Not the Girl You Marry

by ANDIE J. CHRISTOPHER

  She hiccupped and paused, but Sasha didn’t fill the silence. Her best friend, the one who had seen her through everything, knew how big a deal it was for her to spill actual honest-to-God-romantic feelings about someone.

  “It just hurt so much that it was all a lie.”

  “How do you know it was a lie?”

  All the confusion and pain she was feeling channeled itself into frustration. She didn’t want to yell at Sasha; she wanted to scream at Jack. But he wasn’t there, and her best friend was. At least until she finally found someone because she’d finally found her backbone and Hannah was truly alone. “He told me it was a lie! He was using me for the article!”

  Hannah slammed the coffee cup on the nightstand and walked into the bathroom, not expecting Sasha to follow her. Unlike her, Sasha came from a bathroom-doors-always-closed family.

  “I’m going to pee,” Hannah said, expecting her friend to leave.

  Sasha just took a sip of her own coffee and stood there. “So pee.”

  “You’re going to harass me about this until I agree with you?” Hannah pulled down her boxers and called her bluff.

  Sasha surprised her by pointedly looking down and saying, “You never waxed.”

  “Your point? Other than to harp on my grooming habits?”

  “He looked at you like—I don’t know—the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen. He looked at you as though he never wanted to look at anything else.”

  “You were seeing things.”

  “Dammit, Hannah!” That stunned her into silence. “The problem was that you weren’t seeing things. You weren’t seeing the way he looked at you, and you weren’t there to hear him talking about you at the Halloween party.”

  She wanted to ask what he’d said about her, even though she didn’t really want to know any of the things coming out of Sasha’s mouth. It would be so much easier if she could just believe that Jack was an asshole—a worse asshole than Noah had ever been. At least he’d been honest with her. It would be so much simpler if she could just continue to believe that she was broken and that no one would ever love her as she was—that she was to be used and discarded unless she kept herself aloof forever.

  “I swear that I’m not seeing this through my rose-colored glasses. Those glasses are broken, I promise.” When had that happened? Before two weeks ago, Sasha had always been the most cockeyed optimist to ever look a cock in the eye. “But that man loves you.”

  “Love is dead.” Hannah had said the same thing before, but there wasn’t any power behind it in that moment.

  “It wasn’t before you flipped double fingers at him in front of a sitting senator.”

  “Who was about to get arrested on corruption charges. And virtually every power player in Chicago.” Still, a big part of her wanted to believe Sasha. But she didn’t want to feel hope. Hope was dangerous. “I think I drowned love in the bathtub with that move.”

  “What I don’t get is why you don’t feel like a guy like Jack would fall in love with you. Like, as your due?”

  “No one’s ever been in love with me.”

  “That you know of.”

  “No. I know it.”

  “And why do you think that is?”

  That was a good question, one Hannah had pondered in therapy and out. But she’d never said it out loud, with Sasha in the room. Before now. “I mean, a guy like Jack is going to fall in love with someone who’s more like you than me.”

  “You mean someone nice?” Sasha’s mouth quirked up at the side.

  “Can you grab more coffee so that we can finish this conversation with my ass covered?”

  Sasha seemed to understand that it was important, so she nodded and left the room.

  When Hannah got to the kitchen, Sasha was opening a bottle of sparkling wine and pouring it into champagne flutes.

  “Do we have something to celebrate?” Hannah asked. “Did I miss something important between the bathroom and the kitchen?”

  “I just didn’t think scotch was a good idea as a brunch beverage.”

  “Makes sense.” Hannah swiped one of the glasses off the counter after Sasha poured. “And the mimosas are always bottomless here.”

  “Exactly.” Sasha grabbed her own glass; Hannah sat down and sighed. “Tell me why you don’t think Jack would ever fall for you. I guarantee that I’ll find any of your explanations stupid, but I’ll listen.”

  “It’s simple really. What if it’s me? What if I’m just not enough?”

  “Are you freaking—”

  “I’m not kidding or joking or crazy, Sash.” Hannah took a fortifying sip of the second necessary beverage of the day. The crisp champagne and sweet orange juice were a non-doctor-recommended balm to her sore throat and raw heart. “You don’t know what it’s like, because you don’t have to. When I was with Noah, I wasn’t black enough because, like, seventy percent of my friends are white girls. And I grew up in an almost all-white town. And I went to maybe the whitest school in that very white town. And I refused to be who he wanted me to be—to forget my family and friends who loved me and become some hotep’s idea of a Stepford wife for him.”

  “He didn’t want that.” Sasha scrunched her forehead again. “He just wanted you to swear less.”

  “He also wanted me to hang out with you less.” Hannah stood up and started pacing. Maybe this would be easier if she didn’t have to look at Sasha’s face while she did it. “He wanted me to be someone else—like he wanted to date a woman with straight hair and a small nose so that all his white friends would think I was attractive, but he wanted me to fit into his life.”

  “So he was the wrong guy for you. I don’t see what this has to do with Jack.”

  “I was a diversion for Jack. Even without the article, he would have dated me for a few weeks, then scraped me off. I think he liked the novelty of dating someone exotic.”

  “You’re from Milwaukee. You’re not exotic.”

  “Minneapolis.” Sasha had consistently gotten it wrong over the course of their friendship. She’d lose it if someone thought she was from Long Island rather than Westchester but couldn’t keep her midwestern cities—outside of Chicago—straight to save her life. “And it doesn’t matter because it’s over now. But maybe Jack picked me because he knew he was never going to fall in love with me.”

  “That’s not right.” And now her nose was wrinkled.

  “Then why do you think he thought, for one second, that it would be okay to date me for sport?” Hannah was at the point where she was fluttering her hands. “If he really liked me, he wouldn’t have done that to me.”

  “Oh, come on!” Sasha stood up. “You did the same thing to him. And both of you accidentally fell in love.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” And then she decided to lay out all her real fears, the ones she’d never shared with anyone.

  “Of course it matters!” Sasha quirked her head to the side like a confused puppy, and Hannah would have laughed if they weren’t having the most serious discussion of their friendship. “You deserve to fall in love. Just like everyone else in the world. Why do you think you’re the exception?”

  “It’s—complicated.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re the most lovable person I know.” That was a crock of shit, and Sasha had to know it.

  “I mean, I swear a lot. And I’m very impatient.”

  “So? It’s kind of weird that I never say the f-word.” Sasha shrugged. “And you know how to get things done better than anyone I know.”

  “But I’m not ladylike. Or polite.” Everything about Sasha was polite, and Hannah felt like every conversation she’d ever had with Noah’s mother had been one long correction of her manners.

  “Okay, so someone’s not going to love you because you’re expressive and a little bit wild.” Sasha was clearly just indulging her now.

 
“Men want to have a one-night stand with wild. They don’t want it raising their children.”

  “That’s not true. Remember Stacy?” The girl who lived next door to them junior year had practically majored in sex with basketball players.

  “How could I forget the wrath of Sister Paulina?” Their school had a policy against premarital sex, which most people ignored. Unless they got caught. Like Stacy had been when the star point guard had knocked her up.

  “They’re still happily married, and they have three more children.”

  All of this was beside the point. The point was that Jack was not in love with her. He barely even knew her. It had certainly seemed like he’d been in lust with her when his face had been parked between her legs at her leisure multiple times, but that had to be dead by now.

  “Stacy is a specific case in a specific time.”

  “Yeah, Stacy is a ditz who didn’t get an IUD when you offered her a ride to the Planned Parenthood along with the rest of us.” As a public-school attendee, Hannah had been shocked to learn that many of the women in her dorm had not had comprehensive sex ed in their parochial schools. So she’d carted as many of them as she could fit in her Prius to the women’s health clinic to get them sorted out. “You are a kind, loyal, genuine person who is always willing to put yourself out there for a friend. And that’s what Jack sees when he looks at you.”

  Hannah found herself getting choked up, and she couldn’t meet her friend’s gaze.

  “You’re going to take the compliment this time, Han.” She always hated getting compliments; they made her terribly uncomfortable. She was much more used to being admonished.

  Which made her wonder how she’d been able to withstand being around Jack for two weeks. He hadn’t articulated his compliments, but just getting to be around him felt like approval. And, coming from him, it had been so easy. How? Maybe because she’d known it was only temporary. That he would eventually see her as clearly as Noah had and break up with her. Or that she would break things off before he could see that.

  The fact that she’d been able to spend time with Jack, to let him see her without blowing it up and sabotaging it, made Sasha’s words sink in in a new way. Maybe Noah hadn’t seen her clearly at all, and perhaps she had something to offer worth keeping.

  “I’m—” Actually, she wasn’t sure. She’d always felt like the exception to her general view that everyone was lovable, and she couldn’t remember a time—no matter how many honor rolls or perfect report cards she earned—she’d ever felt as though she was enough. Nothing had made her dad come back. Nothing had protected her from bullies in school. Nothing.

  She wanted to just parrot Noah’s words again. I’m just not the girl you marry. But for the first time, standing in her kitchen, hungover from grief at losing a relationship that hadn’t even been real, she realized that it didn’t make sense.

  So she didn’t say them. Instead, she let the idea that someone as great as Jack had seemed to be when they’d first met could like someone as abrasive, aggressive, and other as her.

  “I love you, Hannah.” Sasha’s eyes filled with tears. “You’ve been my best friend from the first time we met.”

  “When I told you that I hated you because you were too perfect?” She’d always assumed they’d become best friends because they lived next door to each other in the dorms and because Sasha was nice enough to forgive her for being a terminal bitch.

  “Yeah.” Sasha sniffed. “I knew we’d be good friends then because you were real. I knew you’d never lie to me just to be nice. And it was so different. I need that in my life.”

  “But men don’t like real.”

  “They obviously don’t like fake, either!” She threw her arms out. “I’m alone, too.”

  “But that’s because you keep dating idiots.”

  “I’m beginning to think you were right all along.” And then the tears came back, and Hannah rounded the peninsula to hug her friend. She hated when people made Sasha cry, even when it was her. “That dudes are all terrible. What could be better proof of that than the fact that you—my caring, beautiful friend—are alone?”

  “No, I’m wrong. You’re the brave one, to keep trying even though no one can see what a treasure you are.” Then they both broke down in sobs.

  “You’re the best.”

  “No, you’re the best.”

  Then Sasha had to ruin it by saying, “Jack thinks you’re the best.”

  Hannah sniffed the bubble of snot that had formed at the end of her nose and pulled back. “You’ve got to let this go. He used me for a story, and now we’re over.”

  “Even if you can’t see it now, I think he’s going to make you see it.”

  “You really think he’s going to get over the fact that I used him to get ahead in my job?”

  “I think he’s already over it.” Sasha poured them both another glass of champagne. “He was over it before he wiped those drinks off his face.”

  Sasha had a point. She and Noah had never had a fight like that, even when they were breaking up. He’d pulled away, and she’d tried to pull him back—over and over—until finally, she’d just loosened her grip and let him go. She’d stopped trying to be what he wanted, and he’d stopped trying to nudge her into being what he wanted. The end of a war of attrition.

  Last night, with Jack, she’d felt like they were both clawing to keep the great things between them. The chemistry, yes, but she knew that she’d never meet a man with the same integrity Jack had. Or she’d thought he’d had. And she might be trying to minimize her hopes that somehow this would work out, but she’d seen something like sadness mixed with determination in his gaze.

  If he’d merely been using her, it wasn’t like he would have been hurt that she was using him. It would have been the convenient way for them to say goodbye. No harm. No foul.

  But there was harm—to her and to him—and her primary objective when she’d accepted that first date with him had certainly been fouled.

  She wasn’t about to get a promotion. The engagement party she and Sasha had planned was a disaster the engagement itself hadn’t survived. And they would be lucky if either of them had jobs when the dust settled.

  Sasha would land on her feet. Her parents wouldn’t allow for any other outcome. Hannah—maybe it was time to go to law school, despite how much she didn’t relish the idea. She’d figure it out. She always did.

  Still, humiliation returned anew to Hannah’s gut. In her attempt to prove to her boss that she could handle weddings, she’d royally bungled her first assignment. If she even had a job left, she would have a long row to hoe to get back to where she’d been.

  On the bright side, the cops hadn’t shown up because of anything she’d done this time. The engagement party wasn’t in the papers because of anything she or Sasha had done.

  She gestured toward the rapidly emptying champagne bottle. “Are you sure we shouldn’t be trying to figure out how to make Annalise not fire us both?” Still, she tipped the glass up to her mouth.

  “I’d say that feckless bitch Giselle should figure it out if she wants to be a VP so badly.”

  Hannah choked on her mimosa, but that didn’t stop them from finishing the bottle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  YOU LOOK LIKE HELL, bro.” Bridget punched him in the arm. He never should have taught her how to throw a punch.

  Jack grunted in response. He didn’t need his sister to tell him how he looked. Not only had he woken up in his liquor-soiled, rented tux that he definitely wouldn’t be getting his deposit back on; he hadn’t slept more than an hour or so. And there might even have been some eye leakage involved when he’d finally come down from the adrenaline of last night.

  He’d considered begging off of Sunday brunch with his mom and sister, but he couldn’t do that to Bridget. Michael had refused from the jump to indulge their mother’s
illusion that she was still parenting as long as she saw them all once a week, but he and Bridget both dutifully attended the command performance every weekend.

  At this point, it was tradition. Plus, this time he had a national byline, which he should be really proud about. He’d woken up to several calls asking him if he was happy at the magazine, so it didn’t matter whether Irv fired him.

  But he couldn’t seem to get himself to care. He was never going to see Hannah again. Even though he’d set out to have her leave him, he hadn’t truly wanted her to. But it had really happened, and there was nothing he could do to fix it.

  “No pithy comeback?”

  Jack wasn’t in the mood for a back-and-forth with his sister. If this had been the old days, when they were all living in the same house, he would have given her a noogie until she screamed and cried. But he was too tired to even return her arm punch.

  For Christ’s sake, his whole body ached. He felt like he had the flu. Couldn’t his baby sister see that and take it easy on him?

  The universe hated him, because as soon as they got to the table where their mother was already seated, she said, “What the hell happened to him?”

  “He was probably up late, making luuuurve to his new girlfriend.”

  Before he could make them stop by telling them the truth, his mother clapped her hands and said, “I really like that girl.”

  Jack pulled out his chair with a little too much force, and that finally made his female relatives stop clucking over the girl who had ripped his heart out and stomped on it in front of half the city of Chicago.

  They both just stared at him, as though meeting him for the first time. He guessed that was true for his mother; she’d never met the surly son of a bitch he felt like at that moment. In front of his mother, he was always on his best behavior. But it didn’t matter anymore. Being the perfect son hadn’t made his mother stay. And being the perfect boyfriend hadn’t made any of his girlfriends stick around. Flubbing everything up intentionally had made things blow wider and faster than Irv could have ever hoped for before he chucked him. Nothing mattered.