My wife had been removing her wedding band before going out with her girlfriends, and I discovered it only because she forgot the ring beside our bathroom sink one Friday night. When I texted her to say she had left it behind, I expected surprise, maybe even panic. Instead, her answer arrived less than a minute later: I know. Guys buy me drinks when they think I’m single.
Chapter 1
I stood in our kitchen staring at those words while the refrigerator hummed behind me.
My name is Michael Grant. I was forty-two then, married to Dana for eleven years, and until that night I would have described our marriage as tired but basically solid. We had no children, two decent jobs, a mortgage on a small house outside Columbus, Ohio, and enough routine to fool ourselves into thinking routine was the same thing as happiness.
Dana worked for a property-management company downtown. I supervised inventory at a regional medical-supply warehouse. Neither of us loved our jobs, but we paid the bills, took a vacation most summers, and still remembered each other’s birthdays.
At least, that was the story I told myself.
For several months, Dana had gone out with three girlfriends nearly every Friday. I never objected. I had my own friends, watched football with my brother, and sometimes spent Saturday afternoons fishing without her. Married people did not need to be attached at the hip, and I had always believed trust meant giving each other room.
But a wedding ring was different.
I picked Dana’s up from beside the sink.
It was a simple white-gold band I had slipped onto her finger in front of eighty relatives at a little Methodist church eleven years earlier. There had been nothing expensive about our wedding. Her father had paid for the reception hall, my mother had made the centerpieces, and Dana had laughed when I became so nervous during the vows that I almost put the ring on the wrong hand.
She had kissed me afterward and whispered, “You’re stuck with me now.”
I used to love remembering that.
That Friday, holding the same ring under the kitchen light, I typed, Why would you want guys thinking you’re single?
Three dots appeared.
Then disappeared.
Then appeared again.
Finally she wrote, Don’t make this into something. They offer drinks. I save money. That’s it.
I sat down.
I wanted to believe her.
A man sees an attractive woman without a ring. He offers her a drink. She accepts. Maybe there is no touching, no promise, no secret hotel room waiting afterward.
But something about it bothered me in a place deeper than jealousy.
Dana wasn’t simply accepting a random act of kindness.
She was deliberately removing the symbol of our marriage because being perceived as available benefited her.
I wrote, Do you flirt with them?
Her answer came immediately.
OMG Michael. I’m out with the girls. Can we not do this tonight?
That sentence changed the temperature of the room.
I put the phone down.
Then I picked it up again.
How far do you let it go for a free drink?
This time she did not answer.
For the next hour I paced through the house inventing explanations. Perhaps men simply approached her. Perhaps she smiled, accepted the drink, thanked them, and walked away. Perhaps I was becoming the kind of insecure husband I had always promised myself I would never become.
By midnight, insecurity had turned into anger.
At one-thirty, I heard her key in the front door.
Dana came in laughing softly at something on her phone. She wore black jeans, boots, and the dark green blouse I had bought her the previous Christmas. For a moment, seeing her standing there, familiar and beautiful, made the entire situation feel ridiculous.
Then she saw the wedding band on the kitchen table.
Her smile disappeared.
“So we’re doing this now?”
I stared at her. “Apparently.”
“Michael, I told you what happened.”
“You told me you intentionally leave your ring home so other men will buy you alcohol.”
She dropped her purse onto a chair.
“You make it sound sleazy.”
“How should I make it sound?”
“I go out with my friends. Men buy drinks. Who cares?”
“I care.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re pretending you’re available.”
“I’m not pretending anything.”
“Then wear the ring.”
She rolled her eyes.
That hurt more than I expected.
“Dana, if it means nothing, why take it off?”
“Because men see a wedding ring and don’t come over.”
I stared at her.
She realized what she had said.
Neither of us spoke for several seconds.
I finally asked, “So you want them to come over.”
“To buy drinks.”
“And what do you give them in return?”
Her face hardened.
“Nothing.”
“No conversation?”
“Obviously I talk to people.”
“No flirting?”
“What do you consider flirting?”
I laughed once, but there was nothing funny in it.
“That’s not an answer.”
She folded her arms.
“You’re acting like I’m sleeping with random men because somebody bought me a vodka cranberry.”
“I didn’t accuse you of sleeping with anybody.”
“You’re thinking it.”
“I’m thinking I don’t know what you’re doing because you apparently built a whole Friday-night routine around looking single.”
She looked away.
That frightened me.
“Dana.”
“What?”
“Has anybody kissed you?”
Her eyes came back to mine.
“Seriously?”
“Has anybody?”
“This is exactly why I didn’t want to talk tonight.”
My stomach dropped.
A simple no would have ended it.
She hadn’t said no.
I asked again.
“Has another man kissed you?”
Dana grabbed her purse.
“I’m not doing an interrogation at two in the morning.”
“Then when?”
“Tomorrow.”
She started upstairs.
I watched her.
“Do you still want to be married to me?”
She stopped halfway up the stairs.
For eleven years, I had known my wife’s silences. I knew the irritated ones, the amused ones, the exhausted ones.
I had never heard that silence before.
Dana slowly turned around.
“I don’t know.”
