Page 2 of Cruel Summer

“Well, if you knew this would make conflict, why bring it up?”

“Because. Because sometimes I wonder if we make certain choices because the path is well-worn. Because there are examples of this exact life all around us.”

“Except we’re different,” she said. “Because we’re friends. We like each other. We…”

“Exactly. We are different. I already know I don’t want to be without you. When I started thinking about this, I considered all the options.”

He’d been considering options. While she’d been grocery shopping, writing articles and having coffee with her friends.

While she’d been showing him the new dress she’d bought at Target and then the new underwear that matched, he’d been considering options.

She’d been having her normal, everyday life and he’d been…

“We got together so young,” he said. “I started thinking about our lives and how it’s built on a foundation of doing what the people around us said was right.

Our beliefs have shifted a lot over the years, and we’re still living a life we chose before.

I don’t want to burn all this down, but I’m just questioning why we’re doing it…

this way when there are other options out there. ”

“Are you cheating on me?” she asked, a sudden anger, a sudden terror rising up in her chest and overtaking everything.

She had missed this entire upheaval inside of him. What else was she missing?

“Hot plates,” said their waitress, approaching the table and setting down her steak and his hamburger.

Sam looked up and stared at the woman. The woman smiled.

Sam frowned and looked back at Will as the waitress walked away.

Sam just stared.

“I’m not cheating on you,” he said. “I never have. I would never.”

“You are literally asking my permission to cheat on me.”

“I’m not. I am asking if you’re open to nonmonogamy, and that isn’t cheating.

I haven’t talked to anyone else about this, I haven’t lied to you, I haven’t hidden anything from you except the reading I’ve been doing about open relationships and how to navigate them.

” She could see his discomfort. He was playing with the fork, his breathing was choppy.

It was…a big deal to him. He cared about this, and he was afraid to talk to her about it.

That was the terrible, stupid thing about knowing him and loving him. He’d made the stupid decision to tell her this at a restaurant because he didn’t know how to handle it. Because it was hard and not because he was trying to be flippant or hurtful.

But it hurt.

Her heart was thundering so hard, and she was having trouble keeping a thought straight, and she was not going to eat her steak, because at this point if she tried to take a bite of anything she was going to throw it right back up.

“I haven’t broken your trust,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that. That’s why I’m talking to you. I had to get some things straight in my own head first. I didn’t want to say anything before I was sure it was more than an impulse. I didn’t break your trust.”

And no, she supposed he hadn’t.

Except he had.

Because she had trusted him to be the man she’d known, inside and out, for thirty years, the man she’d been married to for over twenty, and he wasn’t.

“Trust is a very important part of this,” he said. “Like I said, I’ve been reading a lot. Communication and trust…you have to have that if you’re going to keep a relationship and give your partner autonomy…”

“You have autonomy. Except, the thing is, we had forsaking all others in our marriage vows. You don’t have autonomy to do things we said we wouldn’t do in literal vows.”

“That’s why we’re having this conversation. I don’t want to end what we have, I want to expand the idea of what it can be.”

She was never cruel. She was occasionally a little mean in the name of humor, but only to be amusing and never to actually hurt anyone, especially not Will. Never Will.

They were never that couple that bad-mouthed each other, not ever. They were united. A team. She’d walked through life feeling that for years now. That she always had him to back her up, that they were always each other’s biggest support, and suddenly now she felt so singularly, utterly alone.

This marriage was a badge of honor for her in so many ways. Her best friend Elysia’s husband had cheated. It had been such a horrendous thing to watch her go through, and she could remember how clearly she’d known Will would never. They were each other’s one and only. They both loved that.

She had been sure they did.

Except Will was a man. And apparently what she’d always believed they both found wonderful and romantic, the fidelity she prized, felt like…a lack of autonomy to him.

She thought they’d chosen it.

She thought they’d chosen each other. Only each other.

She had.

She searched around wildly for someone to blame. Someone who wasn’t her or Will.

The villain presented himself easily enough.

“Is it… Are you jealous of Logan?” She’d already stopped herself from thinking about him, but now she couldn’t help it. It was easy for her to blame her husband’s best friend.

Which maybe wasn’t fair. Logan was…well. He was the kind of guy most men envied. He was the kind of guy most women wanted.

He was single and had been for years, and God knew he had his share of bar hookups and whatever else.

Maybe that was it, it was watching his friend with other women, watching his friend live a single, unattached life that made this seem like something he wanted.

“This is about us, not anyone else,” he said. “Don’t make it about him just because you don’t like him. I’m not jealous of the guy whose wife died, Sam. I don’t want to lose my wife. I don’t want to lose you.”

She looked down at her plate. “What if I say no?”

There was a long pause. “I’ll probably keep…trying to talk to you about it. But I won’t leave you. This isn’t an ultimatum.”

That was both better and worse.

If he would be unreasonable then she could be too. She could take her hurt and embrace it, let it be anger. She could just…storm out. Of the restaurant and the marriage. But he was coming to her with…sincere feelings and regrets and desires, and he wasn’t forcing anything on her except…

Except the knowledge that their marriage wasn’t enough.

She didn’t know what to do with this.

She really did want to run away. To take a break from this, because he was right, she hated confrontation.

But especially with him, because it was just so rare, and she’d never really had a great idea about how to navigate it. She preferred to hide from it and let it blow over.

And he’d brought her here, to the neon beer signs and blaring country music, so she couldn’t do just that.

“We think life has to look like this. We think it’s the only way to live, the only way to be in a marriage, because it’s what we were told. Why can’t we question that? Can we at least start at questioning it?”

She didn’t have an answer to that. Neither of them took a bite of their food.

“Let’s just box it up,” she said, feeling tired, and very much like she needed to be able to go into a room—any room—and lock the door and just sit in silence for a minute.

“If that’s what you want.”

“Yeah, it’s what I want.”

He signaled the waitress, who came back and looked at them like they were insane for asking for boxes for untouched food.

“Can we get an extra box of rolls?” he asked. “Also to go.”

Damn him. For knowing she still wanted the rolls. For transforming just enough to make her feel like the wind was knocked out of her and her whole life was turned on its side, but not enough to be a total, monstrous stranger.

They walked outside and she stopped in the middle of the parking lot, looking at the row of cars, which contained three black SUVs that looked just like theirs and seemed to somehow underline the things he was saying to her.

She’d always loved their life because it was theirs.

She hadn’t thought about how much like their neighbors they were.

He seemed to think they had all these things because they were held hostage by some kind of need to be the same, but she’d just felt like she was a middle-of-the-road person.

There was a reason things were mainstream, after all.

That she liked rosé, Bridgerton and iPhones had nothing to do with the influence of others. It was just that she liked what a lot of people did. Same as she had the sort of normal life most other people did.

She’d done her best to be…good.

She and Will had done one thing that everyone had known about and viewed as bad. As sinful and out of order, and she’d been running from that shame ever since. But the running path was very nice. It was a good life with a good husband and beautiful kids.

She’d never questioned it.

Not even once.

They got into the car, and the leather suddenly felt sticky rather than welcoming and soft, and she didn’t know if that was a real thing or a her thing.

“How do you see our life?” she asked, the question sounding muted.

“What do you mean?”

“I see our life as being…special. Because we have a great relationship. We’ve been married for twenty-two years, and I’m still so…

” Her breath suddenly felt sharp. “I’m still so happy to live in our house and be in our life.

I don’t care what other people do or what they have.

I didn’t marry you to be normal. I just am… normal.”

He put the car in Reverse, his eyes on the backup camera as he eased out of the spot. When they were on the highway that led back to their neighborhood, he finally spoke again.

“I like our life too. But I see our life as limited. We have barriers and walls built up around what we do, and maybe it isn’t even because it’s what we want.

It’s because we learned a set of rules a long time ago, and we’re following them without questioning them.

Are we…normal because it’s what we want or because it’s what we were taught to do? ”

“I don’t get it.”

“Monogamy isn’t the only way to do marriage.”