Just the Nicest Couple(89)

“I have something to tell you, Christian,” she says, breathing the words into my neck.

I pull back to look at her. “What?” I ask.

Lily pushes herself up into a sitting position, so that she looks down on me. She hesitates, thinking twice about saying whatever she has to say. She gazes toward the window, stalling for time, and I reach for her, setting my hand on her chin, turning her face, forcing her to look at me.

“What is it, Lily? What do you want to tell me?”

She says, “You told me once that there is nothing I could ever say that would change the way you feel about me. Did you mean that?”

I nod, though inside, something has changed. Lily has changed.

“I’ve been lying to you,” she says. “It didn’t happen like I said it did.”

“Okay,” I say slowly, drawing it out as my heart races inside of me. “How did it happen, then?”

“Would you still love me, Christian,” she asks, her eyes turning rheumy and red, her nose starting to run, “if I did something terrible?”

My heart stops. I push myself upright and into a sitting position beside her and ask, “What did you do, Lily? What did you do?”

What Lily tells me is bad. But it’s a different kind of bad than I imagined.

I feel like someone stabbed me through the chest with a knife and that when the blade was inside of me, they twisted the handle.

I wonder if it would hurt less if she said that it happened once, that one single time she got carried away, caught up in a moment, that he seduced her, that he practically forced himself on her, or that she was out of her mind drunk.

But five times. Five times is what she said when I asked her, which is exactly five times too many. Five times is voluntary and deliberate and, for two married people having an extramarital affair, planned out in advance. It doesn’t just spontaneously happen. There are things to think about, things to consider, like how to do it without getting caught by the ones you’re supposed to love.

“Say something. Please,” she pleads, biting down hard on her lower lip.

I can’t look at Lily. I can’t stop thinking about Jake’s hands on her and hers on him. I feel like throwing up.

Lily reaches for me as I get out of bed. I turn my back to her, walking away, unreachable to her hands. “How did it happen?” I ask.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes. It does. To me.” Lily is quiet behind me. I turn back, looking hard. “You’re not going to tell me, Lily? That’s the least you can do, don’t you think?”

It happens as these things almost always happen. It was innocent at first. They ran into each other by accident and they grabbed coffee. But then it happened again, not so accidentally that time.

“Why?” I ask. “I thought you loved me, Lily.”

“I do. I love you more than anything, Christian.”

In this moment, I find that hard to believe.

“Where did it happen?” I ask. “Here? In our bed?”

“No,” Lily insists and it’s the one thing she says that I maybe believe. “Not here.”

“Then, where?” She swallows. I see the movement of her throat. “A hotel?” I spit out, losing patience. “His car, their house? Where, Lily?”

I can see in her face that I got it right. Lily had sex with Jake in his and Nina’s house.

“How?” I ask, aghast. It disgusts me.

“Nina’s mother always needs something from her, rides to the store or to church or whatever. She gets lonely. She lives alone and is practically dependent on Nina. It drove Jake mad. Her mother always wants Nina to come stay with her, to keep her company, and Nina obliges. But when Nina was with her mother, Jake was home alone.”

I shake my head. That’s not what I meant. That’s not the answer I was looking for. I say, “What I meant was how could you do that to your friend? How could you do this to me?”

Lily just cries.

“How did you know Nina wouldn’t come home and find you with Jake?” I ask.

“Jake would look for her on his phone. He knew where she was and when she’d be home.”

“He was tracking her?” I ask, laughing in disbelief, and then I stop laughing. I narrow my eyes at her. “That’s fucked-up, Lily. That’s really fucked-up.” I run my hands through my hair, thinking of those weekend afternoons that Lily would tell me she had errands to run, but instead of the grocery store or yoga like she said, she was stealing away to meet Jake, because Nina had left to take care of her mother for the day and Jake was home alone.

I ask Lily, “What really happened that day at Langley Woods? You didn’t just happen to run into him like you said?”

“No,” she admits. “I asked him to meet me there. I didn’t want to be with him anymore, Christian. I only wanted to be with you.” Lily gets on her knees on the bed. She reaches for me, clutching a fistful of my shirt, pulling me back to her. “I’d made a mistake. I was so stupid, Christian. I messed up. I’d been regretting it for weeks, but didn’t know how to tell Jake it was through, that I didn’t want to be with him anymore. I wished more than anything I could take it back, that it never would have happened in the first place. I asked Jake to meet me there, at the forest preserve that day. He didn’t know why I wanted to meet, only that I wanted to talk, and then I told him that it was over, that whatever he and I had was through. I told him that I only want to be with you. He got so upset, Christian. He flew into a rage. He lost his mind. He threw me to the ground, he called me a whore, he said I was leading him on and sending all the wrong signals, and I got scared,” she says, crying now, like I should feel sorry for her and maybe I do, a little bit. “I panicked,” she says. “It happened almost just exactly as I said it did,” she swears, and so help me, I chuckle. I fucking laugh, a demented laugh, though there isn’t anything even remotely funny about it, other than that it didn’t happen at all like she said it did.