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“I’m sorry, Sarah. My heart pushes me one way even as my brain pushes me another.”
“Jack, I don’t know anymore. Is this how it’s going to be with our marriage?”
I stare at her, slightly in disbelief. “What, you’re not just calling it off right here and now?”
She paces back and forth, setting her bag down. “I don’t know. What even are we?”
“Engaged, last time I check.”
“Yeah, but, like, that’s just some legal mumbo jumbo. We aren’t in love, Jack. We’re just... business partners. Using marriage as a tool to solidify a business agreement. Just something to help one another out.”
Part of me wanted to speak up and say, then she shouldn’t care. I didn’t betray her love. But I knew it wasn’t that simple.
It was for business. The marriage was all a sham. But it was still a marriage. And up until Lily entered my life, I was trying to convince myself that we could work it into something that resembled love, building off the shared values we did have.
That fantasy had gotten even more impossible when she spotted me cheating on her.
“Well, I’m not making excuses,” I say. “I’m not going to pretend you didn’t see what you saw. I’m not going to pretend like, I don’t know, I was giving her CPR with my tongue.”
Lily is silent through all of this. She feels as guilty as I do, and doesn’t just want to run away from the scene. She has her head in her hands, rubbing her temples, trying to think of the impossible thing to say that would make everything all right.
Sarah takes a deep breath. “I’m going to say I’m thankful that you’re honest about it. A lesser man would feed me lies on top of the breach of trust. But I guess it’s just a wake-up call about what this all is.”
“What are we going to do about the engagement?”
“I told you, I don’t know. Logic and business sense tells me I should just ignore this. Pretend like our engagement and marriage is actually one of love. Maybe take this as permission to go find my own lover. But I don’t know if I want to be part of that. It all seems like a bridge too far, Jack.”
I nod along. “You’re your own woman, Sarah. Whatever you decide to do, I’m not going to protest it.”
There is a part of me that wanted to be the one to break it off. That now that I had an inkling of what love actually is, I couldn’t just use marriage as a tool. It was something that was meant for love.
But I knew how much it meant to Sarah. She didn’t deserve to be in that situation any longer than she had to be.
Sarah picked her bag up. “I’m going to head to bed. I want to run far, far away from here, but I don’t want to give off the idea that anything’s gone wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” Lily says, finally piping up from her silence. “I’m sorry I’m putting you both through this.”
“You did nothing but act on how you naturally feel, hon,” Sarah replies. “This is all just a complicated mess. A better world wouldn’t put us through it.”
Sarah heads off toward one of my guest rooms to leave me and Lily all alone.
Lily has tears in her eyes. I rush to her side, pulling her head against my chest. “Don’t cry. I never want to see you cry.”
“I just don’t get it,” she says, the sounds muffled by my chest. “Why are you two even getting married?”
“For business,” I say, something I’ve repeated way too many times.
“It’s the twenty-first century. Can’t you just go to a lawyer? Draw up some paperwork? And work like that? That’s how you do business, Jack. You don’t have to have a wedding for all of that.”
“I’m afraid we do in this case,” I say, stroking her hair gently.
“That’s absurd.”
“No, I mean it.”
“Explain yourself, then. I’m not getting why you’re so intent on marrying Sarah. You two clearly don’t love one another. You literally floated the idea of you two having side pieces, and that’s not even for some kink or something. It’s just you two being apathetic to the other cheating.”
“Maxwell Perry is fifty-four years old. He could well live for another fifty years, if not longer.”
