Chapter 3

He stayed on his knees on the floor and talked for a long time.

In our second year together, my company sent me to Singapore for eighteen months. He stayed behind in Toronto.

"We barely saw each other that whole time. I'm a man. Some things, you just need."

He said Mia had been an intern on his team. Twenty-three. She was the one who asked him out for coffee.

"The first time, I was drunk. I thought she was you. It was just that once, and she got pregnant with Theo."

"You know how my parents are. They kept pushing. I brought up marriage once, and you said it scared you."

I didn't respond. I'd never told him why it scared me. When I was eight, my father moved out, and my mother raised me on her own. He knew that. He knew I didn't want to talk about marriage. But he never said, "Then we'll take it slow." He just said, "I get it," swallowed the rest, and went and married someone else.

"Mia was pregnant, and her family was pushing too. So I... I made it official with her first."

"So you married her," I said.

He didn't make a sound.

"But Cece, it's you I love. With her, it's just responsibility."

He reached for me. I stepped back. My stomach turned.

The man in front of me was a stranger.

During those eighteen months in Singapore, he video-called every single day. He told me everything: where he went, who he saw, what time he got home. Any time he could scrape together a few days off, he flew out. One Valentine's Day he had a 39-degree fever and landed on one hour of sleep anyway. He stood outside my building, pale as paper, handed me a gift, and said he missed me.

I'd held on to that memory for six years.

That same year, he slept with someone else, married her, and became a father.

For six years after that, every "late night at the office," every "business trip," had been a trip home to them. And at the start of this year, Mia got pregnant again.

The happiness I thought I had was thinner than a soap bubble.

"Cece..." He was crying so hard he could barely breathe. "Please. I can't lose you."

I looked at him. It was almost funny. "You still want to be with me?"

He nodded frantically.

"And your wife and kid?"

"Mia and I worked it out a long time ago. We have an open marriage. She doesn't care what I do. As long as you don't bother her or make things hard for her, she won't make trouble for us."

I laughed out loud.

"An open marriage, Nathan." I shook his hand off my arm. "You'd use even that as a fig leaf. A wife and a girlfriend, and you won't give up either one."

"Get out."

I grabbed the ashtray off the coffee table and smashed it on the floor. Glass exploded everywhere. He flinched back. I used that second to shove him out the door and lock it behind him.

He pounded on the door, his voice rising and falling.

Ten-something minutes later, it went quiet.

Then, flatly, through the door: "Cece, Theo's running a fever. I have to go."

After that, nothing.

I stood there, burning up. The thermometer read 40.0. I swallowed two pills, wrapped myself in a blanket, and slept on the couch all night.

When I woke up, it was morning. His side of the bed hadn't been touched. He never came back.

The fever had eased a little, but my head was the clearest it had been in years. I was done sinking any deeper into this triangle.

I opened Messenger and sent Mia one line:

"Did you know Nathan has someone else on the side? Let's meet."

A long while later, she replied with one word: "Fine."