Chapter 50
Chapter Fifty
Madison
Dinner on Wednesday hadn’t been in the schedule.
Jack had planned for Friday, but Lily had staged a mid-week intervention that involved a grocery bag of mozzarella and a refusal to take no for an answer.
By six o'clock, she was standing on a step stool at the counter like a tiny Michelin-starred chef who had strong opinions about cheese distribution.
Jack had been demoted to dough duty, a role he accepted with quiet patience. I’d been assigned sauce, which Lily supervised with the usual intensity.
It had been loud and slightly chaotic.
The pizza had come out slightly lopsided—and completely fine—and we'd eaten it at the kitchen table while Lily gave us a detailed account of a disagreement between Noah and another kid about whose turn it was on the climbing frame.
The story had so many characters and subplots that I'd lost the thread somewhere around the third act, but Jack had followed with apparent ease. He’d asked clarifying questions at the right moments, which made Lily feel heard and made me feel something warm and difficult to name.
Halfway through dinner his phone had buzzed. He'd glanced at it, put it face down, glanced at it again.
"You can take it," I said.
"It's fine."
"Jack."
He'd picked it up, excused himself, gone to the hallway. I'd heard his voice, low and careful, the register of someone not wanting to be overheard. He'd been back in three minutes, easy and present, and we'd finished dinner. I'd told myself it was work.
It was work. Of course it was work.
* * *
Thursday I was walking back from the pharmacy on Calloway Street when I saw him.
I almost missed it. I was scrolling through a consult report on my phone, and I only looked up to check the curb. And there he was—visible through the window of The Anchor.
Twelve years ago, it had been a dive bar with a sticky floor and a flickering neon sign. Now, it had been bought and renovated into something upscale, all exposed brick and soft lighting and overpriced craft beer. But it was the same building. The same glass.
And he was right there, sitting at a table tucked into the back corner.
There was a woman across from him. Dark-haired, mid-thirties, something professional about her. There were papers on the table between them, but from the pavement, the light was too flat to be sure.
They were leaning toward each other.
I stopped walking.
He'd told me this morning, when I'd texted to ask about Friday, that he'd be working late. Busy day, probably won't finish until six. I'd said no problem, see you then.
And now here he was, at The Anchor.
I stood on the pavement outside and felt the world narrow to a point. I didn't go into pubs like The Anchor. It wasn't my scene, and I had no reason to be there, but I knew the street well enough.
Jack looked up.
Not at me—at something the woman was saying, something she'd put on the table between them.
He looked at it with that attention he brought to things that mattered, and his face did the thing it did—the slight narrowing of the eyes, the tension in the jaw—and I…
I just stood there. Then I realized I couldn't feel my hands.
Jack had said he'd be working late, and now he was at a pub. With a woman.
I turned and walked.
I got back to my car and sat in it for a long time without starting the engine.
I thought about the bruise. The phone calls. The slightly-off quality of him this last week, present and also somewhere else, like he was managing something I didn't have access to.
I thought about twelve years ago and a Thursday in March, and I thought about the way I'd turned onto Calloway Street and seen his bike outside a bar.
I thought: stop. You don't know what that was. You don't know anything yet.
But I also thought: but you know what it feels like.
I started the car.
The drive home was ten minutes. I didn’t think about Jack once, which meant I thought about him with every rotation of the tires.
By the time I sat at my kitchen table, the diagnostic was complete. I looked at the apartment I’d been living in for two years and I could see the future with terrifying clarity. Or at least, one version of it.
The version where this was what it looked like.
The version where I'd let someone in, and they'd taken a piece of me. The version where I had to rebuild from zero. I’d done it once already, twelve years ago, and I knew the protocol. I was good at starting over. I was an expert at building a life from nothing. I’d spent my entire adult career proving I could survive the subtraction of a person.
I pressed my hands flat on the table.
My phone buzzed.
Still on for Friday? Lily wants to watch the sequel.
I looked at his name on the screen for a long time.
Then I put the phone face down and sat in the quiet of my apartment, looking at the future and trying to remember how to breathe.