Chapter 13 #4
“You feel it too,” he says, repeating his earlier refrain. Not a question, but I still respond.
“I feel it too.”
This time, we don’t fall asleep fast; we stay up and whisper sleepy secrets in the dark.
We talk about the first crushes we ever had, all the way back when we were kids.
I tell him how I already hate my job even though I just started it and that I regret transitioning so seamlessly from high school to college to law school to work, never pausing to take a break.
He admits he worries that his mother is disappointed in the man he’s become, even though he’s able to take care of her now.
I talk about the places I want to go, and he tells me about the places he’s been.
We discuss our fears of dying, our fears of aging, our fear there’s nothing out there, and our fear there is.
We talk until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.
The sun is bright when I wake up, alone and disoriented. Memories come flooding back. An amazing night, but morning brings with it guilt and shame.
I glance at the clock. Make that afternoon.
I hear a distinctly male, distinctly familiar voice coming from the living room, and I smile.
I get up to call him back to bed, my negative emotions forgotten now that I know he’s still here.
Funny how company has a magical way of taking the edge off where guilt is concerned.
I’m not actually any less guilty because there are two of us, but now that I know he hasn’t left, it feels like we’re splitting the pot.
I pause in the hallway, amused by the sight of that god-awful lavender satin dress crumpled in a ball on the floor, pulled off me and tossed aside in our flurry to the bedroom, discarded in plain sight without a second thought.
“I’m at the hotel,” Alex murmurs, low enough that I can tell he’s trying not to wake me.
Silence. “Yes, I know I told you I was going to come straight home, but I had too many drinks at the reception and figured it was better safe than sorry,” he says, his voice getting louder as irritation bleeds into his tone.
More silence as whoever’s on the other end of the line replies.
You know who it is, a traitorous part of my brain whispers. And I do. Alex’s wife, whom I conveniently forgot about last night.
That’s too kind to myself. Alex’s wife, whose existence I conveniently chose to ignore.
“No, I’m not lying,” Alex says with a long sigh.
A cold weight of dread settles in the center of my chest. This is not a conversation someone has with his estranged wife he’s about to divorce. This is a man trying to placate his worried loving partner he just cheated on.
The lavender dress now appears to be mocking me. Crumpled. Tossed aside. Discarded.
“If you wanted to keep tabs on my every move, you could have come with me.”
More silence.
“My friends do not hate you, Ingrid.”
I listen as this goes on, him assuring her that he’s at the hotel, his tone alternating between blatant irritation and quiet placating. Eventually, he promises that he’ll be home soon and ends the call with a gut-punching “I love you too.”
He walks back into my bedroom and freezes when he finds me sitting at the edge of the bed, staring at him with what I’m sure is a scathing expression.
“Josephina, I can explain—”
“My name is Joey,” I snap, despite the fact that he called me Josephina and Jo several times last night.
Last night, I had even liked the sound of Jo coming from his lips, a special nickname for a strangely special night.
“You’re assuming that I expect or want an explanation, neither of which, I promise you, is the case. ”
“Just let me—”
“It’s fine, Alex. I’m not naive. I knew what this was going into it. I’d watched the man I love marry someone else, I had a couple drinks, made a bad decision. That’s it. It’s not worth getting all hung up over.”
But I am. I’m so hung up, and I need him out of my apartment so I can wallow in peace.
“A bad decision,” he repeats, voice hollow.
I will my eyes to stay dry. I feel so stupid.
So monumentally, disastrously stupid. Stupid and also guilty, because Alex was right a few minutes ago when he assured Ingrid—his wife, his fucking wife—that his friends don’t hate her.
At least, I don’t hate her. The few times I met her, she was cool, if a bit distant.
Not the sort of woman who deserves what I just did to her.
No woman deserves that.
“Yes, Alex. A bad decision. What else would you call fucking a married man?”
I put it out there. Call it what it is. I have to. Acknowledging what we’ve done won’t erase it, but it’s better than couching it in euphemisms and pretending that makes it better.
Carried away. Swept up.
“You’re right,” he snaps. “A bad decision. Like pretending last night was anything more than both of us using each other to get over other people. Hope I helped.”
He leaves, and I do my best not to think about him until the night comes seven years from now when I walk into a dinner party and am confronted by his unexpected presence.