Page 64 of Fight

I roll up my sleeves. I guess we’re hashing out our shit now. So much for having a decent time.

My voice hardens. “We’re for sure not sleeping together, but honestly… I don’t know… I don’t think I can be friends with somebody who…” I rub the back of my neck. Damn it, I’m mad at her for lying to me. “Why did you sleep with me, Scottie? Why the fuck did you do that?”

She furrows her brow. “What do you mean?”

“And why did you fuck Dave? I mean,thatguy? Seriously? Of all people?—”

She stands with her arms open wide and drops her jaw. “What are you talking about!? I never slept with Dave! He’s married!”

I snap. “And so are you apparently!”

She flinches as if I slapped her, closing her mouth and letting her hands fall at her sides.

“Yeah…” I say. “I know about that.”

“I didn’t sleep with Dave,” she says, barely above a whisper.

“I saw him leave your apartment after he spent the night? You really think I’ll believe you two weren’t fucking?”

She takes a giant step forward, attempting to get into my space. She’s close enough that at her short stature she has to slant her chin up to face me. “He didn't spend the night!” She pokes her chest. “My car had a flat on my way home from working third shift! He picked me up and dropped me off at my house. He only was inside because he basically invited himself in!”

I level her with a glare. “But youaremarried.”

She shrinks away from me, curling her arms around her stomach. “But it’s not what you think.”

I throw up my hands and walk to the other side of the room. “Well, Ithinkyou’re fucking married! What else is there?!”

“It’s not a real marriage.”

I laugh sarcastically. “I saw the wedding announcement in your town’s newspaper, darlin’. It’s real.”

“I’m trying to get a divorce.”

Crossing my arms, I ask, “Did you serve him papers?”

“No, but?—”

I scoff, and spin on my heel. What game does she think she’s playing?

She stomps her foot like a toddler. “Would you just shut up and listen? It was a lavender marriage! I didn’t have a choice. The only way to leave the marriage was to leave home. I left everything I had!”

When I face her, she’s wearing a scowl. “A lavender what? You both looked pretty fuckin’ happy in that photo.”

“My husband is gay!”

I throw up my arms. “Oh, is he now?”

She continues despite my obvious doubt. “It’s a fucked-up form of conversion therapy. I come from a fundamentalist community, where, when a man is found to be, or, hell, even suspected to be gay, the church intervenes. They choose a woman in the congregation to be chosen for what they refer to as apurity bridewith the hope that the man’sevil inclination will pass”—she gestures using finger quotes—“once they’ve been with an attractive woman.”

Is she serious?I shake my head. “No way.”

“Jonathan and I are friends, we’ve been friends since we were little. His parents were like my parents. We saved each other. I love him, but not in the way a wife loves her husband. I begged him to come with me, we fought about this for months. I stayed for as long as I did because I loved him, but eventually, I couldn’t wait anymore. I had to leave. And so I did. Alone.”

“Why would anyone agree to that?”

She covers her face with both hands, then drops them. “A few reasons. If we chose each other, then I wouldn’t be given toanother member of The Fold—that’s what it was referred to as, like a shepherd’s fold—including the elders or council members. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t. The other women never spoke poorly of their husbands. The only thing they talked about were children or housework, but the girls who were given to the older men always looked dead behind the eyes.”

This kind of thing doesn’t really happen, right? This sounds like a cult.

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