Page 98 of The True Love Experiment

When I meet my best friend’s eyes, I feel the tight knot of sadness and regret loosen.

I am here for you, her eyes say.

I know and I love you, mine say back.

I mean, hers say,I am here for you tonight for dinner, and you owe me.

Your husband is a riot.

Her gaze turns wry.He complained all day.

River complaining about being social! I do not believe you!

River clears his throat. “Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?” Jess asks.

“That thing where you converse without words,” he mutters.

I go to throw my napkin at him when, from behind the cameras, Connor clears his throat in reminder. “We’re rolling.”

There’s some scripted conversation we’re required to have referring to River’s last appearance, about GeneticAlly, the technology, and reminders to viewers about River’s involvement in the inception of the entire thing. But then dinner devolves into something easy where we forget for small stretches that we’re being filmed, where we tell stories from our past that we may have told a hundred times or never heard before—it doesn’t matter because even if I’m not romantically interested in Evan, I like him. I know the cameras are catching the easy familiarity we have. It bodes well for Evan, which bodes well for Connor.

But, God, I wish it were Connor beside me.

forty-threeCONNOR

Natalia’s text message is only five words, but I study each of them for a good ten seconds.

“Fuck,” I say aloud in the sealed silence of my car parked outside of her house.

She’s with Juno at Fizzy’s

In the madness of the show, my weekends with Stevie have been sporadic at best. Tonight was the perfect night to pick her up and have a cozy night relaxing at home. But there is nothing relaxing about the prospect of driving over to Fizzy’s. I know it probably isn’t true—and it certainly isn’t fair—but it feels like my ex-wife is forcing me toward Fizzy on a night when I’m not sure my emotional storm doors are sturdy enough to weather any more alone time with her. Today was hard. The confessional was brutal, and watching an easy, chatty double date I wished I were a part of was even worse.

But Nat couldn’t know that, so here we are.

I don’t bother going up to say hi to her anyway, even though I’d love to vent it all out to someone who knows as well as I do what’s on the line for me here. Instead, I turn my car around at the end of the street and head toward the little cream-and-blue bougainvillea-covered house just over two miles away. And once I’m at the curb,I feel frozen again, even though my kid is inside and what I’d really like is to get my daughter, grab a pizza, and make a pillow fort on the couch for some quality television time. I don’t want to think about the show, or the woman who runs constant laps around my mind, or the way she looked earlier when she confessed her feelings again. I was seconds from crumbling. I’d never known that kind of sensation, the way my heart felt heavy but airborne inside my rib cage. I’m so fucking in love with her I can barely take a full breath.

I’m out of the car, I’m up the steps, I’m closing my eyes at the door and taking a deep, calming breath before knocking. Greet everyone, grab my kid, head home.

Protect my heart. Protect Stevie. Move on.

At my knock, three voices yell out a cheerful “Come in!” and I open the door to find them piled on the couch beneath a mountain of fuzzy blankets.

“I could have been a bad guy,” I tell them, frowning.

“We saw your shadow on the porch through the window,” Stevie says.

Juno nods. “You’re taller than everybody.”

Fizzy gives me a playfulI mean, they’re not wrongface, but I can’t engage. I realize it as soon as I lay eyes on her. There is so much pent-up longing and desire in my chest that it feels like if I say anything else, it will come out as a bellow. And if I take one step deeper into her house, I’ll drag her into her room, lock the door, and fuck her into the floor.

“Grab your stuff, squirt.” I lift my chin to where her backpack sits across the room, papers and colored pencils and bright colorful erasers spilling out everywhere.

The room goes quiet; exuberant energy drains. Great, now I’m the moody dick who spoiled the party.

“You okay, Dad?” Stevie asks, carefully extracting herself from the tangle of limbs and blankets. “Are you mad at somebody?”

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