If only she knew. We exchanged a polite handshake, both of us performing the roles expected of us. “Nice to meet you,” she said, steady as stone.
Her eyes, however, said something very different: We cannot ever speak of this. Dinner was a blur. I couldn’t taste the food.
Couldn’t follow the conversation. Every time her stepmom laughed or asked me a question, I sat rigid, terrified I’d slip, terrified someone else would sense the tension. My wife still thinks I simply get “a little shy” around her stepmom.
She teases me about it sometimes. But the truth? I’ve kept a careful, polite distance ever since that night—not because I still care, but because one wrong look, one careless word, could blow up everything I’ve built with the woman I love.
And that’s a risk I can’t ever take.
