Page 68 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
That’s the question I’m most obsessed with answering.
My wife left me. She ran from me.
She’s here with me, weeping, yelling. I can see how much I hurt her, and I have no idea what I did.
I’m certain I didn’t have an affair. I cannot imagine ever wanting to touch another woman. She makes me ache. Even in my present state, my desire for her is intense. Nearly all-consuming.
Even without memories, with an injury, my need for her feels like the most essential thing.
“I am sorry,” I say. “I’m not a good husband, clearly.”
“No, you aren’t,” she says, her voice watery.
“Why did you marry me?”
Her shoulders sag and she turns to face me. “I didn’t know better. I thought that our attraction was everything. I thought it was enough. I thought it was what made us…us. And my family couldn’t tell me I was being silly, even though I think my mom wanted to.”
“Tell me,” I say. “Tell me how we…met.”
“I was working at an event.”
She has mentioned that before, but it doesn’t feel right to me. She tells me again, though. She was wearing black, waiting tables. I approached her and took the tray from her.
No. I didn’t approach her.
I close my eyes. She’s sitting in Trafalgar Square, on the edge of the fountain and she’s wearing a bright yellow dress. Her long legs are stretched out in front of her, as one of her friends tells her a joke. Then a man—a boy really—sitting to her left leans in toward her and I fantasize about killing him.
I remember the fantasy. Vividly.
It makes me think I’ve seen someone struck in that manner before, it’s so vivid, and I know at the time I felt no remorse for wishing death on him. I’m not sure I feel any remorse now.
But she’s moved on in the story, to me taking her home.
“I thought that you’d send me away that night but you didn’t. Then I thought you were being nice because I was a virgin.” She blushes just slightly when she says that. I feel a deep sense of possessiveness, knowing I was her first, and I don’t think that was the point of the story.
She clears her throat. “You let me stay, and then you took me shopping. You took me to Trafalgar Square.”
It’s so odd that she says that considering my memory and I wonder if somehow my mind has put two different events together.
“And then?” I ask, desperate for more.
“You took me back to your place again. I had to text my roommate and tell her. I mean, if I’m honest I texted her and bragged because she was also a virgin and we’d both sort of started despairing of ever seeing a naked penis.”
She laughs ruefully, but I’m only filled with curiosity. “Why hadn’t you?”
“What?”
“Why had you not been with a man? It isn’t because you aren’t appealing.”
“I was too busy.”
“You were busy the night you met me, according to you, and yet you made time for sex. So why not before?”
She looks away from me. “It was love at first sight for me, I fear.” She blinks. “Not really. You can’t love someone on sight, that’s all chemicals and pheromones and all of that, but it felt like it at the time. It felt like something bigger than myself and I… I wanted that.” She pauses for a moment. “You’ve never asked me about this before.”
“I haven’t?”
“No. I’ve told you some of this, I’m sure, but you never really asked. When we first got together I chattered at you constantly, and I think you found it amusing but…you weren’t really asking for my life story. When you met my parents—”
