The First Husband

I thought I felt it then, just the softest tension—his lips against my cheek starting to release. But then, almost as quickly, he was back with me, lips pressing against my skin.

“That was nice of you.”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” I said. “Jesse needed to get into Boston for a meeting with his dissertation adviser.”

“It was a big deal,” he said. “Aren’t you on deadline for your latest ‘Checking Out’?”

Another reminder that I was on deadline—Peter anxiously reminding me himself via phone and e-mail, at increasingly frequent intervals. A looming deadline not only to turn in the new column, but to make a decision as to where I wanted to travel next. The answer no closer to coming to me.

But I just smiled and shrugged. “It was kind of fun, actually,” I said. “I saw a little of the town. Got to hang with the twins, and see their school. Plus, I met Gia.”

This time I knew I wasn’t imagining his tension.

“You met Gia?” he said.

I nodded. “In the breezeway. We ended up talking for a little while and she seemed lovely to me. A little like she could give Martha Stewart a run for her money, but I actually thought maybe I made a first friend here. I know that sounds like I’m in high school, but it felt like I knew her or something. She just seemed . . . lovely to me.”

“You mentioned . . .”

“Is she not?”

“No,” he said. “She is. She’s lovely.”

I looked up, met his eyes. “Right, so I’m trying to figure out how I offended her. All I know is she walked away from me quickly after I told her we had gotten married. Why would she care about that? You dated in high school.”

Griffin closed his eyes, slightly shaking his head. “Shit,” he said.

“What? She can’t still be into you after all this time. That’s crazy. I mean, I’ll never get over you, but . . .”

Griffin opened his eyes, looking at me, not smiling at my joke. Or, for that matter, at me.

“Annie,” he said, “I never said that Gia was just my high school girlfriend. I never said that to you.”

“What do you mean? Yes, you did.”

I racked my brain for the information I was holding on to, until I recalled the conversation I’d been thinking of, the one in which he mentioned her: the two of us sitting next to each other at the hotel bar, my fingers on his half of the tattoo, Griffin talking about the night he got it.

“You said you got that tattoo at eighteen, right?”

He nodded. “Right.”

Then I started to get it, what apparently I’d missed. “You and Gia were together longer than that?” I said.

He nodded again. “Right.”

“How much longer than that?” I said.

He looked behind himself toward the workers, a few of whom were looking our way, waiting for him. “Maybe we should go outside for a minute. Let’s go outside and have a real discussion about this.”

“How much longer, Griffin?”

He looked right at me, looked right into my eyes. “Thirteen years,” he said.

“Thirteen years? ”

I was dumbstruck. I’d always hated that expression—still hate it—someone being dumbstruck. And, yet, in writing a travel column, one would be surprised how many times Peter thought it was appropriate for me to be so: dumbstruck at the Burj Al Arab hotel, dumbstruck at the Big Ben. Dumbstruck at the Milan Duomo. I never was—or I never wrote that I was, at least. But standing in front of my new husband and learning he had been with someone before me for close to a decade and a half, I wasn’t sure how else to articulate the feeling. No other word seemed to do it.

“Look, it’s all a little complicated,” he said. “And I really didn’t want to burden you with it, for all the reasons I told you in California. I don’t think it’s helpful in a new relationship to get into it all too much.”