Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin Read Free Book Online

has already banished his jacket and tie to the floor and his blue dress shirt is unbuttoned at the collar. At first I think he is asleep, but then I see one of his bare feet moving in time to Ani DiFranco’s As Is . It is my CD—and so far afield from Andy’s usual happy Top Forty tunes (or his sappy country music) that I assume our stereo is on random-play. Andy makes no apologies for his taste in music, and while I’m listening to my favorites, stuff like Elliott Smith or Marianne Faithfull, he will roll his eyes at the more turbulent lyrics and make cracks like, “Excuse me while I go chug some poison under the sink.” But despite our different tastes, he never makes me turn my music off or down. Andy is the opposite of a control freak. A Manhattan litigator with a surfer boy, live-and-let-live, no worries mentality.
    For a long moment, I watch Andy lying there in the soft amber glow of lamplight and am filled with what can only be described as relief. Relief that I got to this place, that this is my life. As I take another few steps toward the couch, Andy’s eyes snap open. He stretches, smiles and says, “Hey, honey.”
    “Hi,” I say, beaming back at him as I drop my bag on our round retro dinette table that we found at a flea market in Chelsea. Margot and her mother hate it almost as much as they hate the kitschy knickknacks that congregate on every free surface in our apartment. A coconut monkey wearing wire-rim glasses perches on our windowsill. Beads from a recent Mardi Gras hang from our computer monitor. A collection of salt-and-pepper figurines parade across our countertop. I am much more neat and organized than Andy, but we are both pack rats at heart—which Margot jokes is the only dangerous part of our being together.
    Andy sighs as he sits, swinging his long legs onto the floor. Then he glances at his watch and says, “You don’t call. You don’t write. Where’ve you been all day? I tried your cell a few times …”
    His tone is easy—not at all accusatory—but I still feel a shiver of guilt as I say, “Here and there. Running around in the rain. My phone was off.”
    All true statements, I think. But I still know that I’m keeping something from my husband, and I fleetingly consider revising my vow of secrecy and telling him the rest. What really happened today. He would most certainly be annoyed—and probably a little hurt that I let Leo come back to the diner to see me. The same way I would feel if Andy let an ex-girlfriend come share a coffee with him when he could have, nearly as easily, told her to kiss off. The truth might even start a small argument—our first married argument.
    On the other hand, it’s not like Andy feels threatened by Leo or feels hostile toward him. He simply disdains him in the typical, offhanded way that nearly everyone disdains their significant other’s most-significant ex. With a mild mix of jealousy and competitiveness that recedes over time. In fact, Andy is so laidback that he probably wouldn’t feel either of those things at all if I hadn’t made the mistake of disclosing a little too much during one of our early-relationship, late-night conversations. Specifically, I had used the word intense to describe what Leo and I had shared. It didn’t seem like that much of a revelation as I had assumed that Margot had told him a thing or two about Leo and me, but I immediately knew it was news to him when Andy rolled over in bed to face me, his blue eyes flashing in a way I’d never seen before.
    “Intense?” he said with a wounded expression. “What exactly do you mean by intense ?”
    “Oh, I don’t know …” I said.
    ” Sexually intense?”
    “No,” I said quickly. “Not like that .”
    “Like you spent all your time together? Every night and every waking moment?”
    “No,” I said again. My face grew hot with fresh shame as I recalled the night that Margot accused me of blowing her off for Leo. Of being one of those girls who puts a man