The Contract Between Us

Aurelia I had been hearing the whispers for months before that night, Nadia dropping small comments about Rex acting strange, working late too often, and answering texts more slowly than he used to. I brushed it all off every time, because Rex remembered I hated cilantro and texted me good morning even during his worst weeks, and I told myself men who did things like that weren't capable of what Nadia was hinting at. I know now that remembering small things costs a man nothing. That day I started very early, moving between the studio and two client fittings, and by the time I locked up and started the walk home, my legs ached, and I was already thinking of a bath and my sketchbook. I wasn't thinking about Rex at all, only about hems, deadlines, and whether I had enough fabric left for the Whitmore order. It was an ordinary night, right up until I passed the lit windows of Chez Odette and caught a familiar profile at a corner table. It was Rex, leaning across a white tablecloth with his hand over a woman's hand, unhurried and certain, the same way he used to touch me. She was laughing at something he had said, and he wore the same pleased look he used to get when he made me laugh. I stood on the sidewalk with my bag still on my shoulder, staring through the glass, unable to make myself move. I didn't decide to go in, but I pushed through the door before the host could greet me and crossed the restaurant in a straight line, while heads turned and a fork clattered against a plate somewhere to my left. By the time I reached the table, I could see nothing but the two of them. "Rex." He looked up, and there was no shame on his face, only irritation, as if I had interrupted something. "Aurelia. What are you doing here?" "What am I doing here?" My voice came out sharper than I meant it to, loud enough that the nearest tables had gone quiet, listening now instead of pretending not to. "What is *she* doing here, Rex? Holding your hand like that's normal, like I'm not standing right here?" "You're embarrassing yourself." He still hadn't moved his hand off hers. "I'm embarrassing myself?" I let out a short, disbelieving laugh that didn't sound like me. "You're on a date, in public, and I'm the one embarrassing myself?" "Keep your voice down." "No." I had stayed quiet for three years, and I was finished with it. "You don't get to tell me to keep my voice down. Not after this. Not after everything I gave up for..." I reached for his arm, needing him to look at me and hear the rest. He was on his feet before my fingers touched him, and his palm slapped across my cheek, the crack of it snapping my head sideways and leaving my ears ringing. The sting spread hot down into my jaw, and for a half second the restaurant seemed to tilt before it steadied and the noise came back. "Don't touch me," Rex said, pitching his voice now not for me but for the room, since people were watching. "You're nothing, do you understand that? No one is ever going to want you the way you think you deserve. You should be grateful I stayed as long as I did." I opened my mouth to answer him, and nothing came out. The woman beside him looked down at her plate and said nothing. My hand rose to my cheek on its own, an instinct to check that the pain was real, and over his shoulder I watched three phones come up at once, screens glowing, red dots blinking. A man two tables over had angled his so carefully it looked rehearsed. Rex sat back down beside her as if the matter were settled, then raised a hand toward the two security guards near the entrance. "Excuse me," he called, not bothering to lower his voice. "I don't know who this woman is. She walked in and started screaming at us. I think she may be mentally unstable." "I'm his fiancée," I said, and my voice cracked on the word. Someone at a nearby table laughed quietly, and Rex only shook his head, as though my answer proved his point. "Ma'am, you need to come with us," one of the guards said. It took me a moment, through the ringing in my ears, to understand he was speaking to me and not to the man who had just slapped a woman in the middle of a restaurant. They had my arms before I fully registered I was being moved, and I didn't fight them. I don't remember deciding not to. Every eye in the room followed me to the door, and no one spoke up. I only remember the cold air on my face outside, the door closing behind me, and the murmur of conversation resuming inside. I stood there for a long moment with my cheek throbbing and a thin ringing in my ears that wouldn't stop, and then I started walking, because there was nothing left to do. I don't remember most of the walk home. I remember a stranger asking if I was okay and me nodding, because I didn't trust my voice. I remember the tears starting around the third block and not stopping, hot and humiliating, on a face three strangers had just filmed being slapped. By the time I got my key into the lock, my hands were still shaking, and all I could think about were those phones, screens glowing, already pointed at me. I didn't know yet what any of them had done with it. I only knew, standing in the hallway, that whatever came next was no longer up to me.