After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid Page A

tell you everything you want to hear at the same time.”
    I laugh. “Yeah, OK,” I say.
    We are quiet for a minute. I have scarfed down all of my food. There is nothing left to do but stare at my white plate. I try to move the crumbs around with my fork.
    “But what is it, though?” I say. I want to know. I’m not sure why. Maybe I need the truth more than I need to hear what I want to hear. Maybe there is almost never a time when you don’t need the truth. Or maybe it’s just that you need the truth the most at the times you think you don’t want to hear it. “Just tell me. I can handle it.”
    Rachel sighs. “I just . . .” she starts. She looks up at me. “I feel bad for Ryan.”
    I’m not sure what I thought she was going to say, but it wasn’t that. I expected something about how I’m taking the Thumper thing too seriously. I expected something about how maybe Ryan and I should give it another try. I expected that maybe she was going to say the one thing that I fear is actually true: that I’m being a whiny-ass baby and that every marriage is hard, and I should just shut up and go home and quit this bullshit, because not being happy is not a real problem.
    But she doesn’t say that. She actually tears up and says, “I just . . . he lost his wife, his house, and his dog on the same day.”
    I don’t say anything to her. I just kind of look at her. I let it sink in.
    She’s right. I used to love that man so much. I used to be the person who made sure he had everything he wanted. When did I become the person who took it all away?
    I start to cry. I put my head down on the table, and Rachel rushes to my side.
    “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry! See? I’m not good at this. I suck at it. I’m the shittiest person at this. You are a good person, and you’re doing the right thing.”
    “Thumper is just for two months,” I say. “The whole thing is only for a year.”
    “I know!” Rachel says, holding me, squeezing my shoulders. “Ryan is fine. I know he’s fine. He’s one of those guys, you know, who’s always fine.”
    “You think he’s fine?” I ask her, lifting my head off the table. It is somehow awful to think that he is fine. It is almost as awful as thinking about him being miserable. I cannot stand the thought that he is OK or not OK.
    “No,” Rachel says. I can sense her desperation to get out of this conversation. She can’t say the right thing, and she knows it, and maybe she’s a little annoyed at the situation I’ve put her in. “Ryan is fine, as in ‘He will be fine.’ Not like ‘He’s totally fine.’”
    “Right,” I say, composing myself. “We will both be fine.”
    “Right,” she says, grasping for the calm tone in my voice. “Fine.”
    So that’s what I aim for. I aim for fine.
    I am fine.
    Ryan is fine.
    We will be fine.
    One day, this will all be fine.
    There is a big difference between something that is fine and something that will be fine, but I decide to pretend, for now, that they are the same.
    “You know you have to tell Mom soon, right?” Rachel says to me.
    “I know,” I say.
    “And Charlie,” she says. “But who knows with Charlie? That could go either way.”
    I nod, already lost to my imagination. I think about telling them. I think about how Charlie will crack some joke. I think about whether my mom will be disappointed in me. If she’ll feel the same way I do, that I’ve failed. After a minute, I recognize that this line of thinking is going nowhere fast. “You know what?” I say.
    “What?”
    “They’ll be fine.”
    Rachel smiles at me. “Yes, they will. They will be fine.”

I go home on Sunday night at seven o’clock, the time that Ryan and I agreed on. I knew he would be gone. That was the whole point. But as I open the door to my empty house, the fact that he is gone really hits me. I am alone.
    My house looks as if I was robbed. Ryan didn’t take anything that we hadn’t discussed ahead of time, and yet