The day she stopped waiting

Chapter 2

The ring was a half-carat solitaire on a gold band.

Lydia had picked it out herself. Or rather, she had pointed to it in the glass case at the jewelry store while Daniel stood beside her nodding, his hands in his pockets, his attention drifting to his phone every thirty seconds. She had thought at the time that she was being practical. She knew what she liked. Why make him guess?

She understood now that she had mistaken his distraction for trust.

It started with small things. The way his face changed when Selene texted. He never said who it was he'd just glance at his phone and something in his expression would shift. Soften. Like a door opening on a warmer room. Lydia would be mid-sentence and he'd pick up his phone and when he put it back down he'd say "sorry, what were you saying?" and she would finish the sentence but they both knew she'd lost him for a moment.

She asked once, early on: "Is that Selene?"

"Yeah, she had a question about her landlord, I think. She just needed advice." He waved a hand. "You know how she is."

Lydia did know how Selene was. Selene was the kind of woman who always needed something advice, company, a second opinion, a favor, an ear. And the people around her always felt lucky to provide it because Selene was so genuinely appreciative that helping her felt like a gift you were giving yourself.

The thing was, Daniel had never been that kind of man with anyone else. He was practical. Reserved. He helped when asked and didn't volunteer. But for Selene, he volunteered.

Lydia told herself she was imagining things.

She told herself that for a long time.

It was a Wednesday night in March when the telling herself stopped working.

She had gone to meet Daniel at the lake park — their lake park, the one where he had proposed a year ago on a cold November evening, down on one knee on the wooden dock, the water black and still behind him. She had a key to his apartment and she'd texted him she was coming, but he hadn't read it. His phone had been face-down on his kitchen counter, she realized later. He always put it face-down when he didn't want notifications.

She saw them from the path.

They weren't doing anything. That was what she told herself for days afterward they weren't doing anything, not really. They were just sitting on the dock, close together. Selene's feet hanging over the edge, Daniel beside her. Selene was talking — she was always talking and Daniel was listening with his whole body the way he used to listen to Lydia in the beginning. Turned toward her. Still. Present.

Lydia stopped walking.

In the shadow of the tree line, with the cold March wind off the water and her breath making small clouds in the dark, she stood and watched the man she was going to marry listen to her sister like she was the only person in the world.

She didn't call out to them. She didn't walk forward. She turned around and walked back to her car and sat in the driver's seat with her hands on the wheel and her ring on her finger. She sat there for twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. She wasn't counting.

She tried to remember the last time Daniel had listened to her like that.

She tried for a long time.

She couldn't find it.

On the drive home she made deals with herself the way she always had she was good at negotiating with her own heart. Maybe it was nothing. People sat by lakes. Friends sat by lakes. Selene and Daniel were friends, had always been friends, and friendship meant nothing except friendship. She was reading into things. She was projecting her own insecurities from a childhood that had already taken enough from her.

She called Selene when she got home.

"Hey! What's up?" Selene's voice was bright and warm as always.

"Nothing. Just checking in." Lydia paused. "What are you up to tonight?"

"Oh, just got home. Long day." A beat. "You okay? You sound weird."

"I'm fine. I'm good. I just I missed you."

And she had. That was the confusing part. She genuinely loved Selene. Not in spite of everything she loved her before the everything, loved her when they were teenagers sharing a bathroom and stealing each other's clothes. The love hadn't disappeared. It had just become very painful to hold.

"I miss you too," Selene said. "Let's do lunch this week. My treat."

"Yeah. Let's do that."

She hung up and sat on her couch with the TV off and the ring heavy on her hand.

She should have said something. She knew she should have said something — to Daniel, to Selene, to someone. But saying something meant making it real. Saying something meant a conversation she wasn't sure she was ready to survive. Because if she asked the question and got the wrong answer, everything fell apart. The engagement. The wedding. The future she had been quietly and determinedly building for herself as proof that she was fine, she was chosen, she was wanted.

So she said nothing.

She started watching instead.

She watched the way Selene touched Daniel's arm when she talked to him at family dinners. She watched the way he saved Selene's number under a contact name that was just a letter — S — like something that needed to be small enough not to be seen. She watched the way her mother asked Daniel his opinion on things Selene was doing, unconsciously pulling him deeper into Selene's orbit.

And she watched herself, too. The way she laughed a little too loud at family dinners. The way she tried a little too hard. The way she dressed more carefully on nights when Selene would be there, as if she was competing. As if this was a competition she hadn't agreed to enter but was already losing.

One night she put on a blue dress — the one Daniel had once said made her eyes look like the sky in summer — and he didn't notice.

But when Selene walked in wearing an old sweater with her hair pulled up, he said, "You look great, Selene."

Lydia went to the bathroom and took a breath and looked at herself in the mirror and said out loud, to no one: "You are not imagining this."

The woman in the mirror agreed.