Chapter Nineteen
The Distance
Sydney
I call Lauren the second the guest room door closes behind me.
She picks up on the first ring, which tells me she sensed a disturbance in the force the way she always does when my life goes sideways.
“What happened?”
I sit on the edge of the bed and press my free hand against my forehead, trying to figure out where to start. “Bree happened.”
“What does that mean?”
“Bree told Archer—in his hallway, at their children’s birthday party—that she saw the way he looked at me at their wedding. At the altar, Lauren. While he was marrying her.”
Lauren is quiet for about three seconds, which is the longest she’s ever been quiet in her life. “She said that to him?”
“She said it to him, and I was standing ten feet away, and I heard every word.”
“Oh, Syd.”
“She said she spent their entire marriage wondering if she was imagining it. And she wasn’t.” My voice cracks on the last word and I draw a steadying breath. “She was right, Lauren. I can’t pretend anymore. I’ve always felt more than I should have.”
“What did Archer say?”
“He said his marriage ended because he married the wrong person. And that it was on him, not on me.”
“Okay. And do you believe him?”
“I believe that he believes it. But… his ex-wife saw something on his face at their own wedding, and he still married her. He still chose her. Whatever he felt—or didn’t feel—it wasn’t enough to change anything. So what does it matter?”
“It matters because you’re living in his house.”
“I know.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go to sleep and wake up tomorrow and help with the kids and pretend my heart isn’t broken. Same thing I’ve been doing, I guess.”
Lauren is quiet again, and I can hear her breathing, and I know she’s choosing her next words carefully because Lauren only does that when the truth she’s about to deliver is the kind that leaves a mark.
“What are you most afraid of?” she asks.
I pull my knees up onto the bed. “What if whatever was between us—friendship, whatever—was enough to keep him from being fully present in his marriage? Because I wasn’t trying to. I swear to God I wasn’t trying to take anything from Bree. I liked Bree. I meant every smile, and I never—”
“You’re not a homewrecker, Syd. You didn’t do anything wrong. You loved someone and you kept it to yourself for fifteen years, and that’s not a crime. That’s, uh—honestly, that’s kind of heroic in the saddest way possible.”
“I don’t feel heroic. I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
“Don’t throw up. Drink some water. Go to sleep. We’ll figure this out tomorrow.”
“What’s to figure out?”
“Whether you’re going to keep living in that man’s house pretending nothing is happening, or whether you’re going to deal with it.”
“I vote pretending.”
“I know you do. Go to sleep, Syd. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I hang up and lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling fan for a long time, and I hear his footsteps in the hallway — slow, deliberate, pausing outside my door for a second before moving on—and I close my eyes and press my face into the pillow.
The next few days are careful.
I don’t pull away entirely because pulling away entirely would mean leaving, and I’m not ready to leave because the twins need me, and I’m not going to punish them for their father’s inability to communicate like a functional adult.
But the couch nights are over. After the twins go to bed, I go to the guest room.
I read my book. I don’t pour wine or sit on his sectional or put my feet anywhere near his thigh.
I am pleasant and present and professional, and the word professional tastes like sand in my mouth because I’m not his employee, I’m his best friend, except I don’t know what that word means anymore either.
Archer gives me space. Of course he does, because that’s what Archer does—he stands at a distance and waits and hopes the problem resolves itself without him having to do anything messy or vulnerable.
He’s been doing it his whole life. He did it the morning after we slept together.
He did it when Bree started asking questions.
He’ll do it until the end of time if I let him, because Archer Lockwood would rather lose a limb than be the first person to say the hard thing.
We orbit each other in the kitchen. We tag-team the twins.
We communicate in logistics—pickup at one, Bree has them Saturday, I’ll be at the senior center until noon.
He asks how my class went, and I say good, and he nods, and we stand on opposite sides of the island like two people who’ve never shared a bottle of wine or fallen asleep on each other or had a hundred deep conversations.
It’s awful. It’s the most awful thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve done some awful things, including dating a guy for three months because I liked his dog, and going to a timeshare presentation on vacation in Cancún because the free breakfast sounded good.
On Wednesday, I meet Winnie for coffee.
She takes one look at me across the table and says, “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Syd, you look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“I’ve slept.”
“How much?”
“Some.”
She flags the waiter and orders us both coffee without asking, which is the correct move. “Talk to me.”
I tell her about Bree. Not everything—not the full hallway conversation, not the kitchen after—but enough. I tell her Bree said something about the way Archer always looked at me, and that I overheard, and that it’s been eating me alive.
Winnie listens without interrupting, which is one of the things I like best about her. She doesn’t fill silences with reassurances. She just lets me talk until I run out of words. It’s what I need right now.
“The part I can’t get past,” I say, wrapping both hands around my coffee, “is that she saw it and I didn’t. Whatever was on his face at that altar, whatever she spent six years noticing—I missed it. I was so busy hiding my own feelings that I never once considered he might be hiding his.”
“You think he was?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem. Bree thinks so. Archer—I’m not sure. I mean, he could be in denial about having feelings for me, or maybe he felt guilty about how close we were, or it could just be nothing and Bree read into it.”
Winnie stirs her coffee. “Can I tell you what I see from the outside?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“You’re not his nanny and you’re not his friend. You’re the person his kids run to. You’re the person he called first when his life imploded. That’s not nothing.”
“Winnie—”
“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what it looks like from where I’m sitting. Banks sees it too. The whole team sees it. The only two people who can’t see it are the two people standing in the middle of it.”
“That’s because we’re too close to it.”
“Or because you’re both terrified.”
I drink my coffee and don’t answer because she’s right and I hate it.
I hate that everyone around us can apparently see what I’ve spent years trying to hide, and I hate that Bree could see it on his face when I couldn’t, and I hate that I’m sitting in a café with smudged mascara and three hours of sleep.
“What would you do?” I ask. “If you were me.”
Winnie thinks about it. “I’d ask him.”
“Ask him what?”
“The question you’ve been afraid to ask since you were teenagers. Just ask him, Syd. Straight up. No subtext, no reading between the lines, no interpreting hallway conversations. Look at him and say, do you have feelings for me, yes or no.”
“And if he says no?”
“Then at least you’ll know. And you can stop torturing yourself.”
I think about that for a second. I don’t think Winnie understands just how badly his rejection would destroy me.
There would be no coming back from that.
I wouldn’t be able to stay here. I wouldn’t even be able to stay friends with him, most likely.
It’d just be too hard. It’s not a simple yes or no.
I stare at my coffee. The café hums around us—other conversations, the espresso machine, a baby crying two tables over. Normal life happening at normal speed while mine feels like it’s moving through mud.
Winnie reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “For what it’s worth, I think everything’s going to be okay.”
I drive home in the Lexus and sit in the garage for five minutes before I go inside. The house is quiet—Archer is at practice and the twins are at Bree’s until tomorrow. I have the place to myself.
I walk through the kitchen and stop at the fridge. Luke’s family drawing is still there, held up by two magnets. Five figures on construction paper. Daddy and Auntie Syd standing close together. Mommy off to one side.
I look at it for another second, then I go to the guest room, close the door, and let myself fall apart.