I didn’t think it was possible to love Nadia any more than I already did, but I do. It’s like my heart grows, and the space I’d imagined a girlfriend fitting is just full of more Nadia. Maybe this is the way it’s supposed to be. I wish that could be the end of it, that we could wake up one day both accepting that we tried and opening our relationship isn’t for us. And sometimes, I hope that I can wake up ready to hop back on our dating app, ready to find someone new — someone better than Jourdan. But neither happens. Each day when I come inside my wife, she whispers to me that we’ll figure this out, and I believe her; I believe we’ll get Jourdan back.

“Dad, do I have to?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

I turn to Nate and hold two fingers up about four feet away from his face. “How many fingers?”

He squints at my hand for a few seconds before sighing in resignation and hanging his head. I throw my arm over his shoulder, squeeze him to my side, and steer him into the mall.

I understand his fear, even if he’s too young to name it as such.

Daniel and Nathaniel are identical twins, and being identical means a lot to them. Nadia and I don’t get it, but it matters to them, and so it matters to us, and we try to respect it as much as we can. But Nate needs glasses, Danny doesn’t, and there’s no way around it. His eyesight’s gotten so bad he can’t read the whiteboard without his brother’s whispered help. They hid it as long as they could, but Nate’s been missing content, and the constant squinting has started giving him headaches. He needs glasses, and he’s struggling to accept that from today on, it won’t be hard to tell them apart.

Nate will be The One with the Glasses, and in his ten-year-old brain, that means they won’t be identical twins the way they had been before.

We could’ve gotten his glasses mailed to the house, but I was a kid who wore glasses, and I know that we have to make getting this first pair an event. I left work early and pulled him out of school. The plan is to pick up his new glasses, get some ice cream, pick up Danny, and then head home. I want to make this day special for Nate, but when I open the door to Modern Eyewear, Jourdan is the first thing I see. I’m embarrassed to admit that it’s hard to keep my brain focused on my son and not my bruised self.

She’s clear across the showroom, but I recognize her immediately. She’s leaning against the front desk in a thin sweater, cigarette pants, and uncomfortably high-heeled boots.