2 #3
I snort. “Making a living is a stretch,” I tell him.
“Sure, I can charge a hefty amount for my services, which helps. Even if the average American can’t afford flights and hotels and wedding planners, the people who can don’t have any real sense of the economy for the working class.
I charge to make up for the lack of opportunities. ”
At the surface of a memory, I grip his arm.
“Once I worked on a wedding where, after a meeting, the groom sent me home with five hundred dollars for an Uber to take me just a few blocks away. When he saw my wide eyes, he asked if it wasn’t enough and threw in an extra hundred.
It’s the rich that make you wonder why God left you to scrape by and earn your living while others got to eat four-dollar avocados every day. ”
Another laugh. Another ding.
“So if this isn’t making a living, what are you going to do once the jobs run dry?” Anders asks.
“Before that happens, I should have saved enough for my real goal—I’m going to buy into this animal shelter I’ve cared about since I was a teenager.
The owner’s retiring soon, and if I don’t come up with my share in time, someone else will take it.
And that place means everything to me.” I sigh dramatically.
“The owner promised me I’d have time, but now he’s retiring earlier than expected.
I have a few months to come up with my share before someone else swoops in and crushes my soul. ”
“What happens if he ends up taking the other person’s offer?”
“I walk into the ocean, never to be found.”
He chuckles again.
At least I’m funny. Something positive to balance out the fact that I’m a twenty-eight-year-old two-time divorcée with no real job, or money.
“Right, you were married twice?” he asks.
I blink, but I’m sure I said that part in my head.
“Yeah.” I nod. “The first time, I was freshly seventeen and desperate to care for my little sister and give her a home. He was eighteen, which wasn’t really an adult, but he had a job and an apartment, which was more than I had.
So I married him, mistook security for love.
He left me for one of his classmates, and, luckily, it got annulled because of my age. ”
“Seventeen is too young to have so much on your shoulders,” Anders says so quietly I’m not sure he meant to say it aloud.
I shrug. “After that, I had a string of bad relationships until I got married again.”
Anders asks, “What was that jerk like?”
It makes me smile. “Ah. This one hurt the most. During one of my visits to my sister at college, I met her TA. He was sweet and kind. I loved him, really, no naivete about it. He never hurt me, not till the end. Married me because we were two years in, and it was the next step given the time we’d spent together.
A good guy. He would have stayed with me forever—unwillingly resented me for it, but he would have stayed.
All while being in love with his coworker. ”
Anders moves a little closer. “What happened?”
“I gave him an out. I was too embarrassed to say I knew he didn’t want me, so I let him catch me making out with one of his friends.
You’d think someone wouldn’t be relieved to find his wife hooking up with someone else, but he was.
I hated him for it, a bit. I wish he’d just never married me, left me himself. ”
I wish someone had stepped in and told him that it wasn’t right.
Subconsciously, it’s probably why I jumped on the chance to wreck a wedding.
It’s so much worse, being hurt by the person you love most rather than a stranger.
I know so well what it’s like to feel trapped in a place not good for either party.
“They both sound like assholes,” Anders says, rubbing circles over my jeans. “I hope they’re living mediocre lives. Nothing too horrendous, not life-threatening, but incredibly annoying. That they live dealing with a thousand inconveniences that make it impossible to have a good day.”
A laugh tears out of me. “Like always stepping on a wet floor with socks on.”
He nods solemnly. “And consistently hitting the corner of the dresser when they walk by.”
“Paying for a commercial-less subscription and still getting commercials,” I say.
“Always feeling like they have to sneeze but never being able to.”
“Evil!” I say. We both laugh, and it feels like the last of the poison has seeped out of me.
Anders is a perfect stranger, yet weirdly it feels safe here, letting it all out.
He doesn’t know me well enough to judge me, so if he does, it won’t hurt as bad.
But the way he watches me, his gaze piercing and fully focused on me, like he has to make sure not to miss a single word, makes me believe he wouldn’t judge me at all.
“So,” I finish, “isn’t my life so bleak?”
He smooths my hair, his hand moving until it’s holding my cheek.
“It sounds like you’ve had some hard times.
” I nod, a little embarrassment creeping its way up my neck.
“And yet here you are, undefeated by it all. Able to smile, make jokes, and comfort a perfect stranger. Someone who dedicates her life to animals and her family. Life is bleak but you seem bright.”
“Oh,” I say, and though I felt steady this entire interaction, his words snap something inside me, and I burst into tears. “Sorry, oh God, sorry!”