brett

Holy shit. Is she pregnant? Are we in the same conversation? Am I in the twilight zone? I knew things were going way too smoothly.

“A baby?” she says, which echoes in my head over and over again. “You look really confused.”

And then it all starts to hit me in these fast-paced, montagelike flashes, punching me in the face, knocking into my pea-brain a terrifying scenario: the recent weirdness. Bam. Her mood swings. Punch. The amount of ice cream she’s been sucking down. Thump. Her talk about taking up knitting. Smack. Layla moving furniture out of the extra room the other day. Whack. The ceiling-hanging mobile she bought—fuck, wasn’t that a prop for a photo shoot? How could I have missed all those signals? But now she realizes that we’re having difficulties and—

“Are you pregnant?” I blurt.

“Already?” she asks, like she’s surprised by the question.

“Are you pregnant?” I repeat.

“No!” she says.

“Phew!” I let out a heavy sigh. “Thank God.”

“I beg your pardon?” she says, seeming taken aback.

“Well, we wouldn’t want to bring a child into the world just as we were …”

Layla’s eyes widen. The relief I felt three seconds earlier gets replaced with panic again. Were we having two different conversations after all?

“What were we talking about?” I ask.

“You tell me, Brett,” she says, and she doesn’t look happy, so I decide to bite the bullet.

“I thought we were talking about us. About maybe taking a break.”

“A break?” she repeats with disgust. “We’re not Ross and fucking Rachel! We’re married. Say what you mean, Brett.”

“A separation?”

“Unbelievable,” she says through gritted teeth. She’s shaking her head, clearly shocked.

“I think we have a miscommunication here,” I say, trying to backpedal or at least soften the situation.

“No, we had one. You just cleared it right up.” Then she whips out that crazy stuffed owl she’s had since I’ve known her. She shakes it at me. “And to think…”

But she doesn’t finish her sentence.

“I’m sorry. I thought we were on the same page.”

“We’re not even in the same book,” she says. “Not even in the same library!”

“No kidding. We aren’t. Because I thought I got the book that had a happy ending. Not the one where my wife and I lose touch and she becomes such a part of my family that she may as well be my sister!” I snap.

“Hardly, because your sister doesn’t like men. She’s smart.”

“So what does that make you?” I snap. “Because you…you love men. You’ve loved men since … how long exactly?”

“I’m not sure what you’re asking me. How long have I loved you?”

“Yeah, I’m not sure what I’m asking you, either,” I grunt. “How about this: Who’s the first person you had sex with?”