Here is a comprehensive list of all the things I’d done since I last saw Theo at the airport.

1. Worked.

2. Thought about Theo while working.

3. Thought about Theo while crying and lying in bed at Chloe and Ethan’s.

4. Thought about Theo while tidying up Chloe and Ethan’s apartment.

5. Watched our marriage ceremony video over and over and over, crying and laughing like a lunatic, for approximately twenty-four hours.

God, we looked so much younger then. So happy. It seemed like so long ago that we’d met.  I felt so much older now that I was watching that video, but maybe I wasn’t all that naive when I told Theo I’d marry him. Maybe it really was that simple all along. It just took a while for my brain to catch up with my heart and soul.

It was like remembering a long-forgotten dream. In my mind, I looked like a hot mess that entire day. From the morning I woke up and said to myself in the mirror: “You’re just doing this to help your best friend out. It’s not that big of a deal.” To the moment right before we walked into the Santa Barbara courthouse and I almost turned to Theo and said: “Wait. What if this is a bigger deal than we think it is?” To that moment in the suite at the ranch, when we shut the door after our friends and family left, and we were finally alone, as legal husband and wife, and he looked so handsome with his disheveled hair, his shirt, untucked and unbuttoned enough to show a glimpse of chest hair, his hands in his pockets, bare feet pointing directly at me, as he watched me, grinning and biting his lip.

“So,” he said.

“So,” I said.

What followed was not the kind of comfortable silence we were used to. It was filled with questions, the kind that neither of us were ready to ask yet, and my answer was this: I held up my hand for a high-five and told him that I had to call Andrew to say goodnight.

If I had played any of those moments differently, it could have changed everything.

But it didn’t change anything between us. There was no sign of frustration or resentment then. We were being best friends. That’s how it felt to me, anyway.

But in that video—on screen—we looked like we were so in love.

Ethan had shot and edited together so many moments, leading up to the ceremony in the courthouse—little looks between me and Theo, looks that Theo gave me when I wasn’t watching him. The thing that really got me was that he barely ever took his eyes off of me that entire day, at least thanks to the magic of editing.

Rather than questioning what was real and what wasn’t, I believed every single thing we said to each other in our vows. And that third kiss! I believed that kiss. I knew that everything I’d said and done that day was true. But I was so mad at myself for not following through on my promises to him.

Maybe it hadn’t been a mistake, to strip everything away. Maybe this was exactly what I needed. Nothing felt complicated anymore. I could now see exactly what we had to work with. We had our friendship. That was and always would be the selling point. We just had to layer all those other elements back in. I was never a fan of monotone or black and white or color blocking. Our relationship could handle a beautiful mess of colors, all the shades, hot and muted. I would handle it. 

I finally reached for my phone and found myself calling someone that I hadn’t planned on calling ever again.

“Gemma? What’s wrong?” I was planning on leaving a message, but he answered after the first ring.

“Hi. Nothing. Are you busy?”

“I’m just studying. What’s up? You never call. I thought it was an emergency or something.”

“Well. Do emotional emergencies count?”

“Is it Theo? Do you need me to come out there and beat him up?” Oh, Andrew. I could tell that he was smiling, but he wasn’t being an asshat. For once.

“No. I just wanted to ask you something. We never really talked about…us. You know.”

“Uh huhhhh.” Now he was probably regretting answering the call.

“I guess I just finally want…”

“Closure?”

“A debriefing.”

He didn’t even make a debriefing joke. “About?”

“Me. As a girlfriend. What did I do wrong? How could I have improved? Be brutally honest. And don’t worry—I won’t reciprocate. Last time I saw you I think I expressed pretty clearly to you how I felt about you cheating on me for so long.”

“Yeah. You were very expressive.”

“You have full immunity now. That’s lawyer-talk, right?”

“Sure.”

“You can send me a list if you need to think about it.”

“I’d rather not leave a paper trail.”

“Ha ha. Lawyer humor. Is that one of the courses you’re taking?”

“I could teach that class.”

“So, do you want to think about it and then…”

“I don’t need to think about.”

“Oh.”

“There’s no list, it was just one thing. You were a good girlfriend to me, Gem, I’ve never felt otherwise. It’s just that you weren’t completely in a relationship with me.”

I sighed. “What about before I met Theo?”

“I’m not even talking about that. Ever since we officially started dating, it’s like you were just my girlfriend, but you weren’t…in it. You weren’t interested in fighting with me or getting to know my dark side or finding out what really made me tick. So I didn’t get into it with you either. It’s like…I don’t know. It never got messy, so it never felt real. Honestly, we were the ones who had the fake relationship. But I still loved ya.”

The lump in my throat made some sort of noise, and eventually I was able to say, “Loved you too. Thank you.”

After we’d hung up, I had a new respect for Andrew, and I definitely had closure.

In my vows, I had promised to be there for Theo, no matter what. That wasn’t supposed to be a fake promise for the judge and the camera, but apparently I had lied. I wasn’t there for him when things got messy and tough for us. I wasn’t completely in it.

I had so much restless energy, but I wasn’t ready to see Theo yet, because I still didn’t know what to say. Actually, I didn’t want to say anything. I wanted to show him that I was there for him, in a way that I hadn’t before.

I looked out the window. The morning haze hadn’t burned off yet, and it didn’t look too hot. I pulled out my running shoes from my duffel bag. I double-tied the laces, so they wouldn’t come loose and trip me up.

I did some stretches, and then I walked out the door with determination, and I started running. I paced myself. I was careful not to overstride, I used proper upper body form. I did all of the things that Theo had told me to do those few times I’d gone running with him.

It made me feel closer to Theo. It made me feel like I was in his head, somehow, and in his body too. About fifteen minutes in, my quads were on fire and pretty much every joint in my body was like—WHY ARE YOU PUNISHING US?!?!?! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOGA, YOU BITCH?! But I thought about how Theo must have felt this when he started running, and he pushed through it.

If really being married to Theo Walker meant putting up with him being jealous and jumping off of cliffs and running marathons together, then I was in.

I wasn’t running alongside him yet, but I was training myself to.