Page 71 of Love in Focus

Before I can even process what he’s doing, James goes to the kitchen and comes back with two glasses and an all-too-familiar bottle.

My stomach turns. “Isn’t that the wine we bought the last time we went to Napa with your parents?” I wince, thinking about the post I had to delete from my Instagram.

A pained look also flashes across James’s face. “I know. I couldn’t bring myself to drink it after…” He trails off and clears his throat, before trying again. “What better time to drink it than now, right?”

I smile tightly and accept a glass of wine from James. But I don’t make any real move to drink it. And neither does he.

“So…” James settles down on the couch beside me with his own glass in one hand. Thankfully, he maintains a careful distance, probably to avoid making things even weirder. Compared to how close we sat together in this living room in the past, the way we’re sitting now feels strange, like we’ve fallen into some kind of parallel universe.

“So?” I set my wine down on the coffee table.

“Are you…” He laughs awkwardly and continues, “Still with that girl? Celeste, right? Your college ex. I was surprised to see her at the New Year’s party. I thought she moved to Korea, or at least, that’s what I remember you telling me.”

“No,” I reply. I don’t elaborate.

“Oh, okay. Daphne and I were seeing each other, but it was… a bit of a roller coaster. I learned the hard way that I’m not ready for another relationship.”

My ears perk up with surprise, but I pretend not to be interested. Instead, I keep my eyes focused on my hands and say, “And you’re telling me this why?”

James shrugs. “I thought you’d want to know.”

I don’t respond. James has dated me long enough to know all my tells, so he correctly interprets my silence as curiosity.

“I regret it, you know,” he continues, his normally loud and confident voice coming out so quietly that it gives me pause. For once, he almost soundsvulnerable. “Breaking up with you, I mean. I was… scared. After we got engaged, everything got so serious. Marriage, kids, all of that was suddenly around the corner, like boom, boom, boom. I missed the days when we could have fun without thinking about all that serious stuff.”

“Youproposed to me, James,” I reply. “Youdecided to take the next step with me.”

“I know. But also, like, of course I did! The one thing I was sure about was my feelings about you. Everything else, though…” He sighs. “In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t called things off when I did.”

A thrill of satisfaction runs through me. But I keep my voice low and steady when I ask, “Then why did you?”

The day we broke up, I walked away from this condo without getting a straight answer from him. I justletthat slide, allowing James to tear my life apart without even knowing why. Granted, if I’m being fair to myself, I was in a lot of shock and pain. But today, I’m completely calm. Keeping my eyes fixed on his, I cross my arms across my chest and wait.

James sighs again, and nervously says, “Look, this isn’t how I wanted this conversation to go. I mean, come on, you’re thirty now, too, so you know what it’s like… it’s terrifying…”

He can’t even meet my gaze. In fact, he’s staring down at the floor, doing everything in his power tonotmake eye contact with me. I’m hit with the memory of how he acted the Monday after the breakup. Like I was invisible. Before, I thought it was some superiority complex, an arrogant display of “I’m perfectly fine without you.” But now, in my much calmer state, I realize he’s not trying so hard to avoid eye contact because he thinks he’s better than me.

He’s avoiding it because he’shiding something.

I’m suddenly reminded of how Daphne glared at me in the printer room a couple weeks after James’s and my breakup. How, unlike James, she didn’t even try to talk to me at the holiday party. She didn’t act like she was embarrassed or ashamed to be someone’s fast, messy rebound. She treated me likeIwas an interloper. Intheirrelationship.

“Did you sleep with Daphne?” I ask. “While we were still together. Is that why you wanted to break up?”

James’s eyes widen. But he doesn’t say anything, keeping his gaze fixed on the floor.

That’s all the answer I need.

Anger rolls and crackles through my chest. I get to my feet and explode, like I did the day he broke up with me. “You know what, James, first of all, fuck you.” My voice comes out strained with pain and disbelief. “Really, howdareyou get engaged to me and then just… cheat like I meant nothing to you? If you were that unsatisfied in our relationship, why couldn’t you tell me without wasting seven years of my life?”

James gets on his feet, too. He finally meets my gaze, and I’m taken aback by how there’s not even a single bit of remorse in his face. He looksangry.

“Because I still loved you!” he yells. “I was just…scared. I only started seeing Daphne as a way to blow off steam so I could stay withyou. But then one day, she asked me to choose. And at the time, she seemed like the more fun, less stressful option.”

I step back, baffled at his logic. While I was changing myself, making myself smaller and more palatable to keep the peace between us, he was…fucking someone else? And then he choseherover me, when I was the one with the ring?

“Why didn’t youtell meyou were struggling so much with all the pressure?” I ask through gritted teeth. “We could have gone to couples counseling.”

He scoffs. “And what, havetwotherapy people breathingdown my neck? You’re a fucking relationship advice columnist. Do you not realize how intimidating that is? If I told you everything that I was feeling, you’d probably try to therapize me like I’m one of your readers. And then you’d get an actual professional for backup to basically repeat everything you told me.”

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