Page 41 of Two Friends in Marriage
Claudia chuckles.
“What?”I’m on edge.
“It sounds funny when you say it like that.Most people are attracted to their spouses.”
“And most people don’t make marriage pacts during a pandemic, but here I am.”
“Well, what are the options?”she asks.
“I could tell him and he could reject me.Super awkward because we live together.”
“Or he could…not reject you.”
“I have no evidence he feels that way.”I pause.“Though to be fair, I’m sometimes clueless when it comes to such things.I don’t always notice.”
My skin heats at the thought of telling him, his slow smile as he kisses me…
“Besides,” I say, pushing aside that silly fantasy, “we’ve kissed.At the wedding, for starters—”
“When else did you kiss?”
“As, um, practice.Anyway, it didn’t do anything for me, though maybe it would be different now.Does that often happen?I have no idea.”
“You’re talking tome,” she says.
“Right.Yeah.”I just don’t know what to do.When the air conditioner stopped working, I sprang into action and managed it, and I didn’t mind.There was a clear problem to be solved, unlike now.Nothing seems clear.
“Is part of the issue,” she says gently, “that whenever this has happened in the past, you were in love?”
Yeah.Because, like sex, this sort of love wasn’t in my plans.I’d given up on it.
“Why is it so complicated?”I mutter.“I don’t love him like that, but I can feel stuff…changing.”
“Sometimes people fall in love after they get married.”
“But in those cases, they don’t usually know each other well beforehand, right?I met Evan over a decade ago.”I sigh.“What should I do?”
“This just started, right?Wait a few days and see if it lasts.Or if it changes.”
“Yes.That’s sensible.Sorry for talking about this so much.”
She waves this off.“What else is new with you?”
“Um, Max and Kim”—Claudia met them at the wedding—“came over, and they brought a cake shaped like a burger.Well, Kim picked it out.Max thought it looked appalling.”
“Do you like having in-laws?”
“Yeah, I kind of do.His parents brought a hundred dollars’ worth of food over the other weekend.”
She laughs.“So, you’re using them for food?”
“No!It’s not the monetary value; it’s having family who thinks of you enough to do such things.What it stands for.”It sounds cheesy when I put it like that, and I know they were thinking more of Evan than me.But still.
I’d heard of parents giving their adult children things they didn’t need, but it wasn’t something I experienced myself.Asian friends, in particular, might talk about how their parents were always trying to feed them and would bring food rather than saying “I love you.”
Both were completely outside my experience.
Somehow, the conversation segues into Claudia complaining about one of her coworkers.She says that when she mentioned this story to her sister, her sister suggested they go out, and Claudia rolled her eyes so hard that she feared she might have damaged them.
