Page 52 of Unrealistic Expectations

Luke put his hand on the woman’s lower back, lowered his mouth to her temple, and kissed her before whispering something in her ear that made her smile even wider. And that was a real smile.

They’d had a whole life together. For the first decade, she’d thought about when they would get married and when they would have a baby. But Luke had kept putting it off—after he finished his residency, and then after he completed his fellowship; after she completed a PhD program became after her book was published. They would always talk about it “later,” and then later never came. She’d contented herself with the life they had. She’d thought she had everything she wanted.

Apparently, Luke had decided he could only find happiness with someone else.

She looked very young. When she smiled, the skin didn’t even crinkle around her eyes. And it could just be the pregnancy, but her face had a fullness that spoke to youth. While they were together, Jessica had never been jealous of any of the women who hit on Luke. He’d never paid them any attention, and so she’d never had any reason to have the pit in her stomach she had now.

Luke was a lot of things—lazy at home, a workaholic, distracted, unkempt—but she’d never once worried that he was cheating on her until he moved out. Now she felt so fucking stupid. Her mind was a storm, and she felt like everyone else in that room—including the man she’d shown up with—had completely disappeared. The air was thick, and it was hard to pull it into her lungs. It didn’t even feel like she had a body at that moment—just her brain floating in a soup of her own jealousy, guilt, and regret.

She jumped when Galvin put his arm around her waist, and she didn’t lean into him like she’d developed the habit of doing.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak. She couldn’t stop staring at the more put-together version of Luke across the room with a very pregnant woman who wasn’t her talking to their classmates as though they weren’t deliberately tearing her heart out.

She wanted to grab a bottle of the cheap vodka from the bartender and make a Molotov cocktail. Mentally, she was doing just that. Instead of doing that in reality, all of the big emotions were making it hard to think, hard to breathe, impossible to speak.

But she registered when Galvin saw Luke and his date. He stiffened and said, “Fuck.”

Then, he physically turned Jessica’s body to face him. He cupped her face in his hands so that she had to meet his gaze. All she wanted was to look away in that very moment. She wanted to go home and huddle under her covers and chew on the image of Luke with this woman for a whole day.

“Are you okay?” He could obviously tell that she was very much not okay, but she couldn’t make the words to respond. Cold sweat ran down her back, and her ribs felt too small to hold her lungs. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. The urge to flee overwhelmed her.

Instead of responding to Galvin’s question, she shook her head and escaped his grasp. She found Luke and the woman in the crowd again, just in time to see them approaching.

“I can’t believe it,” Galvin said, echoing the sentiment that characterized how all of her cells felt in that moment. “Do you want to go?”

She did, but she knew that she wasn’t going to get answers if she left. Luke hadn’t answered his phone after a few logistical calls postbreakup, and setting up an appointment to have a video conference, like they had a few times when he was on call for a whole week, seemed inappropriate.

And now she realized that he probably hadn’t been on call as much as he’d claimed to be. All the times that he hadn’t wanted to have sex with her because he was “tired” on date night came rushing back to her. It wasn’t just that their relationship wasn’t working. It wasn’t just that she’d been living with the consequences of choosing someone safe who didn’t excite her. She’d chosen someone who did the same thing that every single one of her mother’s boyfriends had done. It was just a little classed up because he was a surgeon instead of a bartender.

“Fuck,” she said. Galvin squeezed her hand. She was glad she wasn’t alone, but then she noticed Luke noticing Galvin and the sneer on his face. Before she could examine it, a wave of embarrassment came over her and she dropped Galvin’s hand.

She instantly regretted it when her whole body went cold. Instead of reaching back out, she wrapped her arms around her own waist. It wasn’t a power pose that would exude confidence and the impression of not being bothered by seeing the man she’d thought she’d spend her whole life with standing in front of her with a woman who he’d clearly gotten pregnant when they were still together.

Luke didn’t even have the decency to seem ashamed of himself. Yeah—Brené Brown, whatever, shame is toxic, yada yada yada—this was the kind of thing that deserved shame. You didn’t do this to someone you’d spent your whole life with if there wasn’t something seriously flawed within you as a person.

“You look well, Jessica.”

She was pretty sure she looked like horseshit that had been trampled over by more horses. At least the woman’s smile had dimmed when Luke said her name. He hadn’t lied to her and told her he was single when he was fucking her. She knew who Jessica was, and she’d fucked Luke anyway. Tramp.

It wasn’t a charitable thought, and cheating was always the cheater’s fault, but Jessica fucking hated this woman and would have been fantasizing about doing her bodily harm if she wasn’t pregnant. Now she knew how Laurie had racked up all of those vandalism charges. For the first time in her life, Jessica could envision herself keying a car or letting some air out of this woman’s tires—but, like, all her tires, so she couldn’t drive, not just one so she would crash.

“Who is this?” Jessica’s words were demanding, she knew that. But she didn’t have the capacity for pleasantries at the moment. She was a few seconds from doing a murder, so she needed to get the information she needed and get out of here.

Galvin had receded into the background, and he was probably mad at her for getting so upset about her ex, but she’d have to deal with that later. Her emotional capacity was tapped out trying not to punch her ex-boyfriend in his perfect nose.

“This is Kari,” Luke said. “My fiancée.”

“Fuck you.” Jessica had always gone out of her way to be respectful to Luke, even when they had disagreements. Her statement just then seemed to shock Luke. “How long?”

“How long, what?” Luke was really going to make her ask him the question.

“How long were you fucking her while you were living with me?” She put a real emphasis on the curse word that time, and if she cared whether the people around them heard them having a disagreement, she would have been embarrassed. “Was it months or years?”

“I don’t see why that matters now.” Luke looked around, and Kari’s smile completely disappeared; she looked visibly uncomfortable.

Jessica threw back the rest of her glass of wine and looked at her. “Bet you wish you could have a drink right now, don’t you?” Knocking Luke out of his arrogant wheelhouse had given Jessica a charge. She wanted him back on his heels right now.

“It matters because you came here tonight with a woman who wasn’t me. Now, I can’t say for sure that you knew I’d be in attendance, but it sure seems like you wanted me to find out that you’d knocked up some other woman while we were still together by seeing you here or through mutual friends who would see you here.”

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