Page 3 of Pretend You Love Me

“Just watched a customer try to pay for a latte with a library card. I told him it was free because his face made my entire month. Then I gave him the employee discount on a book because I’m a literal saint. Also, I saved you the blueberry scone. It’s in the back when you get here. Hurry up before I eat it and tell you we ran out.”

I laugh despite myself, the sound escaping before I can decide whether I have the energy for it. That’s Luca, finding the one bright, ridiculous spot in the morning and holding it out like it’s a gift.

I pick up the cold coffee from the counter and look around the kitchen. The drying rack with its tiny clothes, the half-open nappy bag, the empty bottles on the counter. Milo, still grumbling in his bouncer with the focused determination of a man who has opinions and nowhere to be. Maisie, quiet in her bassinet.

This is fine. Everything is fine.

I almost believe it.

Two

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m on the living room couch in a state of such unusual calm that I’m afraid to move in case I break the spell. Maisie is asleep in her bassinet by the window, her tiny chest rising and falling with each peaceful breath. Milo, after forty-three minutes of increasingly desperate negotiation involving three different pacifiers, a vibrating chair, and a complete reenactment of The Very Hungry Caterpillar with sound effects, has finally surrendered to exhaustion on my chest. And outside, the steady drone of the lawn mower tells me Daniel is making himself useful while I finally get a minute to myself.

I should be reading. That’s what I told myself I’d do with these precious twenty minutes, pick up the paperback I’ve been trying to finish since the twins were born, a book with so many dog-eared pages it looks like it survived some kind of natural disaster. Or maybe I should just close my eyes and not do anything at all, which is always the right answer but somehow the hardest one to choose.

Instead, I spot Daniel’s phone on the coffee table.

It’s a thoughtless, practical impulse. We’re running low on nappy sacks, the disposable kind that make the whole disgusting process of twin diaper changes slightly less likely to result in biohazard exposure. Daniel gets triple points on his shopping app for household purchases, some complicated rewards program he signed up for back when we were still making coherent choices about our lives, and I’ve ordered through his account before. No big deal. I’ll have them ordered in under a minute and then I’ll have earned myself at least seventeen more minutes of staring into space before one of the babies decides that naptime is over.

I move carefully, sliding one hand under Milo’s back while keeping him pressed against my chest with the other. He stirs slightly, his tiny face scrunching, but doesn’t wake. Slowly, I reach for the phone with my free hand, stretching just far enough that my fingertips brush the edge of the case.

Got it.

The phone lights up under my touch, the lock screen showing a picture I took last month, Daniel on the floor, Maisie on his chest, both of them looking up at the camera with identical expressions of surprise. They have the same nose. The same small crease between their eyebrows when they’re thinking hard about something.

I position the phone so it can see my face, and it unlocks instantly, facial recognition, same as mine. Daniel set it up when I was still pregnant, his arm around my waist as he held the phone between us, both our faces filling the tiny frame. “Now we can both get in,” he’d said, his chin resting on top of my head. “In case of emergencies.” At the time, it had seemed like a gesture of intimacy, of trust. Now it just feels practical. A small decision that makes life with newborn twins slightly less impossible to navigate.

The shopping app is right there on the home screen. My thumb is already moving toward it, scrolling through the last few purchases (formula, baby wipes, a twelve-pack of energy drinks, clearly Daniel’s doing), when a notification slides across the top of the screen.

The username is unfamiliar: JazzyGirl847.

The preview text: “So when can I see you again? I’ve been thinking about that thing you did with your… “

There’s a photo attached. Just a thumbnail, but it’s enough. A woman’s body. Unmistakably not mine.

I go completely still.

The lawn mower hums steadily outside, a distant mechanical sound that suddenly seems too loud and too quiet all at once. I can hear my own heartbeat in my ears, a thick, insistent rhythm that doesn’t match the steady click of the kitchen clock or the soft rustle of the curtains when the air conditioning kicks on.

I read the notification again. Then again. Each time, the words seem to change slightly, as if to make sure, I’ve gotten the message.

JazzyGirl847. The thing you did with your…

My thumb moves before I’ve decided to move it, tapping on the notification. The screen flashes, and suddenly I’m in Snapchat, an app I did not know Daniel had, or at least an app I thought he’d stopped using back in college, when we were still figuring out who we were to each other.

The full message thread opens.

It’s worse than I thought. Much worse.

There’s only one message visible, but it’s enough. More than enough. The photo is still there, the kind that makes my stomach drop somewhere below my knees, and below it, her most recent message sitting in the chat like it’s perfectly normal, like it’s fine, like this is just how people talk to my husband.

The lawn mower keeps going outside, seemingly disconnected from the room I’m sitting in, from the phone in my hand, from the sudden absence of air in my lungs.

I don’t move. I don’t cry. I don’t throw the phone across the room or scream or do any of the things I’ve seen women do in movies when they find out their husbands have been unfaithful. Instead, I sit perfectly still, Milo’s warm weight against my chest the only thing keeping me anchored to the world and watch as the evidence of my husband’s betrayal stays on the screen.

“So, when can I see you again? I’ve been thinking about that thing you did with your tongue last night.”

Last night? He was at the gym…