Marriage For One

I cleared my throat before they started their usual back and forth. “If you happen to or decide to take coffee to Jack, don’t forget Raymond. Jack likes my—the lemon bars, and Raymond likes the triple chocolate brownies.”

Sally snorted. “Right. I give it a week before you cave.”

I gave her a murderous look. “Keep dreaming.”

An hour later, I wasn’t sure if I was more annoyed with myself because my eye kept wandering over to where Jack was standing, or if I was just annoyed with him for breaking my focus at work. I decided to head to Sally’s place so I could cook us dinner as a thank you for letting me stay with her.

The second I stepped outside, my heart started pounding in my chest. Jack straightened up the moment he saw me. I stood just a few feet away from him as we studied each other. If he had walked forward and said something, I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done. Maybe, like Sally had said, I would have caved, but he didn’t. So, I did…sort of, still leaving a healthy amount of space between us, enough for four people to easily walk through, actually.

“What are you doing here, Jack?” I asked, raising my voice just a little.

“Wanted to see you.”

I opened my arms at my sides. “Now you did. Goodbye.”

He was about to take a step forward when a group of girls walked between us, successfully blocking him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked when it was just us again.

“Oh, perfect. Just perfect. Having the best time of my life.”

“I meant your head, your nose. Are you still getting dizzy? Headaches? You look tired.”

I tilted my head to the side, narrowing my eyes. “Thank you. As you know, it’s my default to look bad. You look like hell yourself.”

His jaw clenched, a muscle ticking visibly. “You need to take better care of yourself,” he forced out, his eyes blazing, as if he had any right to be angry with me.

“No.” My eyes still on him, I shook my head. “Don’t do that. You don’t get to act like you’re worried about me, Jack.” I looked to the left and then the right. “There is no one around who knows us, so you can stop the pretending.”

We studied each other in silence. I wasn’t sure if this would be the last time I’d ever see him. He could just wake up the next day and say, The hell with it, she isn’t—or, even worse—she wasn’t worth the trouble anyway. I had my fun with the business deal marriage. Now it’s time to move on. The thought alone scared the bejesus out of me, but I wasn’t ready to ignore everything and act like he hadn’t hurt me either. Therein lay our problem.

“Go home, Jack,” I said quietly. “You have no reason to be here.”

In the great scheme of things, we were nothing more than two people who had passed each other while walking through their lives. Couples broke up every day, and we were not special in that regard either. You cried yourself to sleep then woke up and went to work. When you repeated the cycle enough times, one day you woke up and suddenly it didn’t matter all that much. New people walked alongside you and eventually you forgot the ones you left behind.

When he didn’t deny what I’d said, I let out a long breath, looked at his eyes for a moment longer to remember, and finally turned to leave.

“I don’t have a home to go back to anymore, Rose.”

I stopped, but didn’t look at him.

“You’re my home,” he finished.

My eyes filling with tears, I walked away.

And he let me.

So we ended as we’d begun, nothing but two complete strangers.

Closer to midnight, after Sally had gone to bed and I was getting ready to start another sleepless night, I opened the curtains and the window so I could breathe in the cold air. Someone was walking across the street and for a moment I thought it was Jack, but then he walked under the light and I realized it was just a stranger.

For a moment I was shocked, why would it hurt not to see him? Why would I be disappointed?

During the week, he came to the coffee shop around closing time twice. He leaned against his car, then when Ray left he leaned against the lamp pole. Every time he showed up he made it harder to remember why I was so angry at him. He paced and waited. When I came out with Sally but didn’t stop to talk to him, he left.

Then he disappeared for several days.

It was the eighth day of our break up and we were getting ready to close when he showed up again. All three of us were in the front. Owen and I were clearing out the dishes on the counter and taking them back into the kitchen, and Sally was stacking up clean coffee mugs and the to-go cups next to the espresso machine. We only had two customers in the shop, and both of them were regulars working on their laptops.