7. Corey
— ? —
Corey
I feel like I’m going to be sick.
I’m sitting at a table in the back corner of a restaurant I’ve never been to, nursing a whiskey I can barely taste, watching my wife hold another man’s hand.
She’s been here for over an hour. I followed her from the nonprofit, kept three car lengths back like I learned from some article I read years ago about surveillance techniques, parked across the street and waited until she went inside.
Then I found my own way in through a side entrance, asked for a table in the back, positioned myself where I could see everything without being seen.
I’ve seen enough.
They’re sitting close together, closer than coworkers should sit, leaning across the table like they’re sharing secrets.
She’s touching him constantly: his hand, his arm, his shoulder.
Casual touches that look practiced, familiar, like they’ve done this a hundred times before.
He’s been crying, I can tell even from here, his face red and swollen, and she moves her chair around the table to sit beside him.
She puts her arm around him. She lets him lean against her shoulder.
Glenn. Fucking Glenn Skair, with his expensive clothes and his easy charm and his nonprofit that makes him look like a saint while he steals other men’s wives. Glenn, who gets to have dinner with my wife three times a week while I work myself to death trying to build something worthy of her.
I think about last night. The way she looked at me when she said she loved me. The way she kissed me like she meant it. The way her body felt against mine in the dark, familiar and new at the same time.
Was she thinking about him? When I was inside her, when she was saying my name, was she wishing I was someone else? Was the whole thing just guilt, just her trying to make herself feel better about what she’s doing behind my back?
The whiskey burns going down. I signal for another, then change my mind and wave the waiter away. I need to stay sharp and see this through to the end.
She’s holding both his hands now, wrapped around his fingers like she’s anchoring him to the earth. She’s saying words I can’t hear, earnest and intense, her face close to his. He looks like he’s falling apart, and she looks like she’s the only thing holding him together.
That used to be me. I used to be the one she looked at like that, like I was worth saving, like I was precious instead of a burden she was stuck with. When did I lose her? When did I become the husband she tolerates instead of the man she loves?
When did he take my place?
They’re getting up now. He’s unsteady on his feet, probably drunk, and she’s helping him with his coat like it’s the most natural thing in the world. She says something to the waiter and hands over her credit card, pays for his meal without hesitation, without even looking at the bill.
Maybe they do this all the time. Maybe this is what my marriage has become: my wife buying dinner for another man while I sit in the dark watching like some pathetic cuckold in a bad movie.
I wait until they leave. I watch through the window as she walks him to his car, as she takes his keys from his pocket and guides him into the passenger seat. She’s going to drive him home. She’s going to take him to his house and walk him to his door and God knows what else.
I throw cash on the table and walk out the back entrance. I can’t watch anymore. I can’t sit here and pretend I don’t see what’s right in front of my face.
The drive home is silent. No radio, no podcasts, just the sound of my own breathing and the thoughts I can’t turn off. I keep seeing her arm around his shoulders. Her hands wrapped around his. The way she looked at him like he was the center of her goddamn universe.
I make it home before she does. I go straight to my study, pour three fingers of whiskey from the bottle I keep in my desk drawer, and drink it standing in the dark. The burn is good, the only thing that feels real right now.
I pour another.
I’m on my third glass and the edges of everything have gone soft and blurry.
Then headlights sweep across the study wall, slow and familiar, and her car pulls into the driveway.
She’s home.