Delaney and Adalyn had been easy for Josh and Emily. They had gotten pregnant exactly on schedule with their perfect lives, just like Josh had gotten the position he wanted and the raise he needed when they decided to start a family. Life worked out for Josh in a way that was completely unfamiliar to me.

Not that I didn’t think he worked hard. I did. I knew he gave his hundred and ten percent and worked his ass off to be where he was today. But he shined brighter or something. The universe loved him more or maybe he had a head start toward perfection.

I worked hard too. I worked my ass off too. And yet… there was something missing.

I didn’t have a gorgeous house in the suburbs or my two point five kids. I barely had a puppy and a job that paid less than tolerable wages.

I had a mountain of student loan debt and a husband that didn’t fight for me.

And a pity party.

I had a massive pity party that made me sick of myself and of the constantly self-absorbed thoughts I couldn’t shake. Ugh.

I needed a wakeup call.

Or a giant bottle of Grey Goose.

“So how’s the school year going so far?” Emily asked while my parents drilled Josh about his newest promotion opportunity.

“Rough,” I said honestly.

“Because of the divorce?” Her tone was gentle and nonjudgmental. I loved my sister-in-law, despite her serendipitous marriage to my brother. We weren’t the closest friends, but Josh had chosen well.

I chewed a bit of pork chop while I decided how to answer her. “That’s definitely part of the reason. But I have a few difficult classes this year. It’s only the middle of September and they’re already acting out. I feel like it’s getting harder and harder to get through to them.”

Her frown was both authentic and sympathetic. “I think what you’re doing is amazing, Kate. Those students, all students, need teachers that genuinely care about them. You’re doing something great. You need to remember that.”

Emily was six years older than me and even if it was hard for us to connect sometimes, she gave really good advice. This was something worth listening to.

“Thanks, Emily. I needed to hear that.”

She smiled softly at me. “And don’t worry about rushing into another relationship either. I know the divorce is something you want, but I’m sure you’re still struggling to move on.”

I nodded, unable to form the words it would take to explain how very reluctant I was to even consider moving on.

“It’s not like he was a bad guy…” My lame attempt at an explanation fell as flat as it tasted in my mouth. It was so much more complicated than two well-meaning people moving on with their lives. There were so many subtle nuances that would take days to explain. I needed complicated pie charts and colored graphs. I needed to watch a movie of my marriage and analyze exactly where things went wrong. Saying Nick was a great guy, though, usually caused people to question all of my motives.

Was I having an affair?

Was I a cold, heartless bitch?

Had I been abducted by aliens who sucked out my soul and left me vapid and broken?

I hadn’t ruled out that last option yet. It might have happened.

Because why else would I have suggested that my husband leave me? For good.

Aliens were a legitimate possibility.

“Of course he’s not a bad guy!” Emily rushed to agree. “But sometimes… sometimes it doesn’t work out.”

It wasn’t her words that bothered me, but her lack of conviction. I hated that everything had become so personal to me lately. I couldn’t have a conversation without a reminder of how great Nick was and what an idiot I was for leaving him. I was as obsessed with myself as everyone else.

Only, I was really, really getting sick and tired of me.

I cleared my throat to avoid commenting anymore.

“Divorce is hard,” Emily went on. “When my parents divorced, my mom said it was like going through the death of a loved one. She struggled for a long time to stay out of depression.”

I turned toward her and hoped to change the subject completely or at least get it off me. “That must have been really hard. How old were you?”

She nodded slowly, clearly struggling with hidden emotion. “I was eight,” she admitted. “They thought they would be better off without each other.”

Her words hit too close to home and I immediately wanted to change the subject to something else. The weather. Football. Aliens and anal probing. Anything else. Instead, I said, “Were they?”

She quickly shook her head. “I don’t know, honestly. My dad never remarried. My mom did. She seems happy now. But we went through a lot of painful years afterward. It was really, really hard on my sisters and me.”

“At least we don’t have kids,” I mumbled to myself.

If Emily heard me, she didn’t respond. And for that I was grateful. I didn’t need to talk about kids tonight or what it was like not to have them.

I knew what it was like. I knew that acutely.

I smiled at my youngest niece, Adalyn, as she tried to sneak long green beans back into the bowl. I shook my finger at her playfully and watched her five-year-old face turn red from embarrassment.

Even Nick thought my nieces were precious. He had one brother, but Jared was younger than us and not married yet, so Delaney and Adalyn were all we had. Both of us loved to have them over so we could spoil them or take them to fun things around the city.

They gave us the excuse to eat chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs and watch cartoons.

I might not have appreciated his attitude toward my mother, but he had always been the best uncle. He would have made a phenomenal father.

If only things had been different for us.

After Josh and I cleaned off the table and started on the dishes, a job that was still ours no matter how old we got, I felt his probing eyes on me. I could feel the serious conversation brewing between us, but I had hoped to avoid this awkward portion of the afternoon.

“I thought you would get back with him by now,” he said out of the blue, with soap bubbles up to his elbows and a porcelain platter squeezed between his hands.

I nearly dropped the wet glass I was drying on the linoleum floor. “What?”

“I didn’t think you were serious about the divorce,” he explained. “I thought you guys might be having a rough patch, but I always expected you to work through it.”

My stomach churned and my heart squeezed with racing panic. I tried to keep my voice steady when I replied, “It was worse than a rough patch.”

“He didn’t hit you or anything, did he?” Josh paused mid-rinse to look at me seriously.

I hated that people always jumped to that conclusion. Did all men have this hard of a time divorcing? Were they always silently questioned about spousal abuse?

“He never touched me like that, Josh. Don’t ever think he did. We just… we don’t get along. We’re not right for each other.”

“You haven’t really tried,” he countered immediately. “You guys are still newlyweds. Give it some time.”

“We’ve been married for seven years.”

My brother was nothing if not persistent. He got it from our mother. “It’s nothing a couple kids won’t fix. Try that. See what a baby can do for you guys. You could still save this.”

I sucked in a sharp breath and kept my tumbling thoughts to myself. I could have told him that I hadn’t talked to my husband in four months and that if he wanted to speak to me, he would have by now. If he had cared just a little bit about salvaging what we had, he would have reached out. I could have told Josh that we knew each other too well. That our faults had become walls that kept the other out and that our fights had scarred us so deeply we would never heal.

I should have told him that a baby wasn’t a magical potion that made people stop fighting and every problem disappear.

But instead, I told him the reason that would shut him up for good, the one thing he couldn’t argue with.