If You Only Knew. Kristan Higgins

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      I seem to have wandered all the way across the park to the East Side. Two blocks from my old place. Owen’s place, rather. Paging Dr. Freud…

      I could visit them. You know…for self-torment purposes, in case my bride wasn’t difficult enough. I could ask to smell Natalia’s head. Maybe put her in my purse, which would easily fit a baby. I actually look to judge the baby-capacity of my bag. Yep. It could work. I’d make sure to move my sewing scissors first.

      I turn around and face the scarf-wearing reader. “Hi. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

      He doesn’t look up. New Yorkers.

      “What are you reading?” I ask more loudly.

      He raises his eyes to me. “I’m sorry, were you talking to me?” he asks with a nice smile.

      “I was just wondering what you were reading.”

      He holds the book up. “Lord of the Rings. My third or fourth time, actually. I’m sort of a geek about it.”

      My wedding dress looks like Arwen’s when she finally sees Aragorn again. (Yes, yes, I’m referencing the movie, not the book. Sue me.) My nieces are our tiny flower girls, and Rachel wears pale green as my matron of honor. Mom has a boyfriend and doesn’t sob about Dad. For a wedding gift, I give him a first-printing edition of LOTR, and—

      And my fiancé’s boyfriend sits down and kisses him. “Hi, darling, sorry I’m late. Brought you a cappuccino, though.”

      “Have a nice day,” I say, but they’re busy kissing.

      It only takes me two minutes to get to Owen’s place. I still have the code to the building, but I buzz 15A just the same. “It’s Jenny,” I say, cringing a little.

      “Jenny! How wonderful!” comes Ana-Sofia’s voice.

      Five minutes later, I’m sitting in my former living room, holding my former husband’s child, accepting a cup of coffee from his current wife, who’s back in her regular clothes. It’s been thirteen days, after all. Why go through all that mushy belly stuff when you’re clearly on Darwin’s list of favorite children?

      “Do you remember Jenny?” Owen asks, smiling down at his daughter. “She helped you into this world.”

      “She’s incredibly beautiful,” I say honestly. Not a pore to be seen. Rosebud mouth, full, lovely cheeks. “She looks like—” you, I was about to say, but I clear my throat. “Like Ana-Sofia.” I smile at my replacement.

      “Thank God for small favors,” Owen says, leaning over my shoulder to stroke his daughter’s cheek with one finger.

      She doesn’t. She looks just like Owen, the same shock of black hair, the same sweet eyes, and I remember in a furnace-blast of embarrassment how I used to look at Owen when he was asleep and picture our children.

      Funny how I didn’t think this was going to be so hard.

      There’s a flash. Ana-Sofia has taken my picture. I imagine Ana-Sofia showing it to Natalia someday. There’s poor Aunt Jenny, just before she went crazy. We should visit her in the asylum this week. “I’ll send it to you, yes?” she asks.

      “Sure,” I say. Who wouldn’t want a picture of her ex and his baby and her doleful self, after all? Maybe I’ll blow it up and hang it over my couch. “So I just wanted to stop by. I had a fitting a couple blocks from here, but I should head home. Still have lots of unpacking to do.”

      “We can’t wait to see the new place,” Ana-Sofia says, taking the warm little baby from my arms. It’s all I can do not to grab the baby back. “And we’re so excited about the grand opening of Bliss!”

      The thing is, she’s sincere. I want so much to hate her—to hate them both—but they’re just too fucking nice.

      “I can’t wait, either,” I say in that oh-so-jolly voice I adopt around them. I wonder if there are any escort services in COH.

      I should really get out of this friendship, I think as I walk back across the park to the garage where I parked. I know hanging around Owen and Ana-Sofia isn’t doing me any favors.

      It’s just that when Owen broke my heart, he also begged me to stay friends with him, saying he couldn’t picture life without me, that ever since we’d met, I’d been incredibly important to him, and even if we weren’t working out (news to me), it would kill him if this was the end.

      I’m still not sure if that was kind or incredibly selfish of him. I’ve been going with kind.

      I moved out of our apartment the day after Owen told me he didn’t want to stay married, and it felt like I’d slept through the apocalypse. The air had seemed too heavy to breathe, and panic had flashed through me in razor-wire slices. How can I do this? How can I do this? How can we be apart? How can he not want me anymore? What the fuck went on here? Where was I when it all went to hell?

      The only island on the horizon had been the idea that the following week, I’d be having lunch with him.

      You may think I’m quite an ass for hanging around, hoping for a few kind words. I understand. I feel that way myself quite often. The thing is, there will be a lot of kind words. Let’s not even bring up the great food those two always have on hand.

      Owen still asks about my work. He loves my sister and nieces and mother. He thinks I’m pretty and funny and smart. He admires my creativity. We have a similar sense of humor. Conversation comes easily, and since the day I met him, and even through our quickie divorce and his marriage, I have yet to go three days without hearing from him. Even when he’s been in a third-world country with Doctors Without Borders. Even now.

      So. Being Owen’s ex-wife is still better than any relationship I’ve ever had, except for one—when I was his actual wife.

      It’s not just his job—Dr. Perfect of the Great Hands and Compassionate Heart. It’s not just his looks, which sure don’t hurt. I always had a thing for Ken Wantanabe, after all.

      It’s all those things and just how golden he is. How privileged I felt as the chosen one, Owen Takahashi’s wife.

      In most marriages, lust and love become tempered by normalcy. If you hear your husband farting in the bathroom seconds before he emerges and asks if you want to fool around, you generally don’t want to fool around. You might, after a few minutes, but you have to forgive your husband for…well, for being human. For eating a bean burrito. After all, you ate the bean burrito, too.

      You discover his irritating habits. He uses your shampoo and doesn’t mention when it’s gone. He leaves his workout clothes in a sweaty pile in the bathroom. When his parents visit, he runs out to the package store around the corner to buy his dad’s favorite beer, even though you reminded him yesterday to pick it up, and that errand takes him ten times as long as it should, and you have to text him twice to say Where the hell are you? Your mother wants to know why I’m not pregnant yet! and he doesn’t respond, claiming not to have received that text when he finally walks in the door.

      Maybe he grunts at you when he comes in home from work, but he gets down on all fours and croons to the dog for ten minutes, using that special voice that sounds vaguely familiar because he used to use it for you.

      Maybe СКАЧАТЬ