Page 116 of The Man I Hate

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I’m ruined.”

He kissed me. “Well, at least you’re not alone.”

Braxton

Being confined to a home for an extended period of time wasn’t an easy thing to do. To keep from going bonkers, we each developed routines. Every afternoon, Anna visited with the neighbor across the street. Hap exercised four days a week. I alternated cardio and weight-training, seven days a week.

The three of us agreed on a day-to-day schedule. On Mondays, we binge watched 90 Day Fiancé. Tuesdays were reserved for various board games. Wednesdays were a free for all, with each of us doing whatever we preferred. Thursdays were consumed with a drive to nowhere, generally a cruise around Los Angeles Counties many neighborhoods, or to the Mexican border and back. Friday was movie night, alternating who was able to select the movie from week to week. On Saturdays we ordered groceries and watched random shows on Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. Each Sunday, Anna prepared a feast for a king, and we ate like royalty.

Knowing in advance what each day held allowed Hap to glide through the weeks without much to complain about. Anna seemed to be along for the ride, happy with whatever we were doing, as long as we were doing it as a family. Life was easy for me.

If Anna was happy, I was happy.

“What kind of dumb fuck would spend $150,000 to chat with a Russian chick online, and then claim he fell in love without ever actually talking to her on the phone or meeting her?” Hap asked during the commercial break.

“He thinks he fell in love with a chick,” I replied. “He’s talking to some 13-year-old boy in Moscow who’s posing as a girl. The kid probably makes 10 bucks a week working for the dating service, and they charge that guy in Las Vegas $2,000 a month to chat.”

Anna shoveled a fistful of popcorn into her mouth. “I think it’s funny that he only has one picture of her, he’s never met her, and he’s never spoken to her, but he claims he wants to propose to her.”

“Goes to show you how gullible people can be,” Hap said. “This guy’s an absolute imbecile.”

“I think it shows how much we all want to believe in love,” Anna offered.

The premise of the television show was simple. It followed various couples through the process of bringing someone they met over the internet into the United States on a K-1 Visa. The law required that they get married before the visa’s 90 days expired. At the end of 90 days if they weren’t married, the rejected lover had to go back to their country of origin, never to return again.

One of the men in the show’s current season was a retired computer tech from Las Vegas. He’d been chatting online with a Russian girl for seven years, spending $2,000 a month to subscribe to the chat service she used. He traveled to Russia three times to meet her, and on each occasion, she didn’t show up. He’d even booked a cruise with her and she failed to arrive, leaving him embarking on his vacation alone.

Despite all the warning signals, he was returning to Russia, hoping to meet her and propose marriage.

“This dumb fuck’s journey through Russia is like a compound bone fracture,” Hap said. “It’s gut-wrenching to see, but for some reason you can’t force yourself to look away.”

Anna shoved her hand deep into her bowl of popcorn. “It’s like a train wreck.”

I glanced at Anna, who was sitting beside me on the couch. Two months earlier, falling in love was incomprehensible. I tried to imagine it happening without meeting her. To chat online, develop a feel for who she was, and allow myself to become attached to her. To me, it made no sense, whatsoever.

Touching her. Feeling her skin against mine. Holding her in my arms. Seeing her smile when I spoke. The warmth I felt when she looked at me for answers, and the joy I saw in her eyes when I complimented her on yet another spectacular meal. All absent. The sensation that rushed through me when we kissed, non-existent.

I’d never felt such desire—or necessity—to have another person be part of my life. It was unimaginable to live a life without her in it.

“Anna,” I muttered.

She took a quick glance in my direction. “What?”

“I didn’t love her,” I said.

Her face washed with confusion. “What?”

“My first wife,” I said. “I never loved her.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Hap chimed. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I didn’t love her,” I said, glancing at Hap and then at Anna. “Now that I know what love is, I know I never lover her. This is a first for me. That’s all. No big deal.”

“Shut your pie hole, lovebird,” Hap said. “Show’s back on.”