Page 22 of The Fake Date Agreement

Yes, we could have this conversation in my room, but I don’t want him in there again.

We had sex in my bed, and he told me he loved me numerous times there. I didn’t want a place I regard as my sanctuary to be where I have confirmation that my boyfriend of six years has been sleeping with another woman. This conversation is happening in the common room with a large wooden dining table and cozy, brightly-colored sectional sofas in front of a television hung on the wall.

As I wait, I pace from the dining table to the sofas, then to the window overlooking the quad, biting my already bitten nails to the quick as nerves eat me alive.

A small sound pulls my gaze from the window.

Marc stands in the doorway, hands stuffed in his pockets. He’s handsome, as usual, in blue jeans and a cream-colored sweater. His expression is one I’ve never seen before—closed off and so serious—and my heart clenches.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he says.

I cross the room to pick up the glass of water I poured to take my thyroid meds. If I drink from it, I’ll choke, so I hold it for something to do, conscious I should be screaming at him or demanding answers. Yet I look at him, and I just want to cry.

“Do you love her?” The words slip out before I can swallow them.

It’s not the question I should want answered first, but it’s the one I need. It’s stupid to hope the answer is yes. If he fell in love and couldn’t bring himself to tell me, it would still hurt, but not half as much as knowing he was screwing behind my back for the sake of it.

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

He doesn’t know?

“Do you love me?”

His pause is even longer, and it breaks my heart when he says, “I don’t know that either.”

Surely, that’s something you know, right? I understand confusion about liking or not liking someone, depending on if they’d done something to piss you off that day. But love and hate? Those are pretty clear-cut, at least in my mind.

“I mean, you’re there,” he says vaguely.

“I’mthere?”

“We’ve been together for a while,” he says, making me wish he had stuck with vague.

I struggle to believe how, in a few short words, he’s reduced me to a pair of old slippers. The girl he was with must be brand new Uggs, fresh from the store.

“Did you sleep with her?”

Marc stares down at me.

The longer he doesn’t answer, the more I hate myself for asking at all.

“More than once?”

“I’m not sure you want me to answer that, Tobie.”

“Because it’s been going on for a while, right?” My smile is bitter. “So long you were perfectly comfortable taking her to a hockey game.”

He says nothing.

“You don’t know if you love her, but you wanted to sleep with her and throw away six years with me, right?”

“Tobie…” He takes a step forward.

I step back, my fingers freezing as I curl them around the glass in my hand.

And I realize he hasn’t really answered any of my questions. That’s become a recent habit of his. Because it’s something he picked up while studying for his LSATs, and lawyers dodge direct questions, or he doesn’t care enough to give me the answers I need.

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