At the time, she’d felt like it was the only way to be. Now, though, the things she did to survive seemed not to fit anymore. The sinking feeling wasn’t even the awkwardness. The conversation between her and Nathan had been stilted from the start. She could feel how much he liked her. It made him sputter and start, and it made her overcompensate.
She hated who she was with him. And she didn’t need Pam to tell her that wasn’t the best foundation for a long-lasting, mutually satisfying romantic relationship. It might have worked for her parents, but she wanted something different.
The problem was that she couldn’t have the different thing she wanted. She dared not ask for it. Even if Patrick wanted to leave the priesthood for her, her family would never accept a laicized priest into the fold, even if leaving was ultimately his choice. The madness that had overtaken them would have to live inside her like a precious gem in her heart. Even if she should feel guilty about what they’d shared, she wouldn’t give up the memory of the way he’d been with her for anything in the world.
She had to break up with Nathan.
In the middle of the walkway, she stopped and turned to him. It took him a few steps to realize that she was no longer next to him. Before saying anything, she looked him up and down. He really was handsome. Good-looking in a way that her mother wouldn’t consider flashy and therefore dangerous. But she was repelled by his khaki pants and pressed shirt. His very appropriate and likely uncomfortable wingtip shoes. They felt like they came from a bygone era.
Sasha opened her mouth to speak, but Nathan beat her to the punch. “I have to tell you something.”
Oh, this was a boon. If he’d picked up on her disquiet and decided to break up with her first, it would be ideal. Not that she’d been broken up with very often—at least not after this many dates—but not having to take on the onus of being the one who was too picky would be very nice. Her mother would still have something to say, but it would be a truncated period of sniping if Sasha was presumably licking her wounds.
“I haven’t been honest with you.” Nathan looked down as though he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Oh?” She cocked her head, and it struck her that it was her mother’s technique for getting wayward children to tell the truth. That was something she could talk about with Pam later. Right now, it was time to get the information that may very well set her free from the self-abnegation springing from not being able to fall in love with a very good prospect.
“Don’t be mad.” He ran his fingers through his hair, messing it up. This was going to be good. “But I’m—I’m married.”
That was the last thing Sasha had been expecting him to say. Married? She looked down at his left hand, noting that a tan line on his ring finger had not magically appeared there in the last few moments—like a secret decoder mark. “You’re what?”
“Separated.” That’s what they all said. At least that’s what they all said on Tinder.
Sasha couldn’t help herself. A snort of laughter escaped her before she could tamp it down. Nathan looked at her with a wide, terrified gaze as though she was about to do the worst thing possible—become hysterical in public. “Did you decide to bring me down here to try to sell me the pier or dump me?”
Poor thing, he looked so confused. “What?”
“I mean, I’m pretty sure the city already owns everything over there.” She didn’t know why she felt anger, why her addiction to forbidden emotions only seemed to grow and never abate. But it wasn’t so bad in this moment because she was mostly angry on behalf of Nathan’s newly disclosed spouse. “You’ve spent the past three months trying to sell me something that belongs to someone else, haven’t you?”
Nathan’s face twisted, as though he were in a position to take exception with anything she had to say right now. “Wait a minute—”
Sasha wasn’t finished. For the first time in weeks, at least since she’d first tasted Patrick’s mouth, she was in a position of moral authority. She fully intended to relish it before resuming her fallen woman status. “We’ve been dating for months—you were out of town and texting me every day—and you’re just telling me about your spouse now? The person you presumably stood before a priest and your family and God and promised till death do us part to?” She hadn’t meant for her voice to rise quite so hysterically, but it did.
“You could have figured it out if you’d wanted to.” Nathan’s voice sounded as lame as his excuse. “You have Google, don’t you?”
He had a point. Never once had Sasha thought about doing a simple web search on Nathan. She’d simply taken him at his word because he put on such a good face. And she honestly didn’t really care all that much. She’d never really liked him.
“And I never tried to fuck you.”
He had another point, although she wouldn’t put it quite so crassly. She hadn’t questioned the exceedingly gentlemanly way that he’d treated her because she was so thankful that she didn’t have to close her eyes and think about a certain Catholic priest while Nathan pretended to know how to operate a clitoris. She really should give him more credit—he was married, after all—but there had to be a reason why he was separated.
“What is it about me that made you think I’d be totes cool with being your side bitch?” Nathan looked surprised to hear her curse at all, and that was a little bit more salt in the wound. She’d never been herself with him—secretly sarcastic and cutting. He’d only seen the carefully cultivated veneer she’d created for herself over decades.
“You should really watch your mouth.”
It might not have been until that moment that Sasha understood why Hannah had lost it on so many of the guys who’d told her how she should talk or feel. Sasha had never behaved anything but perfectly, had never stretched the bounds of appropriate feminine behavior under the patriarchy. She hadn’t even tested the fences before that night at Dooley’s bar.
Although she’d always felt she was wrong for wanting to color outside the lines a bit, she only felt that way because she’d been living inside such a small plot of emotional land for so very long. So now, when she was just expressing her emotions in the most straightforward fashion possible—with profanity—she was shocking? That was fucked up.
“I’m not the one who’s married. You should maybe watch where you’re putting your mouth.” Nathan had kissed her when they’d met outside the restaurant. Perhaps the fact that she’d never been to his home should have been a clue. Come to think of it, the fact that he hadn’t been holding her hand for a romantic walk along the lakefront should have been another clue. Here she was, grateful that he hadn’t tried to have sex with her, when he’d really just been trying not to break his marriage vows.