Really Good, Actually

by Monica Heisey

Jon said, ‘What do you think, Maggie?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, okay’; and so we got married, because everyone else was, and because nothing being particularly wrong felt, at the time, like everything was right.

An underwhelming breakup. No affair; no big, blowout moment. Just a series of small fires that we let burn out around us, clutching our coffees like the dog from the internet: THIS IS FINE.

It was hard to learn traits I’d considered mine alone had been forged with or borrowed wholesale from someone else. How embarrassing, to have to figure out what was Me, what was Him, what was Us. How much more embarrassing, to find out you’d got it wrong.

The church was soothingly grand, candlelit and cavernous, with that nice Roman Catholic smell (you can’t say much for the institution, but they do have an eye for drama and a nose for incense).