26. Alexander
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Alexander
The Whitmore Maison dinner was Henri’s idea.
“You need to get out more,” he’d said when he called to invite me. “You’re becoming a hermit. It’s disturbing.”
“I go out.”
“To work and back doesn’t count. Neither does the occasional family dinner where you spend the whole time staring into space like you’re communing with ghosts.”
“I don’t stare into space.”
“You absolutely do. Mother’s been asking if you’re sleeping, and I’ve run out of creative ways to avoid telling her the answer is obviously no.
” He’d sighed. “Just come to the dinner. It’s investors and industry people, nothing too taxing.
Smile, shake hands, remind everyone that Alexander Whitmore still exists. Consider it a professional obligation.”
So I went. Put on one of the suits that fit me differently now, styled my hair the way Sophia used to like it, stopped myself from wondering why that still mattered.
The restaurant was elegant and impersonal, a place built for deals made over expensive wine, where nobody remembered the food. I’d been there for an hour, nursing dull conversations about business and money, when I saw her.
She was across the room, seated at a small table near the windows.
Her hair was short, much shorter than I remembered, cropped close to her head in a way that made her cheekbones sharper and her eyes more striking.
She was laughing at whatever her companion had said, her whole face transformed by genuine amusement, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe.
Her companion was a man I didn’t recognize.
Dark hair, well-dressed, leaning toward her with the body language of someone who wanted to be closer.
Another comment from him, and Sophia laughed again, and I watched her hand touch his arm in a gesture that looked natural and intimate and absolutely devastating.
She looked happy.
That was the thing I couldn’t stop noticing. She looked happy in a way she hadn’t looked in the final years of our marriage. Relaxed and present in a way she hadn’t been in years, a woman who’d found her footing and no longer needed anyone else to hold her up.
I should have turned away, focused on the people I’d come here to see, on the obligations that had brought me here, on anything other than my ex-wife having dinner with another man.
Then Sophia looked up. Her eyes swept the room, casual and unfocused, until they landed on me.
She went still. I watched the recognition hit her. Her expression shifted from surprise into a guarded stillness, and her composure faltered in a way I’d only seen a handful of times in the eleven years I’d known her.
I reached for my wine without looking and knocked it directly into my lap.
Red wine bloomed across my shirt in a spreading stain that would have been comedic if I hadn’t been standing in front of the woman I’d loved for over a decade. I grabbed my napkin, started dabbing at the damage, and caught myself adjusting my cuff the way I always did when I was nervous.
Sophia noticed. I saw her eyes drop to my hands, saw the flicker of recognition, saw the corner of her mouth curve upward in a smile she was trying to suppress.
She remembered. Of course she remembered. She’d teased me about that nervous habit for years, about the way I couldn’t keep my hands still when I was around her, about the time I’d spilled champagne on our third date because she’d touched my hand unexpectedly.
For one humiliating second, I was twenty-five again and hopelessly, terrifyingly in love with a woman who was completely out of my league.
“Alexander.” Henri appeared at my elbow, concern in his voice. “What happened?”
“Wine on my shirt. It’s fine.”
“It’s clearly not fine, you’re dripping onto the floor.” He steered me toward the back hallway where the restrooms were located. “Go clean up. I’ll make your excuses.”
I went. Not because I needed to clean my shirt, though I did, but because I needed to not be in the same room as Sophia while I figured out how to make my brain work again.
The bathroom mirror showed me exactly what I expected: a man in his late thirties with wine on his shirt and panic in his eyes. I grabbed paper towels, ran them under water, started dabbing at the stain with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
She was here. In Paris. Having dinner with someone else.
Of course she was having dinner with someone else.
It had been three years. She was beautiful and brilliant and had built an entire life without me.
The idea that she’d spent all that time alone was laughable.
Insulting, even. She deserved to be happy.
She deserved to be loved by someone who could give her what she needed.
I just hadn’t expected to watch it happen.
The stain wasn’t coming out. I gave up, buttoned my jacket over the damage, and went back into the restaurant. I’d say my goodbyes, claim an early meeting tomorrow, escape before I had to see Sophia laughing with her handsome date again.
She was waiting by the front entrance.
I stopped short, caught off guard by her presence. She was alone, her coat over her arm, her phone in her hand like she’d been about to call for a car.
“You’re running away,” she said.
“I’m leaving. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” She slipped her phone into her pocket. “Because that’s exactly what you used to say when you wanted to dodge an uncomfortable subject.”
I adjusted my cuff again. Caught myself. Made myself stop. “You look well, Sophia.”
“I look like I just watched my ex-husband spill wine on himself from across a crowded restaurant.” Her voice was dry, familiar, exactly the tone I’d spent three years missing. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. The shirt might not recover, but I have others.”
“You always did.” She paused, studying me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. “You look different.”
“Older.”
“Thinner. Tired.” Her eyes traveled over my face, cataloging changes the way I’d cataloged hers. “You’ve let your hair grow.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy to get a haircut?”
“Too busy to care about getting one.”
The words came out sharper than I intended, and I saw her register the edge. A guarded wariness crossed her expression. Concern, maybe. Or just surprise that the polished Alexander Whitmore she’d left behind had become someone who couldn’t be bothered with grooming.
“I like it,” she said. “The hair. It makes you look more human.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s an observation.” She shifted her weight, and I noticed she was wearing heels that made her almost my height. “The man I was having dinner with is named Luca. We’ve been seeing each other for a few months. It’s casual.”
I should not have noticed the heels. I noticed them anyway, the way they changed the line of her legs, the way they put her mouth level with mine so that I couldn’t look at her without looking at it.
Three years divorced and my body still cataloged her like it was taking inventory of a possession it had lost the right to.
The tendon in her wrist when she lifted her glass.
The bare stretch of her throat above her collar.
The specific shade of red she’d painted her nails, the exact one she used to leave fingerprints of on my white shirts.
Another man had been seeing her for months.
Had watched her order wine and push her hair back and do the hundred small things I was watching her do now.
The jealousy that went through me was ugly and immediate and had no right to exist, and underneath it, worse than it, was want.
Plain, humiliating want. I wanted to back her into the nearest wall and remind her which man’s name she used to say when she couldn’t think straight.
I picked up my water and drank it like it might drown the thought. It didn’t.
I didn’t ask for an explanation. I definitely didn’t deserve one. But she’d given it anyway, and I didn’t know what to do with that.
“He seemed nice,” I said.
“He is nice. He’s an architect. He laughs at my jokes and remembers my wine order and doesn’t make me feel like an obligation.” She paused. “You don’t have to look so wounded, Alexander. I’m allowed to date. We’ve been divorced for three years.”
“I know how long it’s been.”
“Do you? Because you’re looking at me like I’ve done the unforgivable.”
I forced my expression into neutrality. “I’m not wounded. I’m surprised. You never mentioned anyone when we… when we communicated.”
“We communicated through lawyers about property settlements. That didn’t seem like the appropriate venue for personal updates.”
“Fair point.”
Silence stretched between us. I wanted to fill it with all the things I’d written in my journals, all the words I’d never sent, all the desperate longing I’d tried to compress into a shape that didn’t consume me. Instead, I adjusted my cuff again and said nothing.
“What about you?” Sophia asked. “Have you been dating?”
The question caught me square in the chest. I thought about the dates I’d attempted and abandoned. The women I’d tried to be interested in. The empty apartment I went home to every night. The journals full of letters to a woman I’d promised to let go.
She was standing in front of me, asking if I’d moved on, and the truth was so pathetic I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“Yes,” I said.
The lie tasted like ash.
“Good.” Sophia’s expression cooled by a degree. “Anyone serious?”
“A few.” The lies kept coming, building on each other. “It’s been three years, Soph.”
I watched the nickname land. Watched her react to the familiarity of it, the intimacy I hadn’t earned anymore. Her jaw tightened, and her eyes went flat.
“Right. Of course. I’m glad you’ve moved on.”
She didn’t sound glad. She sounded hurt, which made no sense because she was the one who’d ended things, she was the one who’d filed for divorce, she was the one who’d asked me to let her go.
“Sophia…”
“I should get back. Luca’s waiting.” She pulled on her coat, the movements sharp and efficient. “It was good to see you, Alexander. You look… you look like you’re doing well.”