Just Friends
1806 Words
I told myself I would be calm. I rehearsed it in the shower while the hot water ran out and I stood there shivering, because calm was a decision you made even when every cell in your body was choosing fury.
I made coffee, exactly the way Marcus liked it, strong with no sugar, and I set his mug on the counter and waited.
He walked into the kitchen at seven looking like a man who had slept fine, and I hated him for it. He kissed me on the cheek the way he kissed me every morning, out of habit, out of the five years we had built together that apparently meant different things to each of us.
"We need to talk," I said.
"I know." He picked up the mug. "I shouldn't have stayed out that late. That was wrong of me."
"That's not what I want to talk about."
He looked at me over the rim of his cup. "Okay."
"I want to talk about what is happening between you and Vivienne."
"Nothing is happening."
"Marcus, you canceled our anniversary dinner."
"I adjusted the plans. It's not—"
"Stop." I set down my mug. "You adjusted our anniversary plans for your ex-girlfriend. That's what happened. I need you to say it exactly like that and not dress it up."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "She called me yesterday morning in a panic. She just got back, she didn't know anyone in the city anymore, and I couldn't just tell her no."
"I am your wife," I said. "You could absolutely tell her no."
"You're overreacting."
There it was. The two words men used when they wanted to make your valid pain sound like a character flaw.
"I am not overreacting," I said slowly. "I am reacting appropriately to being humiliated on the one night a year that was supposed to be about us."
"Nobody humiliated you."
"She raised a glass at me, Marcus. Like I was a joke."
Something moved across his face. For a second I thought I had reached him. Then it was gone.
"You're reading into things," he said.
I looked at my husband. I looked at the face I had woken up next to for five years. I looked for the man who had once driven three hours because I left my sketchbook at a conference in Philadelphia and he knew how much I needed it. That man was in there somewhere. I just couldn't find him.
"I want you to set some distance between yourself and Vivienne," I said. "I need you to do that for me."
"That's not realistic. We're working together on the downtown project."
"Then figure it out," I said. "Because I can't keep watching you choose her."
"I'm not choosing anyone." He set down his mug, checked his phone, and moved toward the door. "I'll be late tonight. The project meeting got pushed."
"Marcus." My voice came out smaller than I intended.
He stopped.
"I had something I wanted to tell you last night," I said. "Something important."
He turned. For the first time all morning he looked at me like he actually saw me. "What is it?"
I opened my mouth. And then I closed it.
Because something in me knew that if I told him now, in this kitchen with the taste of last night still between us, the news would land wrong. He would say the right things in the wrong tone. And my child deserved better than to be announced into a room that still smelled like an argument.
"It's nothing," I said. "Go. You'll be late."
He hesitated for two seconds, then left. I stood in my kitchen alone and pressed both hands over my stomach and made a promise to the life inside me that I was not sure I could keep.
I went to his office that afternoon because I needed to see it for myself. I told myself it was not paranoia, it was information-gathering, it was what rational people did when they felt the floor shifting beneath their marriages.
His assistant Priya looked up when I walked in and did something with her expression that people do when they feel sorry for someone but cannot say so. "He's in a meeting, Mrs. Reid."
"I'll wait," I said. I did not wait. I walked past her desk and opened the conference room door.
They were not in a meeting. They were alone,
sitting so close their shoulders were touching, his laptop open between them but neither of them looking at it. When the door opened they both looked up. Marcus pulled back. Vivienne did not.
She smiled at me. It was the kind of smile that knew things.
"Naomi," Marcus said. "I didn't know you were coming."
"Clearly," I said.
Vivienne stood. She was taller than I remembered from photos. She extended her hand toward me.
"Naomi. I'm so sorry about last night. It was completely my fault. I didn't realize it was your anniversary until it was already too late to change the plans."
She did not look sorry. She looked composed.
"It's fine," I said, because what else do you say when the woman dismantling your marriage is standing in front of you apologizing with a smile that has no warmth in it.
"It's really not fine," she continued, "and I want to make it up to you. We should do dinner, all three of us, soon." She said it to me, but she was looking at Marcus.
Marcus said, "Naomi, I'll be done in about twenty minutes. Why don't you wait in my office?"
He was dismissing me. In front of her. In his office, which was partially funded by the first three years of my career, when I put my business on hold to support his.
"No," I said. "I'm going back to work. We can talk tonight."
I left before anyone could say anything else. On the elevator ride down I stood with my back straight and did not let a single thing show, not until I got into the cab and the door closed. Then I pressed my forehead against the window and I let myself feel it. All of it. The years. The work. The baby I was growing inside me while my husband sat next to the woman who used to be in my place.
My phone buzzed. Marcus. I did not answer.
He texted: We'll talk tonight. I promise. Then, two minutes later: She means nothing.
I stared at that text for the entire cab ride home. She means nothing, as if the problem was what Vivienne meant to him and not what I clearly
no longer did.
He did not come home that night until eleven. I was already in bed with the lights out.
I heard him move around the apartment. I heard him pause outside the bedroom door. He did not knock. And something about that silence, about the fact that he did not even try, felt more final than anything either of us had said.
- Writer
