gases. Honestly, he could learn a thing or two from me.
I let him blow off steam. I nod and agree like the good little fiancée I am, but I am not a good fiancée at all because I feel like I might fall apart at any moment.
I’m a good actress. It’s a point of pride. Nicholas’s point of pride is that he thinks he knows every little thing there is to know about me. He tells people all the time that I can’t hide anything from him. I’m transparent as air and intellectually just as substantial. The fact that he can look into my eyes and believe I am totally in love with him is proof that I’m a fantastic actress and he does not know everything about me, or even most things.
Ratio-wise, I would say that I’m forty percent in love with Nicholas. Maybe I shouldn’t say I’m in love. There’s a difference. Being in love is frantic. Fluttery. Falling. It’s nervous sweats and pounding heartbeats and a feeling of tremendous rightness, or so I hear. I don’t have that. I love him forty percent.
It’s not as bad as it sounds, if you think about the couples you know. If they’re being honest, a lot of them would list a lower number than the one they’d declare out loud. The truth is that I don’t think any two people both feel one hundred percent in love with each other at the same exact time, all the time. They might take turns being seventy-five, their personal high, while the other clocks in at sixty.
I’m a miserable cynic (a newer development) and a dreamy romantic (always have been), and it’s such a terrible combination that I don’t know how to tolerate myself. If I were only one of those things, perhaps I would be nodding and agreeing with Nicholas, smiling brightly, rather than drumming up one of my favorite daydreams to focus on when I don’t want to live in reality. In this dream, it’s my wedding day and I’m standing at the altar next to Nicholas. The priest asks if anyone objects to this union and someone in the audience stands up, boldly proclaiming, “I do.” Everyone gasps. It’s Jake Pavelka, controversial season 14 star of The Bachelor.
In real life, Jake Pavelka isn’t going to interrupt my vows, and Nicholas and I will be stuck with each other. I revisit my mental calendar and feel sick at how little time I have left. Right now, the thought of saying I do makes my pulse gallop like a runaway train.
I am falling apart and Nicholas doesn’t even notice.
This is happening with snowballing regularity. Just when I think the odd feeling’s gone and I’m complacent again, all feelings of dissatisfaction suppressed, the pendulum swings back at me. Sometimes the feeling hits me when I’m about to fall asleep. It happens when I’m driving home from work and when I’m eating dinner, which means I lose my appetite immediately and have to make up an acceptable explanation as to why.
Because of my excuses, Nicholas thinks I have a sensitive stomach and my PMS lasts three weeks. We frequently discuss my gluten intake and I pretend to consider cutting sugar out of my diet. This is what happens when you date a guy for eleven months, then get engaged six hours before finally moving in together and learning who the other person truly is on a day-to-day basis. Signing up for Boyfriend Nicholas and inheriting Fiancé Nicholas later on was some legitimate bait-and-switch business, let me tell you. I thought I’d won big-time when I landed him, but after sliding a ring onto my finger he relegated me to Eternal Second Place.
When I’m alone or when I might as well be because he’s ignoring me in favor of spending quality time with his computer, I at least have the reprieve of letting my smile fall. I don’t have to waste energy pretending I’m fine. I don’t let myself indulge the dark, intrusive thoughts for too long, even though I want to, because I’m afraid once I start going full Morrissey, fixing the wall with a thousand-yard stare and reflecting on what exactly makes me unhappy, it will become impossible to fold those thoughts up and put them neatly in a drawer to reexamine another day.
I tune in to Nicholas’s tangent long enough to grasp a few keywords: Stacy, khaki ban, gas gauge. He has found a way to combine his three favorite gripes into