Page 46 of A Storybook Wedding

“Yes and yes. But all names were changed to protect the innocent.”

“Okay, CJ, if you say so. Mind if I change in there?” He points at my bathroom.

“Have at it,” I say.

When Nate emerges wearing Bryce’s old T-shirt, I find myself experiencing a surprising physical reaction. My chest gets tight like I can’t breathe, but only for a second, and my thighs feel momentarily numb. My rational brain knows that this man is very attractive, but I’m triggered seeing him in that shirt. It’s like muscle memory: all of a sudden, my body remembers things like desire, lust.

Sex.

“Look okay?” he asks.

“Yup. Looks good,” I say, intentionally looking away before I start to stare. I check the time on my microwave clock. It’s 11:20 now. I pour a cup of coffee for Nate, move the dining room chairs so we can sit next to each other, and set up the laptop so that we’ll be ready when it’s time to Zoom. We chat until just shy of noon, him asking me questions about my family and whether I think they’ll be mad at me for getting married without them, and me—with an answer for everything—reminding him that it’s not a real marriage, not that he necessarily needs any reminders.

I’m not a huge fan of wearing this promise ring though, if we’re being honest.

I hate remembering Bryce. I say it that way because when I see him now, it’s like he’s a completely different person—he’s Bryce-Jamie’s-husband, not Bryce-who-has-seen-me-in-my-most-scandalous-underthings. We pretend like it’s not weird. Like this happens in families all the time.

But I know it’s not normal. So I prefer to live in my basement lair and not deal with it.

To be clear, it’s not Bryce that I miss exactly. It’s being someone’s person. Ever since our split, the whole world exists only on the internet, it seems, and that got, like, ten times worse once COVID hit. I don’t know if most people feel this way, but in my opinion, the internet has a way of making you feel like you’re not good enough. It’s a real bitch that way. I could wear a great outfit, put on makeup, do my hair, even put in contact lenses if I wanted to go balls to the wall, and show up at a restaurant for a date, only to be told that I “don’t look like” my profile picture or even worse, be told nothing at all before getting ghosted by a contender on Tinder’s top-ten least-likely-to-succeed list. These are men living in the basements of their parents’ homes (at least I rent mine), men with not-always-steady jobs and sometimes extremely steady drug habits, men who are more interested in exchanging bodily fluids than in exchanging basic facts about each other, like, oh I don’t know, last names.

I suspect the reason that I was able to be so undramatic about the whole thing now is because, despite taking my virginity, Bryce never once gave me an orgasm. After the newness of it wore off, the sex itself became pretty routine. Nine times out of ten, he would initiate it, and we’d go through all the steps and motions until he was finished. He never asked if I was satisfied—I think his young mind just assumed that because my breathing was heavy, I must have been enjoying myself. Or maybe he didn’t want to ask because he was afraid of what the answer would be.

In any case, with the help of Cosmopolitan and several articles online, I figured out how to handle that business on my own. The only thing I couldn’t manage was the whole telling the guy what to do thing, you know, in order to create results for myself. Of course, I’m a writer, so if you asked me to write down the directions, I probably could, but we all know that men don’t ask for directions, right?

So I figured who needs a man when you’ve got a vibrator?

That’s called options.

Only, seeing Nate in Bryce’s shirt and smelling his cologne—he definitely put on cologne today, because I inhaled it greedily when I hugged him—is awakening all the nerve endings deep in my belly. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s in my apartment. Or maybe it’s actual fear, because we’re about to get on a Zoom call and basically tell an elaborate lie to his boss and my mentor (a man whose opinion means the world to me). Or maybe it’s because he’s my husband, and I would just really like to see what he’s packing in those khakis.

Jesus. I blush. I am an embarrassment even to myself.

I change the subject, and we fill up the time talking about the MFA program and how our expectations of it compare to the reality. Before we know it, the clock strikes 11:57, and I am busily setting us up on the Zoom screen through a login sent to Nate’s email address.

Finally, at exactly 12:00 p.m., a bell chimes through the audio, and Professor Dillon Norway’s face appears on the screen.

“Oh,” he says, caught off guard. “Both of you are here.”

“I’m sorry,” I begin. “I just wanted to be here with Nate so we could all address this head-on.” I remember this is not my meeting and stop talking.

Dillon Norway nods thoughtfully. “Well, okay. I suppose that’s fine. I’m assuming that’s fine with you as well, Nate?”

Nate nods. “Yes, sir.”

“I imagine that you both know why we’re here.”

“Yes,” Nate says. “And I would like to begin by apologizing to you. CJ and I have known each other for several years, and I didn’t realize I had to disclose that once I realized she was in this program.”

“CJ?”

“Cecily Jane.”

Dillon Norway tents his fingertips and leans them to his lips. “The issue is not one of you being acquainted.”

“Right. I understand. I assume you saw The Tonight Show the other night?”

“I didn’t actually,” Dillon Norway says. “But one of my colleagues brought it to my attention.”

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