My husband wanted my sister to be his wife for one day. His brother wanted me for life. My husband, Damen, had a talent for dropping bombs as if he were asking me to pass the salt.
We were eating dinner, a pot of pasta I had made after a twelve-hour day at the firm because Damen said he was too tired to cook, even though he had been home since three. I was twirling spaghetti around my fork when he said, “So, my ten-year reunion is next month, and I need Nikki to come with me.”
I kept chewing because I assumed I had misheard him. Nikki was my younger sister.
She was prettier than me by conventional standards, thinner than me by fifteen pounds, and unemployed by choice for the last two years because she was “finding herself” on my dime. I paid her rent. I paid her car insurance.
I paid for the highlights she got every six weeks because she said dark roots made her feel less confident. I had not realized I was also paying for her to attend my husband’s high school reunion. I swallowed my pasta and said, “Why would Nikki be coming to your reunion?”
Damen did not even look up from his phone.
“Because I need her there,” he said, as if that explained everything. I set my fork down and waited for him to elaborate, because surely there was more to this sentence. There was not.
He just kept scrolling through whatever app had his attention more than I did. “Damen,” I said. He finally looked up with that expression he always wore when I was about to inconvenience him with questions.
“Why do you need my sister at your high school reunion instead of your actual wife?”
He sighed like I was being exhausting, like I was the one who had just said something insane over pasta. “Because I told everyone I married her,” he said. “Back when we first started dating, my buddies met her once at that barbecue, and they assumed she was my girlfriend.
I never corrected them.”
I stared at him. I kept staring at him. I was waiting for the part where he laughed and said he was kidding, where this became some strange joke I did not find funny but could at least categorize as humor.
That part never came. “You told your friends you married my sister,” I repeated slowly, making sure I understood the words coming out of his mouth. “It’s not a big deal,” he said, picking his fork back up like we were done discussing it.
What happened next changed everything… continues on the next page.
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