Arranged(79)

I’d taken a very deep breath when he had me close, drawing in his scent. God, this was going to be rough.

I was about five minutes late, so as we sat down across from each other I asked, “How long have you been waiting for me?”

His eyes were steady on mine, glittering with some bittersweet thing I was unable or perhaps unwilling to name. “A thousand years.”

“Don’t,” I warned him, voice steady, heart anything but. “Don’t try to charm me. I’m only here because you didn’t give me any other choice.”

He put his hands up as though surrendering, his face unsmiling. “Consider all the charm off, gone for good. How are you? I miss you.”

And so it went. I set a timer and left at one hour on the dot.

One week later, we met at a restaurant instead. I’d decided the coffee was a mistake. At least if we ate I’d have something to do with my hands aside from clenching them hard under the table, tamping down the urge to reach for him.

Again, I’d chosen the place. A noisy deli with a line around the block. A mistake again. Standing next to him, even if it was in a jostling crowd, was worse than sitting across from him. Our arms kept brushing. He took my hand once. I snatched it away, flushing.

He was flushing too. “Sorry,” he said, his voice absolutely unapologetic. “Habit.”

“We weren’t together long enough to develop any habits,” I reminded him.

“Speak for yourself,” he returned in a voice that ached.

I was hoping we wouldn’t get our food until our hour was up, but once again all the luck was on his side. We had sandwiches in hand in under fifteen minutes. We walked a few blocks to Bryant Park and found a table. Even with Chester trailing us it was downright romantic.

Banks nodded to my food as I unwrapped it. He’d somehow talked me over from a salad sans dressing to a turkey sandwich. “At least I can assure myself that you got one solid meal this week.”

I rolled my eyes and ate every bite.

Right before we parted he gathered me to him. Modern day men never did things like this. It was something you’d see in an old movie. “I want you,” he breathed into my ear. “Come home with me.”

What a bastard, I told myself. Even so, I let myself feel everything for five agonizing beats before I wrenched myself away.

The internet had predictably had a field day with us. The divorce, the pregnant mistress, the public spottings, the ever persistent rumors of the Bride Catalogue, all of it was just too perfectly messy not to gossip about. Even I understood why. We gave good headlines. Our messes were the most succulent fodder for the masses.

We were still coming up regularly, and if someone managed to nab a picture of us together post-divorce, they no doubt got a good paycheck for it, and it would unquestionably go viral. We became a regular segment on TMZ.

That picture of us hurt more than the others. Him gathering me close. The harsh longing on his face. The anguish on mine. I returned to it again and again. I must’ve spent hours studying it.

We looked so right together. It was hard to look at the image, and remember just why we were so wrong.





“It’s not mine,” burst from him the second we sat down on our fifth mandatory weekly one hour meeting. He was beaming at me.

“Excuse me?”

“Fatima finally took a paternity test. The baby isn’t mine.” His expression was asking for a reaction I didn’t want to give.

Was I relieved? Yes. God, yes. Did it fix even one single broken thing inside me? Hardly.

“What would you have done if it was yours?” I asked him, wanting to lash out at the relief I felt inside of me. “Would you have stayed together for the baby?”

That got the reaction I wanted. His eyes widened in horror. “Stayed together?” He sounded offended. He sounded pissed. “We’re not together. That was never on the table. And I don’t know. I never really believed there was a chance it was mine. I suppose I would have been as much of a father as she’d let me, but me and her getting back together, I know that’s what she was aiming for, but it was not even in the realm of possibility.”

I studied him, wondering if I believed it. Their toxic attachment to each other had survived a lot of obstacles. “So her husband is the father?”

“I have no clue. Frankly, it’s none of my business and I’m happy with that. She and I are done for good, Noura. I mean it. Her trying to hurt you . . . It put the nail in the coffin of every good memory I ever had of her. Fatima was a habit for me. An affliction. You’re a cure.”

“I don’t want to be your cure. Don’t put that on me.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just . . . I haven’t been living right for a while now. Too much resentment for all the wrong reasons. If some relationships bring out the worst in people, the opposite must be true. And you’re the opposite. I’m not giving up on us, Noura.”





“God, I miss you,” he told me on our eighth weekly meet-up. It was a cheap shot straight to my gut. Not even the words themselves, but the way he said them. Like he couldn’t keep them in. Like they’d become the whole sum of him.

I figured he just missed the sex. He was my first and only so far, but even I knew we had something rare between us there. If sex was always like that there’d be less fighting in the world and more cases of people fucking themselves to death. “It’ll pass,” I assured him.