Chapter 2My Sweet Puppy Is Him at Eighteen

“So, you’re telling me that even though the thirty-year-old me got his dream of marrying you, he didn’t cherish you at all,” eighteen-year-old Jack said, his eyes wide with horror, a grain of rice still stuck to the corner of his mouth. “Not only did he knock up his assistant, but he’s been pushing you to get a divorce?!”

He looked genuinely terrified. “How could I do something so stupid? Did I get swapped with an alien? Or maybe I was in a car crash and got amnesia, totally fried my brain?”

I stared down into my coffee, slowly stirring it as a bitter smile touched my lips. “No. There was no accident. You’re perfectly healthy.”

“We got married right after graduation,” I continued, my voice hollow. “Things were perfect at first. We were inseparable, just as in love as we’d been for the past decade. But everything changed when Penelope showed up.”

Penelope was hired five years into Jackson’s company. It was also the year we hit our seventh anniversary, the infamous seven-year itch. I was on the cusp of a promotion to become the youngest attending physician at the hospital, and Jackson’s business was exploding.

The corporate dinners became endless, the meetings ran late into the night. After I turned down his requests to accompany him to a few events, he blew up at me for the first time.

“Everyone else has their partner with them, and I’m the only one who looks like a lonely bachelor, even though I’m married!” he had yelled. “My partners are starting to mock me, asking if I’m whipped or if I’m just not making enough money to convince my own wife to support my career!”

It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me that way. I was stunned, hurt. He had always treated me like a princess, never raising his voice. But even though I loved him, I couldn't abandon the medical career I had spent more than a decade building.

Neither of us would apologize, and so began the cold war. He moved out of our home and into a luxury penthouse overlooking the river, closer to his office. In a year, I could count the number of times he came home on one hand.

Once, on his birthday, I missed him so much that I went to his penthouse unannounced. When I knocked, the door was opened by Penelope, wearing nothing but a slinky slip dress.

“Mr. Archer had a bit too much to drink tonight,” she said, looking down shyly. A constellation of faint red marks bloomed on her neck, just visible beneath her hair. “He’s not really available for guests.”

She didn’t seem to recognize me. “Can I take a message? I’ll pass it along when he wakes up.”

I fought back the tears stinging my eyes and pushed the gift bag into her hands. “I’m Seraphina,” I said, each word a shard of glass. “Tell him to call me the second he wakes up. It’s important.”

Penelope nodded sweetly, wished me a good night, and closed the door.

I waited for two weeks. He never called.

Hearing this, eighteen-year-old Jack slammed a glass on the table, shattering it. “That’s impossible! I would never cheat on you with another woman! It’s not true! There has to be a misunderstanding!”

I wiped a tear from my cheek and shook my head silently. No one wished it was a misunderstanding more than I did.

But soon after, Penelope got pregnant. Jackson doted on her, both in public and in private. He even brought her to my hospital for a check-up. No matter how much I tried to lie to myself, I couldn’t deny the truth anymore.

The eighteen-year-old Jack was clearly having an even harder time accepting it than I was. He chugged down glass after glass of whiskey, curling up on the sofa like a wounded puppy, his face wet with tears.

“How could I, Sera? How could I ever hurt you…?” he sobbed.

I sighed and draped a blanket over him. Before I could straighten up, the front door opened. I turned, and my eyes met the gaze of the thirty-year-old Jackson.