He hadn’t changed at all. That was the whole revelation of the evening. He was exactly the same cruel, shallow, faithless boy, just older, and it turned out that the thing I’d spent years believing was a flaw in me — that I wasn’t good enough for Jason — had always, only, been a flaw in Jason.
So when I called David and brought him over, I wasn’t bringing a bodyguard. I was bringing the answer to a question Jason didn’t know he’d asked.
« David, » I said, my arm through my husband’s, « this is Jason. Jason and I went to high school together.
Jason, this is my husband, David. He came to pick me up. And I wanted you to meet him, because I think you should see him. »
Jason was still confused. Still flirting-adjacent, still not understanding. « High school? I’m sorry, I really can’t place— »
« You can’t place me, » I said. « I know. Let me help you.
I’m Emily. »
Chapter 3: The Name That Made Him Go Pale
I watched it land.
I watched Jason look at me — really look, this time, the way he hadn’t in twenty years, the way he hadn’t when I was sixteen and grieving and he was too embarrassed to be seen with me. And I watched him find, under the dress and the twenty years and the woman I’d become, the girl he’d told to look at herself and despair.
« Emily, » he said. And the color left his face.
Because Jason understood, all at once, everything he’d just done. He’d spent the last twenty minutes flirting with the fat girl he’d dumped in high school — telling her she was beautiful, offering to leave his wife’s side for her, mocking Katherine’s body to impress her. He’d done, to the woman he’d once destroyed, the exact thing that revealed he was still the same person who’d destroyed her. And she’d let him. She’d let him show her, in real time, in front of witnesses, that he’d learned nothing and become nothing.
« You didn’t recognize me, » I said. « So you did what you do. You flirted with a woman you found attractive, and to make yourself look good, you mocked the body of the wife you cheated on me to be with. You told me Katherine ‘let herself go’ after having your three children.
Do you hear yourself, Jason? You cheated on me twenty years ago because I gained weight while grieving my parents. And now you’re cheating on Katherine, at a reunion, in front of everyone, because she gained weight while bearing your children.
You didn’t leave me because I was fat. You left me because you’re the kind of man who leaves. And you’ll leave Katherine the same way, for the same reason, and some day you’ll be old and alone and shallow and you’ll finally understand that the ugliness was never on anyone’s body but the inside of yours.
