12. Juliette #2
“At dinner parties. At galas. Every time your mother’s friends made little comments about where I came from, you never-”
“I know.” His voice is rough. “I should have. Every single time. I should have done that.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Six years,” I say, before he can answer. “Six years I waited for your face to do that on my behalf.”
“I know.”
“It picked now. A stranger on a sidewalk got the defense your wife never did.”
“You were never the stranger.” His voice comes out low and raw. “That’s what took me so long. Strangers are easy. There’s nothing to lose.”
He finally looks at me. His eyes are dark with something I can’t name.
“Because I was a coward. Because I was raised to keep the peace. Because I let my mother convince me that defending you would make things worse.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t have a good answer. I just know I should have done it, and I didn’t, and I’m sorry.”
I don’t know what to do with this.
The Zachary I married would have smoothed things over. Would have made excuses for Mrs. Whitfield, explained that she didn’t mean it, suggested that I was overreacting. He would have protected the relationship, the connection, the network of obligations that made up his world.
This Zachary - the one who just eviscerated a society matron on a public sidewalk - I don’t recognize.
“Thank you,” I say finally. “For saying that.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m years too late.”
“You are.” I meet his eyes. “But you did it. That’s not nothing.”
He holds my gaze. Somewhere in the distance, a seagull cries. The afternoon light is golden on the brick buildings around us, and for a moment, standing on this sidewalk in a town my mother loved, I almost forget why I’m supposed to hate him.
His hand moves. Reaches for me, almost involuntary, like a reflex he’s trying to suppress.
I catch it.
I don’t step back. I catch his hand out of the air, and I use it to pull him off the parking meter, and I have exactly no idea what I’m doing until his mouth is on mine and it turns out I knew all along.
He makes a sound like a man losing an argument he’s been winning for weeks. Then his hands are in my hair and my back is against his ridiculous car and this is happening on a public sidewalk in a town where word teleports.
“Car,” I say against his mouth.
“What?”
“Get in the car, Zachary.”
We fall into the back seat like teenagers.
Like criminals. Like two people who have been not-touching so carefully, for so long, that the touching goes off like a held breath.
I end up on top of him, knees bracketing his thighs, his hands under my coat and up the back of my sweater, palms hot on bare skin.
The glass is going gray with us. His mouth is at my throat.
I am making decisions with approximately none of my faculties present.
“Juliette.” His voice is ruined. His hips lift under me and I feel exactly how much he means it. “Juliette, we-”
“Don’t talk.” I kiss him again, harder, and his hands slide to my hips and grip, and for one white-hot minute there is no email, no gala, no six years. There is a man under me shaking with how much he wants me, and a version of me that has been starving on dignity since spring.
His hand starts up my thigh.
I catch that too.
We stop. Both of us breathing like we ran here. His forehead drops to my collarbone. My hand is still wrapped around his wrist, holding it exactly where it stopped, which is not the same as moving it away, and we both know it.
“This isn’t happening,” I say, when I can.
“It’s a little bit happening.”
“It happened. Past tense. It’s over.” I climb off him with as much dignity as fogged glass allows, which is none. My sweater is sideways. His collar has been through a war. “You will not be smug about this.”
“I’m not smug.”
“You’re vibrating.”
“That’s my heart, actually.” He says it plainly, no charm on it at all, and that lands worse than anything he could have engineered.
We get out of the car on opposite sides, like the end of a negotiation. The sidewalk is mercifully empty.
“The keys,” he says, his voice carefully neutral. “Dianne gave me a set. Guarantors get copies.”
“Like hell they do.”
“It’s in the contract.” A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “I’ll never use them without asking.”
I hold out my hand. “Give them to me.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out both sets - the ones that are mine by right and the ones that are his by technicality. I take them all.
“I’m keeping both.”
“You’re going to be insufferable about the guarantor thing.”
“I’m going to be silent about the guarantor thing,” he says. “Which will be worse. You’ll see the mortgage line on the paperwork every month and think of me. It’s the most patient thing I’ve ever done.”
“You think you invented patience this quarter.”
“I think I finally met the syllabus.” He shifts against the parking meter, and something that isn’t quite a smile happens around his eyes. “Turns out the course is six years long and the professor grades on actions only. I’ve done the reading. I’m showing my work.”
“You planned that.”
“I plan everything. It’s the only skill my family let me keep.”
“I figured you would.”
“And I’m still angry at you.”
“I figured that too.”
“And this doesn’t change anything.”
“I know.” He opens his car door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Juliette.”
“I didn’t invite you tomorrow.”
“I know.” He slides into the driver’s seat. “But I’ll be there anyway.”
He drives away, and I stand on the sidewalk holding both sets of keys, and I don’t let myself think about how it felt when his fingers touched my arm.
One car. One stop I barely managed. One almost with a past tense now.
Behind me, I hear an engine start.
I turn. A black sedan is pulling out of a parking space down the street, and through the tinted window I catch a glimpse of a face I recognize - one of Eleanor’s people, the kind of blank-featured professional who handles things that need handling.
The car drives past slowly.
Black sedan, mainland plates, a woman’s profile in the driver’s seat - sunglasses in December, which on this island is either glaucoma or espionage.
The driver doesn’t look at me.
By dinner, the island has the story.
“There are three versions going around,” Rosie reports, letting herself into the cottage with a bag of rolls and zero ceremony. “In one, he made the Whitfield woman cry. In one, he threw a punch. In my favorite, you both told her off in unison, like a choir.”
“Which one are you telling?”
“The true one.” She sets the rolls down. “It’s better than all three. A Dean, on a public sidewalk, saying I’m done standing by. Half this island has waited twenty years to hear a Dean say that to one of their own.” She points a roll at me. “You be careful with that man.”
She pulls out the chair across from me and settles in like the story requires witnesses, tearing a roll in half and buttering it with the focus of a woman preparing testimony.
“I’m being careful.”
“I didn’t say careful of him. I said careful with him. Different preposition. Different problem.”
But I know she saw everything.