The First Husband

“Like you don’t belong here?” she asked.

I shrugged. “A little like I may not belong anywhere.”

Jordan looked confused, but I wasn’t sure how to say it out loud so that it made more sense than that. I was just becoming keenly aware in all the movement in my life recently—all the movement forever, really—I’d never stopped long enough to know what was going to make me happy. To know the difference between moving around and getting somewhere. And now that I had come to a full stop, what if I didn’t have the tools to hold on to it—something like stability, like happiness—even if I wanted to?

“So,” Jordan said. “Here’s the other thing maybe you can help me wrap my head around. How does the girl who goes to Williams-Sonoma seven times before purchasing a coffeepot end up married to someone whose middle name she doesn’t even know?”

“Griffin doesn’t have a middle name.”

“That you know,” she said.

That made me laugh, for real this time. I started wiping at my tears, trying to pull it back together.

“You’ve got no one to blame but yourself,” I said. “You’re the one who told me to be the opposite of myself.”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

I looked at her, dazed. The basis of the whole new me, the advice that I was certain was going to save my life, and she didn’t even remember giving it.

“That is going to kind of hurt your credibility for a while,” I said.

“Let me just ask you one more question then,” she said. “Do you love him?”

I didn’t have to pause, not even for a second.

“Yes,” I said. “Very much.”

At the end of everything I told her, there was also that. Maybe I had fallen into this life on some kind of impulse, resulting from my last one falling so stupendously apart, resulting from my feeling like I had something to prove in the aftermath of that. But there was this too. I loved Griffin. With all of my heart. However I had gotten here, I felt that in my core. Which immediately made me feel better.

But then Jordan pulled her hat down lower on her head, shielding her eyes.

“Then if that’s true, or you think that that’s true, you’re going to have to work really hard to hear this,” she said. “You need to leave him.”

“Excuse me? Did you hear what I just said?”

“Did you hear what you just said?” she asked. “This isn’t the right life for you, Annie. Stuck in the middle of nowhere. Stuck anywhere. You need freedom. And lots of it.”

“Says who?”

“Everyone!”

“Maybe everyone should spend more than ten minutes inside of my life before making that assessment,” I said. “Maybe freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”

She tilted her head. “Did you really just quote Janis Joplin?”

“Maybe!” I said, gathering steam. And volume.

In response, Jordan got calmer and quieter, like she was talking to a crazy person, like that crazy person was me.

“All I’m saying is this is a reversible error,” she said. “You can get it annulled. I can do that for you.”

I shook my head, feeling myself getting mad. “I really can’t believe you,” I said.

“Why are you so defensive, then?” she asked. “If I’m not at least a little right, there’s no reason to be defensive.”

“You’re wrong,” I said, standing up, anxious to get away from her before it was too late, knowing we were about to go there. To the place where we both went too far and were inevitably sorry later.

“Where are you going?” she said.