Page 80 of The Love Losers

There have been some developments.

Oh, do tell?

I’m marrying a woman I want to marry.

Dammit, Anthony. Not again.

My bedroom smells like Rosie.

I spend almost all night awake, soaking in her scent and the memory, half-heartedly palming my dick, because nothing could feel like she does. Also because my bed is very clearly broken.

For me, desire has never been an unanchored thing—it’s about wanting a person,likinga person—so it’s been months since sex has mattered to me. But now I’m filled with a hollow ache. A need that lights every moment.

I want Rosie.

Ineedher.

It’s insane, absolutely divorced from any sense of reason or logic, but I don’t just need her to marry me. I want to call her my wife.

So at the breakfast table the next morning, I ask my mother if I can have the Smith family ring.

She refused to give it to me for Nina.

Maybe it’s perverse, to want the ring attached to my parents’ miserable marriage, but it’s a family heirloom—a symbol. And I want to change what it means to be a Smith.

My mother watches me shrewdly as she spreads marmalade on her toast. Finally, she says, “Yes, you can have it. It never brought me any luck, but your grandmother loved your grandfather well enough. I suppose two out of three isn’t bad.”

“You approve?” I ask, not wanting to care, and caring anyway. My mother is a difficult woman, but I’ve never doubted her love for me and Emma. She’d do anything, literally anything, to push us onto what she sees as the right path. It can be an obnoxious quality. Still, she’s right more often than she’s wrong.

“Rosie’s young and willful.” My mother pauses for long enough for peak drama before adding, “and probably exactly what you need. You have my approval and my ring.” Then she shocks me by taking my hand from across the table and squeezing it. “I’m proud of you, Anthony.”

“For finding a woman who’s willing to be a substitute bride?”

“For letting someone care about you.”

An ache pulses in my chest. I’m tempted to bat away her remark, but it’s an old impulse, and I don’t do it. Besides, I know she’s right. Rosie does care about me. She challenges me to push past all the boundaries I’ve raised for myself—and I’ve tried to do the same for her, because I care about her too. It’s a bone-deep kind of caring that’s staggering, given that we’ve only known each other for such a short time.

In a screwed up way, I’d thought Nina was safe. I’d never felt lost to my feelings with her. I’d certainly never stayed awake all night because I was thinking about her or worrying about her.

So I just nod and take a bite of my toast, precluding further conversation about emotions.

“Emma is arriving today,” my mother says after a moment.

“I know. She texted me.”

“I hope you two get along this time.”

“We’ll do fine as long as she doesn’t disrespect my fiancée in front of me.”

I’m referring to the second-to-last time I saw my sister—at a dinner party at my house six months ago. She’d taken the opportunity to tell me my fiancée was a terrible person who was only interested in me for my money. She’d said it in front of Nina, who’d made the bold declaration that anything that was said to me could be said to her.

Nina had turned to me, her nails digging into my arm, and asked if I was going to let my sister disrespect her.

The answer was no. I might have suspected Emma was right, but she was still in the wrong. Our mother had been belittled in a million different ways by our father, and I wasn’t going to allow anyone to do that to my partner. So I’d asked Emma to leave, she’d saidgladly, and we’d barely spoken for months.

My mother smiles at me. “We both know Nina deserved it.”

“No. She didn’t deserve to be disrespected in her own home. No woman deserves that.”

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