It’s been a year since they agreed on this. The decision was made quickly, he feels like he didn’t even have his word to say. They expressed their desire to come out, they explained their worries, some guy in a five fingers black suit found a solution in three steps. “Easy,” he said. Gillian said “yes,” his lawyer signed a paper, her lawyer signed it too, they shook hands and it was done. “Easy,” he repeated to himself.

It was “easy,” at least in the beginning. They found the perfect guy, British but not really, divorced but not really, the type of guy she could be attracted to. But not really. He felt odd when he had to let her go with him the first time, but he got used to it. It was the first step, his own first step, actually. He had to learn to share. Ceremony after ceremony, he had to watch the love of his life show herself with another man.

Jealous would be an understatement to define him. He’s possessive, territorial even. But her sweet words and soft touches never failed to reassure him. He was the one and the only one for her. He convinced himself that he could live like that a little more. It was for the best. Even after a certain day of June, when she called him in tears to apologize for what she called “an unfortunate accident”, he still thought it was the right thing to do. It was his turn to reassure her, to tell her it was okay and to renew his trust in her.

But if he was being honest with himself, he knew it wasn’t okay. Something has changed between them, and he feared it was forever. He made it to a new step. He had to learn to live without watching, reading, listening, caring. He had to rely on trust and only on trust, even though when he closed his eyes at night, this picture haunted his dreams turning them into terrible nightmares. Even today, when he finds himself on his knees in a moment of pure intimacy, with his hands on her hips, he has to take a deep breath and chase the ghost of Italy away before he strips her down. She knows, he can see it. He can tell that her lips say “I love you,” but her eyes say “I’m sorry.” They usually take twenty-five years to resolve their issues and he isn’t sure they have twenty-five more years to resolve this one. It was supposed to make them happier, to allow them to live their life normally, as a couple and as individuals too. But it’s consuming them slowly from the inside. Day after day, the sparkle in her eyes faded. Her smile became sad. Her demeanor more severe. She was happy to work with him, he could tell. But every time she had a new appearance scheduled with “him”, he could feel her apprehension and reluctancy weeks before the D-day.

He tried to negotiate with the guy in a fancy suit. Maybe what she did was enough already. Maybe it could stop now. They could skip the second step and launch the final one. The happy one. But he “knew his job”, and he had to “trust him.” So David threw himself in the second step. He picked a girl. Young but not really, smart but not really, sweet but not really. The kind of girl everyone expected him to be with, according to fancy-suit.
Oddly, it made Gillian laugh to see whom they had chosen for him. She seemed to have found a second breath. Maybe it’s because they shared the attention now. “Where’s your girlfriend?” she used to tease him. She bought him Viagra once, and they laughed heartedly for an hour.  

But soon, it’ll be his turn to play his part more seriously. It’ll be her turn to rely on trust. To live without watching, reading, listening. Soon, they won’t live in their own bubble anymore. There won’t be no apartment where they can hold each other at night, no trailer where they can have a few minutes break just the two of them, no private places where they can talk through all of this. He hopes with all his heart they can make it to the final step but he’s afraid of what will be left of them and how long it’ll take to rebuild the new shape of their relationship.
“It’s gonna be easy,” he lies in her ear as she falls asleep in his arms.