2. Victoria
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Victoria
Three weeks after the anniversary, and I was standing in my mother’s charity gala with champagne I didn’t want and a smile that made my face ache.
The ballroom was beautiful. My mother had outdone herself, the way she always did: towering floral arrangements in gold and cream, a string quartet playing something classical and tasteful, the city’s most generous donors mingling beneath crystal chandeliers.
This was her legacy, the foundation she’d built from nothing after my father’s first heart scare fifteen years ago.
Heart disease research. Early detection programs. A cause that mattered.
I was supposed to care. I was supposed to be working the room, thanking volunteers, making donors feel appreciated. Instead, I was standing near the bar, watching my husband charm everyone in sight.
Timothy had arrived with me. His hand had settled on the small of my back as we walked through the entrance, warm and possessive, and something stupid in my chest had flickered with hope. He’s here. He came. Maybe tonight will be different.
The photographer called our names. Flash. Flash. Flash. Timothy’s smile was perfect, practiced, the same smile I’d seen in a hundred society photos. His hand stayed exactly where it was.
For exactly as long as the cameras were pointed at us.
The second the photographer moved on, his hand fell away like my back had scalded him.
“I need to speak with Harrison about the quarterly numbers,” he said. Already looking past me, scanning the crowd. “I’ll find you later.”
“Of course.”
I didn’t watch him go. I’d learned not to.
***
The champagne was expensive and tasted like nothing.
I moved through the room on autopilot, playing the part I’d perfected over five years of being Timothy Gibbons’s wife.
Thank you so much for coming. Your donation means the world.
My mother sends her gratitude. The words came easily because they didn’t require me to feel anything.
I could smile and nod and make small talk while my heart sat somewhere outside my body, observing everything from a safe distance.
It took me twenty minutes to find him again.
He was across the room, near the silent auction tables, and he wasn’t alone. Michelle stood beside him in a dress that probably cost more than my first apartment, her head tilted up toward him, her hands moving as she talked. Animated. Excited about something.
I watched from behind my champagne glass.
Timothy was listening. Actually listening.
Not checking his phone. Not scanning the room for the next conversation.
Not wearing the polite mask of attention he gave me when I tried to tell him about my day.
He was leaning in, his body angled toward her, and when Michelle laughed at something, he smiled.
A real smile. The kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made him smile like that.
That’s the attention I’ve been begging for.
The realization settled in my stomach like a stone.
That’s what I’ve been starving for. And he gives it away like it costs him nothing.
***
I left without telling him.
I walked out the front doors, handed the valet my ticket, and drove home alone in the emerald dress I’d worn for a husband who hadn’t looked at me once.
It took him two hours to notice I was gone.
I knew because I checked my phone. Because even after everything, some pathetic part of me was still waiting for him to care.
He didn’t call.
***
That night, I moved my things into the guest room.
The penthouse had never felt like mine. Timothy had decorated it before we got married, chosen every piece of furniture, every painting, every carefully curated object.
I’d moved into his life like a guest who’d overstayed her welcome, and five years later, I still couldn’t point to a single thing in this apartment that belonged to me.
A museum of his taste. A monument to his success.
And somewhere in the middle of it, a wife who’d learned to take up as little space as possible.
The guest room was cold. Impersonal. A room for strangers.
Good, I thought, grabbing my pillow and my phone charger and the book on my nightstand I’d been reading for three months because I kept waiting for Timothy to ask about it. That’s what we are.
He never asked.
***
Timothy came home at midnight.
I heard the front door. Heard his footsteps in the hallway, the familiar rhythm of his walk. Heard them pause outside the master bedroom.
Then they kept moving.
Toward the guest room.
My breath caught in my throat. I lay completely still, listening, my heart pounding so loud I was certain he could hear it through the door.
The footsteps stopped outside my door.
Silence.
I stared at the door handle, waiting. He noticed. He finally noticed I’m not there. He’s going to open the door and ask me what’s wrong, and I’ll have to tell him, and maybe-
The handle turned-