Damage control.Damage tomymarriage. I didn’t care about their reputation. I just wanted Jackson to stop hurting, but I knewshewould care. She would care a great deal, as would her company, who didn’t need a bloody nose about a leak.
She fixed me with a long, evaluating look, then held the microphone out. “You should have the chance to address those rumors, I agree. Though I can tell you, that leak did not come from us.”
“How would you know?”
“Let’s just say that your NDA doesn’t cover that information.” Her smile filled with grim humor. “But we did learn important lessons from our prior skirmish with the legal system and enacted further measures to suss out workplace gossip.”
I wondered if those further measures included a certain machine intelligence with a penchant for information gathering.
A slow quiet washed over the crowd like a wave over a smooth, sandy beach as I mounted the steps to the dais. Bright lights on the stage blurred faces into deepening shadows. Despite that, I could still see Jackson in the gathered people, not far from where I’d left him. Closer to the door. Ready to escape the real rumor and the imagined shame that lived here only in his mind.
This is probably where I should point out that I’d rushed my objective without a plan, seized victory without a thought, and stepped up in public without a clue. My tactical prowess knows no bounds.
So I did it live.
“Good evening, gentlefolk!” I said into the mic. The sound system had to cost more than the entire school I worked at, since it avoided the squeal of feedback and I didn’t sound like I’d started talking into a tin can. “I hope you are thoroughly enjoying this beautiful soirée. It is, after all, meant to celebrateyou. Well, us.”
I sounded like a corporate shill, or at the least, a paid speaker. Not what I’d hoped to achieve, but I didn’t want to make it weird. Elaine had trusted me with the microphone on the spur of a moment. I owed her the dignity of an unplanned talk with more aplomb than a high schooler’sI love my man and all of you shut uuuuuup.
The room gave me its attention. Or its morbid fascination, either. Hard to tell the difference, really, but they stopped talking and started listening, and I’d accept that for whatever reason sat behind it.
“My name is Sebastian Sadler. I ought to tell you that Mail Call Mates isn’t paying me for this. They didn’t even know I wanted to speak tonight. Neither did I, to be honest. Not that I’m against telling everyone I talk to what Mail Call Mates has meant to me, or that I didn’t want to say ‘thank you’ to the company who gave me my husband. I do. I just wanted to do it privately, instead of on stage, in front of a room full of people who insist on saying my match was made by mistake.”
A quiet murmur ran over the crowd, and the resulting quiet changed in tenor. No longer simply not speaking so they could listen, they fell into a guilty silence. Excellent. A nice shame barbecue might do them some good.
“Yes, I’ve heard the rumors. Sebastian Sadler, who asked Mail Call Mates for a woman but ended up with an accidental husband. That’s ameatystory, isn’t it? Great fun to tell. Blame the computer, laugh at the matchmakers, spread the rumor over and over until it’s a disembodied tale about two caricatures. Except, it’s not. This is my life, and my husband’s life. We’re people, not a funny anecdote, and I think we deserve a chance to tell the truth of the Hendrick-Sadler match made by the good people at Mail Call.”
I’ve seen the kind of discomfort the crowd wore before. Usually, I see it on the faces of students in an after-lunch class period, and most often, I see it the day after a substitute teacher has endured them. I stand up at the head of a class and ask them how their day with the substitute was. After the nervous chorus of, “Fine,” I tell them I read the sub’s report. That’s when this discomfort hits, like a hangover from a cocktail of shame and chagrin that their bad behavior didn’t stay behind the classroom door.
This isn’t Las Vegas, kids. What happens in my classroom doesn’t stay in my classroom. Neither does gossip stay only in the circles you whisper it into, occult mysteries involving someone else’s bedroom habits shared among others who believe.
“When I signed up for Mail Call Mates, I did ask for a wife. I filled out the forms saying that men weren’t my taste, I checked all the boxes that said ‘woman, please’. I told them I was one-hundred-percent straight. In other words? I lied.”
I spread my arms wide, allowing them to see me. Mea culpa from a man in a tuxedo. “Yep. I lied. My family was conservative. They didn’t believe men should love other men. When I showed interest in people of my own gender, they treated me to a very unpleasant afternoon. So I buried that part of me deep. It had hurt me once. It might hurt me again. I lied to myself, and I lied to Mail Call Mates. And you know what? My lies couldn’t fool them. They still found me the perfect match.”
I couldn’t help but look at Jackson. Even blinded by the lights, staring at him in the shadows beyond the wall of illumination, he was still the most handsome man I had ever laid eyes on. The shape of him had become a familiar outline now, one I had seen while half-awake as he slipped into the bathroom each morning, or as he crept back into the bedroom after fetching a drink from the kitchen. One I found strength in, and encouragement, one I looked forward to curling up with at night.
“That’s right,” I said. “The program found me exactly what I wanted. It looked beyond gender, beyond the denial I’ve spent most of a lifetime hiding behind, and it found what Ireallywanted. Not what I expected, no, or what IthoughtI wanted, but what Ineededmost. A partner, a support, a champion, a friend. Someone who makes me better than I could have been alone. A true other half I can love and cherish. One who is more than I ever dreamed of.”
A tear tracked down my cheek. I left it there. Let them see it. Let the crowd, and Jackson, and whatever god was staring down on me see the most private piece of my heart.
“His name is Sergeant Jackson Sadler. He was my husband from the day he returned to where I waited for him on Earth. Since then, he has become my best friend, and my strength. He is my whole life and I never want it any other way. He has never been an accident, but a deliberate choice, one I would make over and over again.”
I looked toward that familiar, beloved shape in the crowd. “I love you, Jackson Sadler. Thank you for choosing to spend your life with me.”
The cat ran out of the bag. I’d never said the words to him, as I should have, and definitely should have done in a more intimate, less, I don’t know,obnoxiously publicvenue, but here we were. Stage. Spotlights. Captive audience. Dawning existential horror. All of it.
Jackson’s familiar, beloved form moved, and I had a sudden terror that he’d decided my over-the-moon declaration of unending love was insupportably extra. He’d head for the door, I’d ponder the best geological location for convincing the ground to swallow me whole. Becoming a peculiar sort of metamorphic rock would have been preferable to enduring what came after.
He didn’t head for the door. Instead, he strode for the stage, up the steps with a straight back and a determined look on his- Tear-streaked face? Wait, what?
Then his strong arms wrapped around me and pulled me into a kiss that burned the world away. Spotlights disappeared. The stage faded. He was my whole life, and in that moment, he was all I knew. His lips, his arms, his chest, his kiss, and I lost myself in an existence that contained him and him alone.
Far away, in the ballroom I’d left behind in favor of the place where only Jackson remained, cheers erupted. We ignored them. The sole sound I heard was his voice as his lips moved against mine.
“I love you, Bastian,” Jackson murmured. “God damn it, but I love you.”
Several people had said those words to me. But it was only when Jackson said them that Iunderstoodthem. This, then, was the true face of love, and I never wanted any other heart next to mine.