"Because he loves her, obviously! Just look at how much charm our Jacqueline has!"
Everyone turned to look at Nelson, and his expression shifted slightly.
"What are you all looking at me for!"
The teasing didn't let up, laughter and jeers tangling together, Nelson's own laugh threaded through it.
Their words were like needles, driving straight into my heart.
I don't know how long the noise outside went on. By the time Jacqueline pushed the bedroom door open, I'd already fallen asleep.
"I'm taking Nelson home. Clean the place up while I'm gone."
I followed the open door with my eyes. Nelson was still out there, waiting.
Again.
Everyone lived the same direction, and yet somehow it was always Jacqueline who drove him home.
Before I could get a word out, she left with him.
I stood in the living room like I'd wandered into the aftermath of some disaster.
In my mind I saw myself, crouched in the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, scrubbing every corner of this house.
And in that moment, the string I'd been holding taut inside me finally snapped.
I sat down on the couch and waited for Jacqueline to come back.
The lock turned, and with it came Jacqueline's furious shout.
"Ethan, you didn't even lift a finger?"
"Don't tell me you were waiting around for me to come clean it up—"
"Jacqueline, let's get a divorce."
I cut straight through the anger, four words that shut her mouth.
The living room went silent.
It didn't last. Then Jacqueline laughed.
"Ethan, you're thirty. You're not some eighteen-year-old boy."
"When you're dating, you can throw a fit and say you're breaking up and it means nothing. Marriage isn't the same."
"You can't treat marriage like a game. There's a son not even a year old in there still waiting for you to rock him to sleep!"
Jacqueline pointed at the bedroom door, the corner of her mouth curling with a hint of scorn.
I lifted my eyes to the woman standing over me.
Jacqueline and I—when exactly had it come to this?
For four years of college, Jacqueline was everyone's idea of the perfect girlfriend.
Beautiful, gentle, good to me, always wishing she could do everything for me herself.
Even on days she had no classes, she'd walk me to and from mine in the rain, holding the umbrella over me.
She'd say, "My Ethan hates carrying an umbrella, so I have to be ready for him."
Wherever she was, she kept a thermos on her, making sure I always had warm water at exactly a hundred and twelve degrees.
She'd say, "Ethan says the perfect temperature to drink water is a hundred and twelve. Anything out there is never as just-right as what I make myself."
She got my meals, picked my classes, grabbed my packages, saved my seat, tutored me before finals. Anything she could do, she did.
People used to joke that the only thing left was for her to eat, drink, and use the bathroom for me too.
The year we graduated, plenty of couples were breaking up over long distance.
She stayed in Bayport for me.
"Wherever you are in this life, that's where I'll be!"
I was moved. I brought her home to meet my parents.
But my parents didn't like her. They didn't like where she came from, her family background.
For her, I fought with them and moved out.
In those two years living together in Bayport, Jacqueline threw herself into her work. She swore she'd make something of herself, prove herself to my parents.
But no matter how busy she got, she never forgot there was someone at home waiting for her: me.
We cooked together, made dinner together, and those were the best two years.
Those same two years settled it for me. I was going to marry her.
"I'm telling you, if you dare marry that girl, your father and I won't give you a single cent!"
"Ethan, she's not as pure and simple as you think she is!"
"Can't you clear your head for once!"
The day I told them I was marrying Jacqueline and getting the license, my mother jabbed a finger at my forehead and cursed me out.
