made another excuse for him. My brother Collin and Liz’s husband Allen started making jokes about my imaginary husband.

“It’s one night a week, Oliver.” I pressed him one evening.

“It’s one night I could be working. Or networking. Or preparing for the week ahead.”

“Why are you treating spending time with my family as if it’s just a waste of your precious time?”

He sighed, the way you sigh at a child who’s being unreasonable. “I’m a very busy man, Genevieve. You knew that when you married me.”

Something inside me snapped at that. I grabbed my purse and stormed out. I drove to the nearest McDonald’s and ordered fries and ate them in my car while crying and ignoring my husband’s attempts to contact me.

That night, I didn’t go home. Instead, I bought a bottle of shitty red wine and crashed on Kylie’s couch. She didn’t say anything; just made a bed for me, and together we got drunk and watched re-runs of The Office until I fell asleep.

The next morning, there were dozens of missed calls and texts from Oliver, all saying much the same thing: “Where are you?”, “I’m sorry, please come home,” and “We need to talk.” I ignored them all, waited until my hangover subsided, and then dragged myself back to the penthouse.

Oliver was waiting for me, still in his suit from yesterday, looking like he hadn’t slept. He reached for me the second I walked in. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What I said was unforgivable. I was an ass. Your family is not a waste of time. You are not a waste of time.”

I just stared at him, uncertain how to reply.

“I’ve never had to consider anyone else’s time before,” he continued. “I’ve spent my entire life being the person other people rearrange their schedules around. But it’s not an excuse to treat you the way I have been. I’ll be at dinner this Sunday. I can’t promise I’ll come every week, but I’ll do my best to come to some of them.”

And so Oliver went to my family’s dinner with me that Sunday.

My five year old nephew barreled into his legs the moment we walked through the door, stared up at him, and asked, “Are you Aunt Genny’s pretend husband?”

“I’m the real one,” Oliver said gravely. “Sorry to disappoint.”

He did his best that night. He was friendly. He listened when my father talked about plumbing. He tried to talk about sports with my brothers. He managed to wince only a little when my two year old niece grabbed at his sleeve with a hand covered in mashed potatoes. He let my nephew show him every single one of his toy trucks. He even complimented my mother’s pot roast, which might have been laying it on a bit thick.

Mom watched him with a tentatively hopeful look on her face. My father slapped him on the back and called him son, and Oliver didn’t correct him.

I thought it had gone well. I thought we’d cleared our first big hurdle. I thought it boded well for our future.

* * *

For a while, things were good between us. Really good. We were happy. I was happy.

I quickly realized that being married to a billionaire meant he worked a lot. More than I would have thought healthy. Sinclair Pharmaceuticals was his father’s company and his grandfather’s before that, and for Oliver, it wasn’t just a job. It was his life. He was out the door before the sun came up and home long after it went down. His phone buzzed through dinners and on weekends. There was always a call to take or an email to answer.

So I became an expert at finding ways to steal time.

A couple of times a week, in between my afternoon classes, I’d bring him lunch. Nothing fancy, just sandwiches from a nearby deli. The first time I showed up at Sinclair Tower unannounced, the receptionist on the executive floor looked at me with visible skepticism, but she still called up. Less than a minute later, Oliver himself came out to meet me.

“Mrs. Sinclair,” he said gravely, and the receptionist’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. “I hope that’s pastrami.”

We’d eat on the leather sofa in his office. Oliver would actually silence his phone. He’d take off his jacket, loosen his tie, and put his feet up.