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I draw my X in the top left corner this time. Max draws an O below it. I never really worried about winning when I played with the kids, but now I decide to be a bit strategic and put an X in the top right corner. He’ll have to stop me from getting three-in a-row now, but then I’ll draw an X in the bottom right corner and he won’t be able to stop both of my three-in-row options.

I shouldn’t be this excited about winning a children’s game, but sometimes it’s the little things.

Only when Max takes the pen he doesn’t draw his O in the middle of my X’s, instead I watch as he draws an X in the middle.

“Max,” I whisper in confusion and slight annoyance—he spoiled my victory. “You’re O’s.”

“I know,” he whispers back, then surprises me by gently tilting my chin up to him with one finger, “but I had to make a row of kisses since I can’t stop thinking about kissing you.”

My stomach does a flip it hasn’t done in years and then he presses the softest of kisses to my very taken aback lips. When he pulls back his eyes latch onto mine and the flip turns into a routine of Olympic caliber.

This…flirting—there’s no other word for it—is just so unexpected. So familiar, yet so foreign at the same time.

Then reality crashes down in the form of Dorothy’s loud voice calling us out. “Now I have friends in the third row,” she booms,“who have agreed to be my volunteers for the next portion of my talk. Jill, Max, why don’t the two of you join me on stage.”

Wait, what? When did we agree to be her volunteers? Did Max volunteer us? We did talk about doing so at breakfast. But no, he looks just as gobsmacked as I do. My head snaps up to Dorothy, who’s looking right at us, beckoning us forward with a catlike expression on her meddling face. Next to me, Tucker’s wife tugs my arm, telling me excitedly to go on up. Luke is doing the same on Max’s other side. In fact, everybody on that side of us is already moving their legs to the side for us to pass.

We’ve got no choice. Exchanging the briefest of glances, we get to our feet warily then make our way out of the aisle and up to the stage. My mind and body reel with confusion as we go. That moment we shared had felt so real for a second. Playing this ‘fool Dorothy’ game is going to be harder on me emotionally than I realized. It’s actually making me question how Max feels about me.

Has preserving our marriage always simply been about his public image?

Nausea churns in my stomach as I mount the steps.

The crazy thing is, even though things have been difficult between us lately, I always knew that Max would stay. That he was committed to me and the kids.

It’s just that I never thought that was enough. Or even that significant of a reality. What did it matter if he stayed if we didn't have the passion of our younger years?Strong marriages last because the people in them have a commitment to each other that goes beyond their emotional responses to each other. The parrot is back.

But this time I think she might have a point.

Chapter 19

Max

ThatmomentwithJillfelt so real to me. It was a cheesy line I laid on her, and sure it was partly motivated by the presence of Tucker, three seats away from me, rubbing his wife’s thigh with reckless abandon, but once I kissed her the anxiety and unease I’d been feeling since I saw Tucker started to fade away.

Jill and I fit. We always have. Things have been difficult lately, it’s true, but that has never made me question whether or not she was it for me. She absolutelyisit for me. How could she be anything less? She’s my wife. Till death do us part.

I wish I could tell her all of this, but I worry she’d think it was just part of this crazy game we’re playing with Dorothy. (And now Tucker too—though Jill doesn’t know that.)

I don’t have time to try and think of a way to fix this, though, because we’re onstage now, Dorothy greeting us with a raised brow.

“There they are: the Bernards. You know, I should disclose that I met this lovely couple on the plane. Or at least I was luckyenough to meet Jill there anyway. She just so happened to get seated between me and my husband. Poor thing.” Dorothy lets out a tinkly little laugh. “Anyway, I have an exercise that I would like each couple here to do together, but I always think it’s nice to have one couple demonstrate it for us first. I hope you two are ready to be a little vulnerable.” She laughs again. Neither Jill nor I join in. I don’t do vulnerable.

“I’m only teasing,” Doorthy says in response to our silence. “Goodness, the looks on your faces. I hope you both know that it’s okay to not have it together all the time. None of us do.”

“Amen to that!” A voice that sounds an awful lot like Hannah shouts from the audience. Next to me Jill purses her lips. Dorothy might as well have told her it’s okay to strip naked on national television. That’s how little she agrees with what was just said. On impulse I reach over and squeeze her hand. She startles slightly, but then relaxes, squeezing my hand back. It’s nice. Feeling like a team again.

Even if it is simply because we seem to have united against a common enemy.

“But I digress,” Dorothy says with a clap of her hand. “I do that a lot, just ask Mick.”

“Love you, sweetheart!” her husband calls from the front row. Dorothy blows him a kiss. Jill’s grip on my hand tightens. I can feel her stress like it’s my own.

“Now then. Quick recap of my last couple of points–”

None of which Jill nor I heard, since we were playing tic-tac-toe, so good thing she’s summarizing them for us.

“Circumstances aren’t representative of God’s love for us. If they were then biblical evidence would suggest that God hated the apostle Paul, after all he endured being beaten, shipwrecked, and imprisoned. It would have been easy for Paul to think that God was punishing him or that God didn’t love him, but thankfully he was rooted in the truth of God’s love for him.Rather than looking for proof of God’s love for him in outward occurrences, Paul looked to the ultimate proof of God’s love for him. In order to be fully rooted in the truth of God’s love for us, then, we too need to keep our focus on that same proof, which, of course, is the cross. As it says in Romans 5:8, ‘But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’