5. Erika
— ? —
Erika
The gala is everything a gala should be, champagne towers catching the light, a string quartet playing classical pieces nobody’s actually listening to, and enough wealth concentrated in one room to solve most of the world’s problems if anyone in attendance cared about anything beyond their own reflections.
I’m wearing a gown I’d have been afraid to touch a few years ago, emerald green and floor-length with a neckline that Kai picked out himself.
“You’ll look stunning,” he’d said when the stylist brought it over, running his fingers along the fabric like he was imagining peeling it off me later. “Everyone will be staring at you.”
Diamonds he bought me glitter at my throat and ears, cold and heavy against my skin, and the heels make my legs look endless but are slowly murdering my feet, each step sending a little jolt of pain up through my calves.
I’ve been standing in them for three hours now, and I’m pretty sure I’m developing blisters in places I didn’t know could blister, and none of it matters, because despite the dress and the diamonds and the shoes I have never felt less visible in my life.
Kai works the room like it’s his job, because it is, moving from cluster to cluster with practiced ease.
Handshakes and backslaps and that particular laugh men do when they’re pretending to find each other funny.
He knows everyone here, or at least everyone who matters, and they all know him, gravitating toward him like planets toward a sun, and I trail behind him like a moon, reflecting his light, occasionally getting introduced but never actually seen.
He’s good at this. He’s always been good at this, and I used to love watching him do it, the tux fitted across his shoulders like it was poured on, the way he stands with his weight back on one heel and his hand loose around a glass, the half-second before he laughs where his eyes crinkle first, and I’d stand at the edge of a room like this one and want him with a completeness that embarrassed me, want to be the person he looked for over the crowd.
I catch myself doing it now, my eyes on the line of his jaw while he listens to some man in a better suit, and I make myself stop, look at the champagne tower, look at anything, because wanting him used to be the easiest thing in my life and tonight it feels like standing at a window watching a stranger’s party.
“Great to see you, fantastic party, you remember my wife, Erika, this is…” and a name I won’t remember in five minutes.
“Nice to meet you.” The man’s eyes slide past me before I’ve even finished speaking, already refocusing on Kai. “Now, about that thing we discussed last week…”
And just like that I’m furniture, decorative furniture in an expensive dress, but furniture nonetheless.
I stand there for thirty seconds, maybe forty-five, waiting for a break in the conversation that never comes, and then I do what I always do at these events and drift toward the bar, where at least the bartender will make eye contact with me.
The bar is a marble monstrosity near the back of the ballroom, staffed by a young guy with kind eyes and the harried expression of someone who’s been dealing with drunk rich people for too many hours. He sees me coming and his face softens, like he recognizes a fellow survivor.
“Rough night?” He’s already reaching for a champagne glass.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only to someone who’s been watching.” He slides the glass toward me, the bubbles rising in perfect columns, and moves off to help another guest, and that small kindness from a stranger is the most anyone has looked at me all night.
I turn back to face the room, champagne in hand, feeling slightly more human than I did five minutes ago, and the feeling doesn’t last.
I’m standing near one of the champagne towers, trying to look like I’m choosing a glass rather than hiding, when a man materializes at my elbow, mid-fifties, in a suit that’s too cheap for this crowd, with the anxious energy of someone who doesn’t quite belong here but desperately wants to.
“Excuse me.” He’s holding out an empty champagne glass, looking at me expectantly. “Could I get another one of those?”
I blink at him, confused. “I’m sorry?”
“Another champagne.” He gestures impatiently at the tower behind me, like I’m being deliberately obtuse. “Quickly, if you don’t mind. I’ve been waiting.”
The realization hits like ice water, freezing me in place. He thinks I’m staff. I’m standing here in a designer gown, wearing borrowed diamonds, holding my own drink, and this man looked at me and saw a servant, someone whose job is to fetch things for people like him.
“I don’t work here,” I say, and my voice comes out flat, stunned. “I’m a guest.”
He squints at me, really looking for the first time, taking in the gown and the jewelry and the champagne glass in my hand, and his expression cycles from confusion to embarrassment to irritation, like I’ve wronged him by not being the help.
“Oh.” He waves a dismissive hand. “Sorry. You were just standing there, so I assumed…”
I walk away before he can finish the sentence, because if I stay one more second I’m going to say a thing I regret, or worse, I’m going to cry, and I refuse to give this room full of people who don’t see me the satisfaction of watching me fall apart.
My heart is pounding as I weave through the crowd looking for Kai, needing him to see me and remind me that I exist, that I’m not furniture or staff or some invisible woman who can be mistaken for a servant at a party she was invited to.
I find him near the quartet, deep in conversation with a group of men I don’t recognize, one hand on a shoulder in that casual, proprietary way men touch each other when they’re making deals, his laugh perfectly timed, hitting all the right notes of amusement and interest.
I stop a few feet away and wait for him to notice me, to look up and smile and reach for my hand and pull me into the conversation the way he used to when we were first married and he wanted to show me off.
He doesn’t. The conversation flows around me like water around a rock, and I stand there for a full minute, invisible, before I finally accept that he’s not going to see me unless I force him to.
“Kai.” My voice comes out smaller than I intended. “Kai.”
He glances over, still half-engaged in the conversation. “Hey, babe. Give me one second, we’re just finishing up here…”
“I want to go home.”
My tone must register, because his expression sharpens with concern. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Nothing. I just want to go home.”
“We can’t leave yet, I still need to talk to a few people…”
“Then I’ll get a car.”
“Erika.” He excuses himself from the group, taking my elbow and steering me toward a quieter corner. “Talk to me. What happened?”
I should tell him, say someone thought I was the help, and I’ve been standing alone for three hours while you networked, and I’m tired of being invisible, and I don’t know who I am anymore when you’re not looking at me.
But the words stick in my throat, because I’m not sure he’d hear what I’m really saying underneath the surface complaint, and I’m too tired to have a conversation that doesn’t go anywhere.
“I’m fine,” I say instead. “Just tired. Just ready to go.”
“One more hour.” He squeezes my hand, his eyes already drifting back toward the crowd, toward the people who matter, toward the work that never ends. “One more hour, and then I’m all yours. I promise.”
I’ve heard that promise before, last week and last month and probably a hundred times over the four years we’ve been married, one more hour that stretches into two, into three, into me falling asleep alone while he closes deals and builds his empire and forgets that he has a wife waiting for him at home.
I should push back, tell him no, demand that we leave now, finally say everything I’ve been choking back for months.
Instead I hear myself say “Fine,” because I’m too tired to fight and too defeated to demand better, and some part of me has started to believe that this is just what marriage looks like when you’re married to someone important.
His smile is relieved, grateful. “Thank you. You’re the best partner anyone could ever have.”
Partner. The word lands wrong, settling in my stomach like a stone, because I don’t feel like a partner.
Partners make decisions together and see each other, they don’t stand alone at parties while the other one networks, and they don’t get mistaken for the help.
I feel like an employee, an accessory, a very expensive piece of furniture that matches the decor.
But I don’t say any of that, because Kai is already being pulled back into conversation, already slipping away from me, and I’m left alone again with my champagne and my borrowed diamonds and the growing certainty that I’m disappearing, piece by piece, into a life that was never really mine.
I find a quiet corner near the balcony and stay there for the next hour, watching the room, sipping champagne I don’t taste, counting down the minutes until I can leave.
From here I can see him work, the way he tilts his head when he’s listening to someone he wants something from, the way he laughs a half second before the punchline lands so the other man feels funny, the way he touches an elbow to steer a conversation exactly where he wants it.
He used to do all of that to me, back when I was the room he wanted to win, and watching him spend it on strangers while I hold up a wall is its own particular flavor of lonely.
The party swirls around me, all glitter and laughter and meaningful glances, and I feel like a ghost haunting my own life, present but not seen.
When Kai finally finds me, I’m on my third glass of champagne and my feet have gone numb in my heels, which is actually a relief because at least I can’t feel the blisters anymore.
“Ready to go?” He looks tired, the lines around his eyes deeper than when we arrived, but satisfied too, like the evening was a success.
“Been ready for hours.”
If he hears the edge in my voice he doesn’t show it, he just takes my arm and guides me toward the exit, nodding at people as we pass, still working the room even as we’re leaving it.
In the car he pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through emails, his face lit blue by the screen, and I lean my head against the window and watch the city slide past, all those lights and all those lives and all those people with their own invisible struggles.
My phone buzzes in my clutch.
I almost ignore it, because I’m tired and sad and not in the mood for whatever fresh hell is demanding my attention, but some instinct makes me look anyway. It’s an unknown number, a text message.
Congratulations! Your novel has been selected as a finalist for the Indie Voice Publishing Award. Please RSVP to confirm your attendance at the ceremony…
I read the message three times, certain I’m misunderstanding, certain there’s been some mistake, and then a fourth time and a fifth, and the words don’t change or disappear or reveal themselves to be a cruel joke.
My book is a finalist. My words, the ones I wrote in stolen moments and secret hours, the ones Isabella Lockhart said would never amount to anything, are good enough to be recognized, good enough to matter.
I want to scream with joy, grab Kai’s shoulder and shake him and say look at me, look at what I did, look at this thing I built while you were building your empire. I want to cry and laugh and call everyone I know and shout it from the rooftops.
But Kai is still staring at his phone, still scrolling, still elsewhere entirely, and I think about how I’d have to explain what the award is and why it matters and how he’d probably say that’s great, babe, in that distracted voice he uses when he’s not really listening.
So I close the message and say nothing, and I let the secret sit in my chest like a small bright flame, warming me from the inside, mine and only mine.