The True Love Experiment

“Oh.”

Connor nods, rolling to his back and tucking one arm beneath his head. A bicep pops and I pretend that I’m not dying to touch it, because we’re having a serious conversation. “We’d been really good friends for a couple years, but only been lovers for about six months by then. I think I already knew we weren’t a great fit romantically, but it was a fun and easy hookup. I knew she’d had a thing for me almost since we first met. I mean, looking back I think I worried that I’d fuck up our group dynamic if I ended things.”

“That’s rough.”

“So then she finds out she’s pregnant, and she wants to keep the baby—which, totally her call, I never had any issue with her making whatever choice worked for her. But since my own father was absent and”—he sighs—“such a dick, really, I wanted to do the right thing, and immediately proposed.”

“Ah,” I say.

He shifts to his side, toying with a strand of my hair again. “Yeah.” I sense this isn’t a story he tells very often because he’s taking longer than he normally would to put the words together. “It was nice at first. Stevie was a really easy baby. I loved the family Nat and I had made. I knew we would be good parents.”

I make a sound of understanding.

“But I wasn’t ever in love with her, and it got harder to pretend. I was sick with the decision about whether it was worse to stay, or leave and potentially make all the same mistakes my dad made. I never wanted Stevie to feel the way I did.”

“Right.”

“I’d love to say I talked about this with her,” he says, “but I didn’t. I loved her, but I wasn’t in love with her, and in hindsight I was just looking for a way to make her stop loving me. I was immature and not very evolved.”

When he says this, I think I know. But the heat of his body and the sweetness of his fingers drawing delicate vines across my collarbones makes it feel like his next words are spoken with invisible ink.

“I cheated on her.”

He lets the sentence sit and it penetrates me like poison, first with a sting at the surface and then with a flashing burn as it takes root inside, ulcerating.

“I have no defense.” I feel him looking at my face, but I can only fix my gaze on a tiny scar on his shoulder. My heart is squeezing so tight I can barely swallow. I am all locked up inside. “We got in a fight while I was at work and I just… didn’t go home. I went out, met a woman at a bar—whatever, it’s such a boring story. I knew if I stayed out all night I couldn’t lie about it the next morning. I sat in my car until the sun came up. Nat knew as soon as she saw me. And yeah,” he says quietly, “that definitely ended things.”

I’m still unable to figure out how to make sound. I nod numbly.

“Maybe it would have happened eventually. We’ll never know. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “I’ve done a lot of work on myself. A lot of therapy. Nat has forgiven me, but it took a long time.” The shoulder I’m staring at lifts in a shrug. “It’s why I don’t think I can stomach casual relationships anymore. Like, I don’t even remember the woman’s name or her face. What a vile thing to do.” He exhales slowly. “That feeling has never really left me.”

I hear what he’s saying; I even hear the emotional weight of his words, the regret and the self-flagellation and the sincerity. But the contradiction of him marrying Nat to do the right thing and ending it in the cruelest possible way feels like a hot and cold wire, twisted around my windpipe.

Suddenly I’m up,

I’m standing,

I’m searching through my open bag for my clothes.

Underwear, joggers, T-shirt. My joints move like they’re programmed, muscle memory, locating everything and panic-dressing myself in the dark.

Connor pushes up. “Fizzy.”

“I’m just realizing people are probably still down at the bar.” I laugh like, Duh me!

His pause feels as deep as a canyon. “It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“I know, but I’m the big sister and just left the wedding without saying goodbye to all my family.”

“You did say goodbye.”

“Not to everyone!”

He goes silent and I can’t look at his face. My thoughts are a flurry of broken trust and fear and anger and sadness. I feel nauseated and frantic, but I see from a distance, too, how this is unfolding. How wild I must look to him right now.

Connor’s voice is steady. “This is about what I just told you. I completely understand why this upsets you. But I need you to come back and talk this out with me.”

I trip as I shove my foot into a shoe. “I swear it isn’t about that. And I’m sure that was super hard for you to share. I’m sorry to do this right now, I just really should check to see if anyone is up that I need to spend time with.”

My card key is on the dresser and I grab it, shoving it into the pocket of my hoodie.

“Fizzy. Please stop.”

I take a deep breath and look at him. He’s sitting up, has pulled a sheet over his lap to cover himself. His hair is a disaster, eyes bright even in the dim room. He’s devastatingly gorgeous, and I think I love him,

but I also think if someone can justify cheating once, they can justify it again. You’re either a cheater or you’re not.

“Fizzy. Come back.”

“I can’t.”

“Talk to me about what’s going on right now. I was a dumb kid. I’m not that guy anymore.”

“It’s fine. This isn’t about that.”

“It is. And it’s okay. I don’t like that I did it any more than you do, but I want us to be able to live with our fuckups. I want us to talk about them.”

I look away, at the ugly bamboo wallpaper, but I don’t even feel like I’m in the room with him anymore.

I’m in a crowded restaurant and Rob’s wife is glowering down at me. I’m aware of my confused date slowly putting the pieces together across the table from me. I’m home alone later, devastated to discover that I am the worst of things: a home-wrecker.

Before Rob, I thought I was bulletproof. I thought I’d always be enough for myself, that I didn’t need anyone, that no man could tank my feelings or sense of self-worth. And then Rob and the whole situation made me question it all. I promised myself I would never feel that way again.

Now I see that Rob was a paper cut. Connor could obliterate me, and it wouldn’t take something as enormous as cheating.

I look over at him. “You want me to be honest?”

He nods immediately, forcefully. “Always.”

“Okay, well,” I say, clenching my jaw and grasping the first lie that comes to me. “I think we were both tipsy and then sex-drunk and we got way too heavy. I don’t know what I was thinking. We barely know each other.”

Connor gusts out a disbelieving breath. “We do know each other. Getting to know each other has been our singular focus for months.”

The words fly out of me: “Then I was wrong about you. You’re not the man I thought you were.”

When he can’t come up with anything to say in response, I turn and leave.





thirty-seven CONNOR




I stare at the door, waiting for the telltale sound of the key card, of Fizzy coming back in to regroup, find her level head, talk this out. But the hotel is so quiet this time of night, the only sound I hear is the elevator ding down the hall, and the mechanical sound of the car descending.

What the fuck just happened?

I fall back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. I know Fizzy to be a lot of things—wild, brave, self-assured, assertive, intense—but I don’t know her to be flighty like this. Fizzy is the heroine who turns around to face the oncoming danger head-on. She isn’t the one who throws out bollocks excuses on her way out the door. Now I’m alone and stark naked on this sex-ravaged bed with the echo of our sounds still embedded in the four walls.