She looks at me, frowning, then says, “Were you really in love with him?”
I give her a confused look. Is she asking whether I was actually in love with Grady or whether I was very in love with him? Either way, it seems like a strange question. “Aren’t most people in love with their fiancés?”
“I’d say seventy–thirty…. Maybe eighty–twenty at best.”
I wait for her to laugh, but she stares at me, stone-faced. It’s such an absurdly cynical Lainey statement that I just roll my eyes.
“I’m serious, Han. Marriage seems like a game of musical chairs. It’s all fun and games until the music stops, then everyone’s in a mad, frantic scramble to squeeze their butt cheeks onto a seat. Any seat.”
“Grady wasn’t just any seat, Lainey. I loved him.” I hesitate, then say, “I still do.”
She gives me a horrified look. “How could you still love him?”
“Because love isn’t something you can just turn off like a switch.”
“Okay. Well. Tell me what you love about him,” she demands.
“Lots of things.”
“Name them. Seriously. I want to know.”
I take a deep breath and picture Grady at his best. “He’s charming and funny, and he makes everything feel like an adventure. Just going to the grocery store…He made life interesting. And let’s face it…I’m a little boring.”
“You’re not boring. You’re just not an attention whore,” she says.
I smile. “Okay. He can be a bit of an attention seeker. But we balanced each other out. Everyone loves Grady.”
“Fine. But what I hear you saying is that you love how much other people love him.” Lainey hesitates, giving me a knowing look. “And I bet I can guess who’s at the top of that list.”
“Who?” I ask.
“Oh, c’mon, Hannah. Don’t play dumb at a time like this.”
I sigh. “Okay. But just because my mother thought he was a great catch doesn’t mean he wasn’t a great catch.”
“Yes. But again, listen to your word choice. ‘Great catch’?” She makes air quotes. “What does that even mean? That he checks a lot of boxes? He’s not even smart—”
“Maybe not book-smart. But he’s very street-smart.”
“He ain’t that street-smart,” Lainey says. “He got busted in bed with another woman.”
“True,” I say.
“Look, the bottom line is he may be seen as a ‘catch’ and he may check a lot of boxes and you might even think you love him—”
“I do love him—”
“Fine. But do you know what?” she says, staring into my eyes.
“What?”
“I never believed he was your person.”
“I thought you didn’t even believe in that soul-mate stuff—”
“I don’t. But you do,” she says. “And I never got that ‘I can’t live without him’ vibe from you.”
“You didn’t?” I ask hopefully.
“No. I didn’t. And for what it’s worth, Tyson couldn’t stand him.”
“Seriously?”
“C’mon. You had to know that. Remember what an ass Grady was about Serena Williams? Honestly, Hannah, that whole thing was low-key racist and sexist—”
“I know it was,” I say with a sigh, thinking that low-key was probably generous.
I always made excuses for Grady, rationalizing that he never said anything overtly racist or sexist. That his attitudes were more the results of an ingrained, unconscious bias. But deep down, I knew that was a distinction without a difference, and I was wrong to look the other way for so long.
“I know this is brutal, Hannah. And if you say you love him, I believe you do. But in the words of Tina Turner: What’s love got to do with it?”
“At this point, I guess nothing,” I say.
“Exactly. You can’t marry a cheater. You just can’t. It has to be over.”
“I know,” I say, nodding.
Part of me feels relieved that the situation is so clear-cut. There is no gray area to navigate, and there is peace in that. But another part of me knows that I’ve built the vision for my entire future around Grady. Without him, I don’t know where I’m going or even who I am. The thought of figuring all that out is nothing short of terrifying, and it doesn’t help to know that my new reality is going to shatter my mother’s very conditional approval of me.
