All Your Perfects

The only thing holding me back from giving up completely is Graham. I know deep down if I let go of the dream of children, I will be letting go of Graham. I don’t want to take the possibility of becoming a father away from him.

I’m the infertile one. Not Graham. Should he be punished by my infertility, too? He says kids don’t matter to him as much as I matter to him, but I know he says that because he doesn’t want to hurt me. And because he still has hope. But ten or twenty years from now, he’ll resent me. He’s human.

I feel selfish when I have these thoughts. I feel selfish every time Graham and I have sex because I know I’m clinging to a hope that isn’t there, dragging him along in a marriage that will eventually become too dull for either of us. Which is why I spend hours every day online, searching for something that might give me an answer. Anything. I’m in support groups, I read all the message boards, the stories of “miracle conceptions,” the private adoption groups. I’m even in several parenting groups just in case I do eventually have a child. I’ll be well prepared.

The one thing I don’t participate in online is social media. I deleted all my accounts last year. I just couldn’t take the insensitive people on my timeline. April Fools’ Day was the worst. I lost track of how many of my friends think it’s funny to announce a fake pregnancy.

They have absolutely no compassion for people in my situation. If they knew how many women have spent years dreaming of a positive result, they’d never even think to make light of it.

And don’t get me started on the number of my friends who complain about their children on their timeline. “Evie was up all night crying! Ugh! When will she sleep through the freaking night?” or “I can’t wait for school to start back! These boys are driving me insane!”

If those mothers only knew.

If I were a mother, I wouldn’t take a single moment of my child’s life for granted. I’d be grateful for every second they whined or cried or got sick or talked back to me. I’d cherish every second they were home during the summer and I’d miss them every second they were away at school.

That’s why I deleted social media. Because with every status I saw, I became more and more bitter. I know those mothers love their children. I know they don’t take them for granted. But they don’t understand what it’s like not to be able to experience the things that bring them stress. And rather than despise every person I’m friends with online, I decided to delete my accounts in hopes it would bring me a small semblance of peace. But it hasn’t.

Even without social media, not a single day goes by without being reminded that I might never be a mother. Every time I see a child. Every time I see a pregnant woman. Every time I run into people like Eleanor. Almost every movie I watch, every book I read, every song I hear.

And lately . . . every time my husband touches me.





Chapter Five




* * *





Then


I’ve never brought a guy to my apartment who wasn’t Ethan. In fact, Ethan rarely came here, either. His apartment is nicer and much larger, so we always stayed there. But here I am, about to have rebound sex with a complete stranger just hours after I caught my fiancé having an affair.

If Ethan is capable of an affair, I am certainly capable of revenge sex with an extremely attractive guy. This entire day has been one bizarre event after another. What’s one more?

I open the door and make a quick scan of the apartment in case there’s anything I need to hide. In doing so, I realize I’d have to hide everything and that’s not possible with Graham one step behind me. I step aside and allow him to enter my apartment.

“Come in,” I say.

Graham walks in after me, taking in my apartment with his sad eyes. It’s a small one-bedroom, but all the pictures of Ethan and me make it feel even smaller. Suffocating.

Leftover wedding invitations are still spread out over the dining room table.

The wedding dress I bought two weeks ago hangs from the entryway closet door. Seeing it makes me angry. I pull it down, fold the wedding bag over, and shove it in the closet. I don’t even bother to hang it. I hope it gets wrinkled.

Graham walks over to my bar and picks up a photo of Ethan and me. In the picture, Ethan had just proposed and I said yes. I was flashing my ring at the camera. I stand next to Graham and look at the photo with him. His thumb brushes over the glass. “You look really happy here.”

I don’t respond, because he’s right. I look happy in that photo because I was happy. Extremely happy. And oblivious. How many times had Ethan cheated on me? Did it happen before he even proposed to me? I have so many questions but I don’t think I want the answers enough to eventually subject myself to an interrogation of Ethan.

Graham sets the photo down on the bar, facedown. And just like we did with our phones, he presses his finger against it and gives it a shove across the bar. It flies over the edge and shatters when it hits my kitchen floor.

Such a careless, rude thing to do in someone else’s apartment. But I like that he did it.

There are two more pictures on the bar. I take the other one of Ethan and me and place it facedown. I push it across the bar and when that one shatters, I smile. So does Graham.

We both stare at the last photo. Ethan isn’t in this one. It’s a picture of me and my father, taken just two weeks before he died. Graham picks it up and brings it in closer for inspection. “Your dad?”

“Yeah.”

He sets the photo back on the counter. “This one can stay.”

Graham makes his way to the table where the leftover wedding invitations are laid out. I didn’t choose the invitations. My mother and Ethan’s mother did. They even mailed them out for us. My mother dropped these off two weeks ago and told me to look on Pinterest for crafts to make out of leftover invitations, but I had no desire to do anything with the invitations.

I’ll definitely be throwing them away now. I don’t want a single keepsake from this disaster of a relationship.

I follow Graham to the table and I take a seat on it, pulling my legs up. I sit cross-legged as Graham picks up one of the invitations and begins reading it aloud.

“The honor of your presence is requested at the nuptials of Quinn Dianne Whitley, daughter of Avril Donnelly and the late Kevin Whitley of Old Greenwich, Connecticut, to Ethan Samson Van Kemp, son of Dr. and Mrs. Samson Van Kemp, also of Old Greenwich. The event will take place at the prestigious Douglas Whimberly Plaza on the evening of . . .”

Graham pauses reading and looks at me. He points at the wedding invitation. “Your wedding invitation has the word prestigious in it.”

I can feel the embarrassment in my cheeks.

I hate those invitations. When I saw them for the first time, I threw a fit at the pretentiousness of the entire thing, but my mother and pretentious go hand in hand. “My mother’s doing. Sometimes it’s easier to just let her get her way than put up a fight.”

Graham raises an eyebrow and then tosses the invitation back onto the pile. “So, you’re from Greenwich, huh?”

I can hear the judgment in his voice, but I don’t blame him. Old Greenwich was recently rated one of the wealthiest cities in America. If you’re a part of that wealth, it’s commonplace to assume you’re better than those who aren’t. If you aren’t part of that wealth, you judge those who are. It’s a trend I refuse to be a part of.

“You don’t come across as a girl who hails from Old Greenwich,” he adds.

My mother would find that insulting, but his comment makes me smile. I take it as the compliment he meant it to be. And he’s right . . . my microscopic apartment and the furnishings herein in no way resemble the home I grew up in.

“Thank you. I try very hard to separate myself from the dredges of high society.”

“You’d have to try even harder if you wanted to convince people you’re a part of high society. And I mean that in a good way.”

Another comment my mother would be insulted by. I’m starting to like this guy more and more.