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

ahead of a friendship. And an unreliable man with no marriage potential to boot, she added, disgusted. Even then, somewhere deep down, I knew she was probably right, but despite my guilt and better judgment, I just couldn’t stop myself. If Leo wanted to see me, I dropped everything—and everyone—else.
    “So what then?” Andy pressed. “You loved him to the heavens and back?” His voice dripped with playful sarcasm, but his hurt look remained.
    “Not that kind of intense either,” I said, struggling to find a way to put a detached, nonpassionate spin on intense . Which is impossible to do. Sort of like inserting a joyful note into the word grief or a hopeful note in doomed .
    I cast about for a few more seconds before I finally offered up a weak, “I didn’t mean intense … I take it back … It was a bad choice of words.”
    It was, indeed, a bad choice of words. But only because it was true—intense was precisely what Leo and I had been together. Nearly every moment we shared felt intense, starting with that very first night in my dark hotel room when we sat cross-legged on my bed, our knees touching, my hands in his, while we talked until sunrise.
    “Too late,” Andy said, smirking and shaking his head. “No take-backs. You can’t strike this one from the record, Dempsey.”
    And so it was too late.
    Fortunately, Andy wasn’t one to beat a dead horse, so Leo’s name seldom came up after that. But for a long time, whenever someone used the word intense, Andy would shoot me a knowing look or make a wisecrack about my “oh-so-smoldering, ever-passionate” ex-boyfriend.
    I am not up for that kind of scrutiny now—joking or otherwise. Besides, I reason, as I peel off my jacket and hang it on our wobbly wooden coat rack, if the tables were turned, I’d rather not know about a chance run-in he had with Lucy, his most-beloved and longtime ex, who is now a third-grade teacher at a snooty private school in Atlanta. According to Margot, Lucy was as smart and wholesome as they come while still looking like she could be a body double for Salma Hayek. It was a direct quote I could have lived without.
    With this rationalization, I decide once and for all that it is in everyone’s best interest to keep my insignificant secret a secret. I plop down on the couch next to Andy and rest my hand on his leg. “So why are you home so early, anyway?” I ask him.
    “Because I missed you,” he says, smiling.
    “C’mon,” I say, feeling torn. I like this answer, but almost hope there is more to it this time. “You’ve never been home this early.”
    “I did miss you,” he says, laughing. “But my case settled, too.”
    “That’s awesome,” I say. I know how much he had been dreading the even longer hours that come with a full-blown trial. I had been dreading them, too.
    “Yeah. Such a relief. I have sleep in my future now … So anyway, I was thinking we could get changed and go to dinner? Maybe somewhere nice? You up for that?”
    I glance toward the window and say, “Maybe a bit later … It’s really coming down out there … I think I’d rather just stay in for a bit.” I give him a seductive smile as I kick off my boots and sidle onto his lap, facing him. I lean in and plant a kiss on his jaw, then another on his neck.
    Andy smiles, closes his eyes, and whispers a bemused, “What in the world ?”
    It is one of my favorite of his endearing expressions, but at this moment it strikes a small note of worry in my heart. Does my initiating foreplay really warrant a What in the world? Aren’t we occasionally spontaneous when it comes to sex? My mind races to come up with some recent, juicy examples, but disappointingly, I can’t think of the last time we had sex anywhere other than in bed, at bedtime. I reassure myself that this is perfectly normal for married couples—even happily married couples. Andy and I might not swing from the chandeliers and go nuts in every room of the house, but you don’t