was “Are you sure?” and “As long as you’re happy . . .” People thought it was a terrible idea, given that I’d only known him a few months and had only seen him on random weekends. People on the other side of marriage know what happens when you’ve never spent any real time together. I had no idea what that reality actually looked like, but I told myself I was just efficient.
The next day I had to fly up to Wilmington to audition for Dawson’s Creek. It was a quick trip, there and back in one day. Back in Jacksonville, I let myself into Chris’s place while he was still at practice and got on his computer to check my e-mail.
Kids, this was medieval times, when olde-timey laptops used to have messages pop up on the screen like they were breaking in with a special report. And there it was:
“Yo, you still got that girl coming in next weekend? Nigga, she’s Greek. Nigga, she’s Greek.”
This was from his best friend. Now, I am not Greek. Nor do I know why his friend was so insistent about this woman’s Greek identity. All I knew was that I was going to be back in L.A. the weekend of Greekfest. And this was literally not even twenty-four hours after he had proposed to me.
I packed my bag and kept my ring on just so he could see me take it off when I threw it at him. When he walked in the door, I nailed it, throwing the diamond right at him. Chris entered the scene in full apology mode, as his boy had tipped him off. I guess my reply—something like “Yes, what was her name again?”—gave away that the person typing wasn’t Chris. He bent to pick up the ring and was crawling on the ground, begging.
“You just proposed,” I yelled.
“I didn’t know if you were going to say yes,” he said.
“So you lined up a backup?” I yelled. “Who do you think you’re kidding?”
But for someone with an intense fear of public humiliation, who, just hours ago, felt lucky to have been chosen, I had no choice but to stay. I didn’t have it in me to call all those people twenty-four hours later to say, “You were right.” Because then everyone would know just how naïve and foolish I really was.
The judgment, I imagined, would be on a grand scale. My publicist had also announced our engagement to the press, and I felt like there was no turning back. People had taken time to ask my publicist for details on how we met and I had already crafted a quote about our happiness. “Yeah, about what I said,” I dreaded saying. “Uh, please respect our privacy during this difficult time?” Now I know the headline would have been “Eighth Lead of She’s All That Calls Off Engagement,” but in my mind, the story was far bigger.
I stalled, putting off sending out the Save the Dates and stretching the engagement from 1999 all the way to 2001. When the Jaguars cut him in 2000, my girlfriends told me that I should, too. But I couldn’t kick him while he was down. I also believed he had a real skill set that would be attractive to another team. The Raiders were interested, and by the time we finally got married, he was doing off-season training with them. He was technically on the team and got a small stipend for working out, but he didn’t have a contract. We married in May, and at the end of August he got cut from the Raiders and never played football again. And for the rest of our marriage, never had another check. From a job. Ever again.
What about that kinesiology degree he was so close to getting? Funny, I asked the same question.
“Yeah, about that,” he said. “I’m actually a year and a half away. And if you’re an ex-athlete on scholarship and don’t tell the university that you want to come back in a certain amount of time, they don’t budget for you. I’d be paying for it. Since I don’t live in Michigan, I’d be paying out-of-state tuition.”
So the Bank of Gabrielle Union was officially open. And doing a brisk business.
I TRIED. NOT MUCH, MIND YOU. BUT I DID TRY. WE WERE LIVING IN A cookie-cutter split-level town house in the Tarzana neighborhood of L.A., and he decided he needed office space for a company that (as far as I could