8. Erika
— ? —
Erika
“…and by the time I checked my phone you’d already called, and I drove here as fast as I could, I swear I came the second I realized…”
“Stop.”
My voice cuts through his babbling, and his mouth snaps shut so fast I hear his teeth click together, the sound echoing through the foyer, off the marble floors and the vaulted ceiling and all the expensive emptiness of this house that’s never quite felt like home.
We’re standing six feet apart, which might as well be six miles.
He’s still in his work clothes, rumpled and desperate, and I’m still in my gown, the champagne silk that was supposed to make me feel like a star, still holding the trophy against my chest like a shield.
My feet are killing me in these heels, blisters forming on blisters, but I can’t seem to make myself take them off, because that would mean this night is over, that would mean accepting that the best moment of my career ended with me standing alone on a stage while my husband had dinner with another woman.
“I don’t care about the emergency.” My voice sounds strange to my own ears, flat and cold, like it’s coming from someone else entirely. “I don’t care about Isabella’s father. I don’t care why you were at that restaurant instead of where you promised to be.”
“Erika, please, if you’d just let me explain…”
“You promised.”
The two words land like stones dropped into still water, and I watch the ripples spread across his face, guilt first, then fear, then panic as he realizes he’s not going to be able to charm his way out of this one.
I’ve seen him talk his way out of impossible situations, watched him smooth over conflicts that should have blown up in his face, but none of those skills are going to help him now, because I’m not a difficult client. I’m his wife.
“Two weeks ago.” I take a step toward him, my heels clicking against the marble, each footfall sharp and deliberate.
“You stood in our kitchen and looked me in the eyes.” Another step.
“You said front row.” Another step, and he actually retreats, backs away from me like I’m dangerous. “You promised, Kai.”
“I know.” He runs a hand through his hair, that nervous gesture he does when the ground is shifting under him and he can’t find solid footing. “I know I fucked up. I’m sorry…”
“Do you know what it was like?”
My voice is rising now despite my best efforts to keep it controlled, the rage I’ve been swallowing all night finally clawing its way up my throat and demanding to be heard.
I’ve spent three hours smiling and networking and pretending I wasn’t falling apart inside, three hours of answering questions about where my husband was with lies I made up on the spot, and I’m done pretending.
“Do you know what it was like standing on that stage? The biggest moment of my entire career, Kai, the thing I’ve been working toward for three years, writing in stolen hours while you slept, while you worked, while you forgot I existed.
” I’m close enough now to see his jaw tighten and his eyes go glassy.
“And I looked out at the audience, looked at the chair with your name on it, and it was empty.”
“Baby…”
“Don’t.” The word comes out like a blade. “Don’t call me that right now.”
He flinches like I’ve slapped him, and part of me feels a savage satisfaction at finally making him feel a fraction of what I’ve been feeling all night.
“Do you know what it was like calling your driver because you wouldn’t answer your phone?
” I’m shaking now, trembling with rage and exhaustion, but I can’t stop, can’t hold back the flood of words that have been building for hours.
“Asking Albie where you were? Hearing him hesitate, hearing the apology in his voice before he even said the words?”
“I can explain…”
“Finding out you were at dinner with her?”
The words hang in the air between us, sharp and poisonous, and I watch his face go pale.
“Nothing happened.” The words tumble out of him, desperate and rushed, tripping over each other in their hurry to reach me.
“I swear to God, Erika, nothing happened with Isabella. It was just dinner, just business, her father was threatening to back out and she said she could fix it if I just met with her…”
“I don’t care if anything happened!”
The words explode out of me, and I don’t even recognize my own voice anymore, this woman who’s screaming at her husband in their foyer at midnight while mascara runs down her cheeks and her hands shake so hard the trophy rattles against her chest.
“I don’t care if you slept with her or held her hand or just sat across a table discussing whatever the hell was so important that you couldn’t leave. You chose her, Kai. You had dinner with Isabella Lockhart instead of coming to my ceremony. You chose her over me.”
“That’s not… it wasn’t a choice like that…”
“Everything is a choice.” I’m crying now, hot angry tears streaming down my face, ruining the makeup that took the glam team two hours to perfect.
“You chose to stay when you could have left, and you chose to let your phone die, or turn it off, or whatever bullshit excuse you’re about to give me for why you didn’t answer when I called. ”
“I didn’t see…”
“Two calls, Kai. Three texts. One voicemail where I tried to sound like I wasn’t panicking, like I wasn’t sitting at a table with an empty chair wondering if my husband was dead in a ditch somewhere or just didn’t care enough to show up.
” My laugh sounds ugly, broken, like glass grinding against glass. “I counted.”
“I care…”
“Then why weren’t you there?”
The question hangs between us, sharp and final, and I watch him struggle to find an answer that doesn’t damn him.
His mouth opens and closes and opens again, and I can see him running through responses in his head and discarding each one as insufficient, and nothing comes out, and I let the nothing sit there long enough that we both hear it.
I turn toward the stairs, and my legs feel like they belong to someone else, like I’m watching myself from very far away as I climb one step at a time.
The trophy is still clutched against my chest, the crystal edges digging into my palms hard enough to leave marks, and I realize I’ve been holding it so tight my fingers have gone numb.
“Erika, wait.” His footsteps follow me, and I hear the desperation in his voice, the edge of panic. “Please. Can we just talk about this? I’ll stay up all night, I’ll do whatever you want, just please…”
I don’t stop or turn around, I just keep climbing, one hand on the banister, the other wrapped around the only thing I have to show for tonight.
“I’ll clear my whole week. I’ll cancel everything.” He’s babbling now, throwing out promises like confetti, hoping one of them will stick. “Whatever you need me to do…”
“Stop.”
I’m at the top of the stairs now, and I turn to face him where he’s frozen halfway up, one hand gripping the banister so hard his knuckles have gone white.
He’s looking up at me with an expression that might be heartbreak or might be terror, and for a moment I feel my chest soften, some instinct to comfort him, to tell him it’s okay, to smooth this over the way I’ve smoothed over a hundred smaller hurts, and I push it down.
“Stop making promises you won’t keep.”
“I mean it this time…”
“You always mean it.” God, I’m so tired, tired of fighting and hoping and believing him when he looks at me with those dark eyes and says all the right words in all the right order.
“And then tomorrow a call comes in, and you mean that too, and I end up alone again wondering why I keep falling for it.”
“That’s not fair…”
“No.” I take a breath, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected, cold and calm and completely unlike myself. “What’s not fair is winning an award and having no one there to see it.”
He’s crying now too, I realize with distant surprise, tears tracking down his face and catching the light from the hallway sconce, his jaw tight with the effort of holding himself together.
“I love you,” he says, and his voice breaks on the words. “Whatever else you believe about me, you have to know that.”
“I know you do.”
“Then…”
“I’m sleeping in the guest room tonight.” I turn away from him and walk down the hall, each step heavier than the last, like I’m wading through water that gets deeper with every stride. “We can talk more tomorrow, if you want. But right now I can’t look at you without seeing that empty chair.”
His footsteps follow me down the hall, and I can feel the weight of everything he wants to say pressing against my back like a physical force.
“Erika.”
I stop at the guest room door but don’t turn around.
“Please.” His voice is barely above a whisper, broken and desperate. “Just let me in. Let me hold you. I’ll sleep on the floor, I don’t care, just please don’t shut me out.”
I put my hand on the doorknob, and the metal is cold against my palm.
“You chose,” I say quietly. “Now I’m choosing too.”
I step inside and close the door behind me, and the lock clicks into place, loud in the silence, and I lean my back against the wood and close my eyes and listen to him breathing on the other side.
“Erika.” His voice through the wood, muffled and raw. “Baby, please. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I don’t answer.
“Just let me explain. Let me make this right. Please.”
I walk to the bed on legs that feel like they might give out and sit down on the edge, still in my gown, still holding my trophy, and the mattress creaks under my weight.
“I’ll sleep right here. I’ll stay outside your door all night. I don’t care.”
I reach over and turn off the lamp on the nightstand.
The knocking starts, soft at first, almost hesitant, his knuckles against the wood, then more insistent, a steady rhythm that sounds like a heartbeat, like everything he can’t find the words to say.
“Erika. I know I fucked up. Just say something.”
I lie back against the pillows, the trophy resting beside me on the pillow, cold and hard as a stranger, and I stare at the ceiling while shadows shift across the plaster as car headlights sweep past the window, brief light followed by darkness, over and over.
“Anything. Tell me you hate me, tell me to go to hell, just please don’t shut me out like this.”
The knocking continues, sometimes frantic, sometimes slow and steady, sometimes just his palm pressed flat against the wood like he’s trying to reach me through sheer force of will, and I don’t move.
Eventually, somewhere around three in the morning by the clock on the nightstand, the knocking stops. I hear his footsteps in the hallway, slow and heavy and defeated, and they pause outside my door, and I hold my breath, every muscle in my body tense, waiting.
“I’m going to fix this,” he whispers through the door. “I don’t know how, but I’m going to fix this.”
Then his footsteps move on, and I hear our bedroom door open and close, and I’m alone with the darkness and the silence and the crystal trophy that’s the only witness to the worst night of my life. I close my eyes and wait for sleep that doesn’t come.