Page 45 of Happy After All

Honestly, seeing him in movies doesn’t do him justice.

He’s not a great actor. He’s charismatic.

When he gets into casting rooms, he puts people under a spell. He’s better in rooms than he is on sets, and in all the time since I’ve seen him, I’d forgotten.

“I’m really excited to get to come out and help,” he says, sounding down to earth and accessible.

“Maybe you should tell us a little bit about yourself,” Reigna says.

“Well,” he says. “I live part-time in LA and part-time in Vancouver. Most of the movies I make are shot in Canada. I have two dogs.”

He hates dogs. Or he did when we were together. This makes me angrier than it should.

“And I live with my fiancée, Natalie.”

Natalieis not the woman he cheated on me with. For some reason, I thought his life had only gone on in terms of his career. I saw him taking off in Christmas films, and I actually haven’t thought about his personal life even a little. I don’t want to be with Christopher. At all.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m prepared to sit here and hear about Natalie.

“We’re expecting a baby in a couple of months.”

Something inside me breaks and drifts away. Like a piece of iceberg falling into the sea. Emotional climate change brought on by his presence that I can’t fight.

I knew he was out there living. I didn’t think about it. I was focused on myself and my new life. It never occurred to me he might get married. It never occurred to me he would be having a baby. He’s been building a career. He’s so much more successful than he was when we were together—why isn’t that all of it?

Why is there this too?

I can’t breathe past it.

Like magnets drawn to the pain he causes me, right in that moment, his eyes connect with mine.

Absurdly, Ifeelit, I know that he sees me. Even though I know we are just a small bubble to him on this outward-facing laptop, I know he sees me.

I willed him to look at me with the force of my reaction, even though it was entirely nonverbal, even though I was motionless.

We were together for so many years, and right now those years are larger than all the years since.

He clears his throat, and his eyes get a faraway look, and I can tell he’s focusing on the bigger picture now and pretending he didn’t see me.

“Wonderful!” Reigna says.

They continue to have light banter, and maybe I’m on another planet.

Maybe I’m dead.

I’m not certain.

I just know that my hands are sweaty, and my lips feel cold. As soon as the Zoom call ends, the meeting adjourns, and I stand up quickly, ready to leave. Needing to leave.

“Do you need to go now?” Sylvia asks. “I wanted to ask you about—”

“I have to go check on something back at the motel. There was a ... an electrical problem. In one of the rooms. Room thirty-two,” I say, because all I can think of right now is Nathan and the power strip. And that he almost kissed me. While Christopher has a whole baby on the way. I have nearly kissed Nathan once. At least in my mind.

I’m not sure what hurts about this. I just know that it does. It isn’t regret. I don’t want Christopher. I don’t want his life.

But it’s something. The feeling that I missed a step somewhere and I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to find it.

“Oh. Did you have the electrical redone when you did your remodel?”

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