The Party Was Not For Me
1630 Words
I knew something was wrong the moment I walked into the restaurant and the hostess looked at me
like I did not belong there.
I had made the reservation myself. Table for two, Marcus Reid. Five years to the day since he slid a ring onto my finger in this exact room while my hands shook so badly I nearly knocked over the wine. I had worn the blue dress, the one he once peeled off me slow enough to make me lose my mind. I looked good and I knew it.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Clarke. Mr. Reid called ahead and changed the party size and location. They're in the private room." The hostess gestured toward the back corridor and gave me a smile that told me nothing good was waiting at the end of it.
"They're," I repeated.
"Yes, ma'am."
I walked down that corridor with my heart doing something fast inside my chest. The private room at Ellory's has floor-to-ceiling glass panels, so you can see everything before you open the door. I stopped before the handle.
There were at least thirty people inside.
Marcus was at the head of the table, laughing, his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up the way I always loved. He looked relaxed. He looked the way he used to look with me, back when I was still new enough to be interesting.
And then I saw her.
Vivienne Cross. Standing at his side, her hand resting on the back of his chair like she owned it. She wore a red dress and she was laughing at something Marcus said. The sound reached me through the glass, muffled but warm.
Our anniversary dinner had become a welcome-back party for his ex.
I stood there for a full minute, maybe two. My fingers pressed flat against the glass. I thought about the news I was carrying into that room: two lines on a test I had taken three times that morning because I needed to be sure. I was pregnant with Marcus's child and I had wanted to tell him over candlelight. Instead, the candles were on someone else's table.
I pushed open the door.
He saw me instantly. His expression shifted fast, something between guilt and calculation. He crossed the room before I could steady myself.
"Naomi," he said, low enough that only I could hear. "I can explain."
"It's our anniversary," I said.
"I know. But Vivienne flew in this morning and I couldn't just—"
"You couldn't cancel a party for our anniversary."
"It's not like that."
I looked past him. Vivienne had turned to watch us. She raised her glass just slightly, a toast to nothing, or maybe to everything she was about to take.
"I'm going home," I said.
"Naomi, don't do this here."
"I am not doing anything," I told him. "You did this. All of this."
I turned around before he could see my eyes fill. I walked back down the corridor, through the restaurant, and out onto the sidewalk where the October wind hit me like a slap. I stood on the curb and pressed both hands against my stomach.
I was pregnant. My husband had just thrown a party for his ex on our anniversary. The worst part was that I was not even surprised. I had felt something shifting in Marcus for months, something pulling him away from me, and I had told myself it was work, stress, the way ambitious men disappear into their careers sometimes. But it was not work. It was her.
I flagged a cab and sat in the back with my hands in my lap. I did not cry. I told myself I would not cry tonight.
But when Marcus got home at two in the morning smelling of whiskey and her perfume, something in me cracked.
"Where were you?" I asked from the couch where I had not slept.
"With Vivienne and some colleagues. You knew that."
"Until two a.m."
"Naomi." He sat down across from me, not beside me. "She just got back. We had a lot to catch up on."
"What exactly did you two need to catch up on, Marcus? Because I've been sitting here on our anniversary trying to figure it out."
He rubbed his jaw. "It's business. The new development project downtown, she's involved. I told you she was coming back."
"You told me she was moving back to the city. You did not tell me you were canceling our dinner to throw her a party."
"I didn't cancel it, I adjusted—"
"Marcus." I said it quietly, because quiet was more terrifying than screaming and I needed him to be scared right now. "Look at me."
He looked.
"Do you understand what tonight was supposed to be?"
A beat. Then: "Of course I do."
"Then tell me. Because I need to hear you say it."
He was quiet too long. That silence told me everything.
I got up, went to the bedroom, and locked the door behind me. I pressed my back against it and slid down until I was sitting on the floor with my knees pulled to my chest.
Our baby had no idea what kind of house it was being born into. And neither, until tonight, had I.
At three in the morning he knocked on the bedroom door.
"Naomi. Open up."
I did not move.
"I'm sorry about tonight. I really am." A pause. "But Vivienne and I are just friends. You have to trust that."
Just friends. I had heard that phrase before, in
movies and in my mother's kitchen when she talked about my father in a voice that never once matched the word just. Just was the word men used when they needed you to stop asking questions they did not want to answer.
I did not open the door. I pressed my hand against my stomach in the dark and I thought: I am going to tell him tomorrow. I will tell him, and everything will change.
I believed that. I really did.
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