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“He’s doing,” she corrected. “Doing the best he can.”
“You’re right.” I regarded her, realizing that even though I’d known her for only a few months, even though our relationship had been predicated on a lie, she’d seen me at my worst and she was still here. “Thank you,” I said, quickly—it felt urgent, up here among all these stories, before we had to go back downstairs to the real world. “For everything, in the past few months.”
She smiled, calm, unafraid. “You’re welcome. You know, if you talked this much all the time, our lives might be a little easier. I might understand you a little better.”
“Ha. Don’t get used to it.”
“I’d like to,” she said, then stood, fast, embarrassed.
I busied myself putting things back into the trunk. We didn’t have long before I was discharged. I knew that and she knew that, but we’d been playing married all day and there was permanence in the air. Little comments, like when she was playing with JJ, Hailey had asked if there would be a little Cassie or Luke in the future.
The ease of her taking my hand before I saw my dad, the ease of kissing her on the cheek when I was proud of her, my funny, creative, fake wife.
I knew it was all an illusion, a life we’d dreamed up out of desperation, but in that moment it felt real.
