Chapter Four Playing Along
The hardest part is kissing him.
I thought it would be the lying. I thought the challenge would be sitting across from him at dinner and pretending I didn’t know what he was doing behind my back.
But that part is surprisingly easy. Travis makes it easy because he’s been lying to me for weeks and he hasn’t struggled with it at all.
He looks me in the eyes every morning and tells me he loves me and he means it the way you mean it when you tell a comfortable piece of furniture that it ties the room together.
I’m useful. I’m pleasant. I serve a function.
So lying back to him is simple. I just do what he does. I say the right words in the right tone and I smile at the right moments and I let him believe he’s still in control.
But kissing him. That’s where my body rebels. When he leans in and presses his lips to mine, something in my throat tightens and I have to force myself not to pull back. I taste the dishonesty in it. I feel the performance of it. And I hold still and I kiss him back and I hate every second of it.
It’s been four days since Kendra showed me the texts.
Four days of pretending. Four days of smiling and nodding and asking about his day and listening to his answers like they mean something.
Four days of going to work and sitting twenty feet from him and acting like everything is exactly the same as it was last Monday.
It’s Tuesday morning and I’m at my station helping Mrs. Parker when Travis walks out of his office with two coffees. He sets one on my counter and winks.
"Vanilla latte. Extra foam."
"Thank you." I pick it up and take a sip and it’s perfect. He always gets it perfect. Because that’s what good liars do. They pay attention to the small things so you never think to question the big ones.
He walks back to his office and I finish Mrs. Parker’s transaction. She counts her sixty dollars carefully and tucks the bills into her pocketbook.
"That man is going to marry you, dear. Mark my words."
"We’ll see, Mrs. Parker."
"I’ve been alive eighty-two years. I know a good man when I see one."
I smile and nod and hand her the receipt. I don’t correct her. I don’t tell her that the good man she sees is the same man who left a voicemail on my best friend’s phone asking for one dinner and calling it harmless. Mrs. Parker doesn’t need that information and neither does anyone else. Not yet.
The morning moves slowly. I process transactions and answer questions and chat with Melissa between customers.
I keep one eye on Travis’s office door because I’ve started tracking his patterns.
When does he check his phone? When does he step outside to make a call?
When does he get that distant look that means he’s thinking about something that isn’t work?
I’m learning him in a way I never did before.
When you trust someone, you don’t watch them.
You don’t analyze their movements or time their absences or listen for changes in their voice.
Trust makes you blind because that’s exactly what trust is supposed to do.
It’s supposed to free you from suspicion so you can focus on living.
But I’m not trusting anymore. I’m watching. And I’m seeing things I should have noticed months ago.
Travis checks his personal phone approximately every forty-five minutes.
He tilts the screen away from anyone who might be walking past. He smiles when he reads certain messages and then puts the phone face-down on his desk.
He steps out to the parking lot twice a day for "fresh air" and comes back with the look of someone who just finished a private conversation.
I see all of this now. I see it because I’m looking.
During my lunch break I call Kendra from my car.
"How are you holding up?" she asks.
"Fine. I’m fine."
"Kaitlyn, you don’t have to be fine with me."
"I know. But right now I need to be fine because if I let myself feel everything, I’ll walk into his office and throw his coffee in his lap."
"Honestly that doesn’t sound like the worst plan."
I almost laugh. "Has he texted you today?"
"Once. This morning. He asked if I was coming to the bank this Friday."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing. I didn’t respond."
"Good. Keep not responding but don’t block him. I know I keep saying that but it matters."
"I won’t block him. But Kait, how long are you going to keep this up? Watching him and pretending and not saying anything? It’s eating at you. I can hear it in your voice."
She’s right. It is eating at me. Not the anger.
The anger is manageable because anger has a direction.
What’s eating at me is the performance. The daily act of being a woman who doesn’t know she’s being betrayed.
It takes energy to pretend that well and I’m spending it faster than I can replenish it.
"A few more weeks," I say. "I need a few more weeks."
"For what?"
"The promotion. My interview is next Monday.
If I blow up my relationship right now, the drama will follow me into that interview room.
Linda knows Travis and I are together. Everyone does.
If I break up with him this week, by Monday every person in that building will be talking about it.
I need to walk into that interview with a clear head and a clean story. "
Kendra is quiet for a moment. "That’s smart. I hate that it’s smart, but it is."
"After the promotion is settled, I’ll deal with Travis. But I’m not going to let him ruin this for me on top of everything else."
"Okay. I’m with you. Whatever you need."
"I need you to keep being exactly who you are. That’s all."
We hang up and I sit in my car for five more minutes. The parking lot is mostly empty. A few customers come and go. A delivery truck pulls up behind the building. I watch a sparrow land on the sidewalk and peck at a crumb near the front door.
I think about what Travis has given me. Not the coffee and the compliments.
Those mean nothing now. I mean the real things.
The résumé he rewrote. The interview prep he ran with me for three evenings straight.
The professional connections he introduced me to when the regional supervisor visited last month.
He’s invested real time and real effort into my career and he did it because keeping me happy keeps me unsuspecting.
But the result is the same regardless of his motive. My résumé is better because of him. My interview skills are sharper because of him. My name is on the regional supervisor’s radar because of him. He gave me those things to serve his own agenda and I’m going to use every single one of them.
I go back inside and work through the afternoon. Travis catches me at my station around three and asks if I want to practice interview questions tonight.
"That would be great," I say. "Can you come over around seven?"
"I’ll bring dinner. Thai sound okay?"
"Thai sounds perfect."
He arrives at my apartment at seven with pad thai and spring rolls and a printed list of twenty potential interview questions.
We sit on my couch and he reads the questions one at a time while I answer them out loud.
He corrects my phrasing when I’m too modest. He pushes me to give specific examples instead of generalizations.
He tells me to slow down when I talk too fast and to make eye contact even when I’m nervous.
He’s good at this. That’s the infuriating part.
He’s genuinely good at coaching and encouraging and building someone up.
If he were a different man this would be an act of love.
He would be doing this because he believed in me and wanted to see me succeed.
And maybe some small part of him does believe in me.
But the larger part is just making sure the machinery of our relationship keeps running smoothly so he can continue doing what he’s actually doing behind my back.
"Let’s try the leadership question again," he says. "Tell me about a time you took initiative in the workplace."
I take a breath. "During the system transition last year, the new software created discrepancies in three customer accounts. I identified the errors before anyone else caught them, corrected the balances, and documented the issue so it could be reported to the vendor. I didn’t wait for Linda to assign it.
I just handled it because the customers deserved accurate records. "
"Perfect. That’s exactly what they want to hear. Real example, clear action, good outcome." He nods approvingly. "You’re going to crush this interview, Kaitlyn."
"You think so?"
"I know so. And listen, I put in a word with Linda today. I told her I thought you’d be an excellent fit for the role."
"Travis, you didn’t have to do that."
"I wanted to. You deserve this and I want everyone else to see what I see."
I look at him sitting on my couch with his sleeves rolled up and the remnants of pad thai on the coffee table and his list of interview questions in his hand. He looks like the perfect boyfriend. He looks like a man who loves his partner and supports her ambitions and shows up when it matters.
He looks like someone I would have trusted with my whole life if Kendra hadn’t shown me the truth.
"Thank you," I say. "Really."
He smiles and reaches for my hand. I let him take it. I let him hold it. I let him think this is real because right now I need it to be real for just a little while longer. Not for him. For me.
We practice three more questions. He gives me notes on my posture and my tone and my tendency to qualify everything with "I think" instead of just stating what I know. By nine o’clock I feel more prepared than I’ve ever felt for anything.
He kisses me goodnight at the door. I close it behind him and stand in the hallway with my back against the wall.
The taste of his mouth is on my lips and I want to scrub it off but I don’t.
I stand there and I let it settle because I need to remember this feeling.
This specific combination of revulsion and resolve and grief.
I need to remember it because it’s going to keep me focused.
The rest of the week passes in the same careful rhythm.
Every morning I go to work and I’m professional and pleasant and exactly who everyone expects me to be.
Every afternoon Travis stops by my station or sends me a text or brings me coffee.
Every evening I go home and I practice interview questions alone in my living room and I call Kendra and we talk about nothing and everything and she asks me if I’m okay and I tell her I am.
On Thursday night I sit at my kitchen table and write down everything Travis has unknowingly given me during this relationship. Not gifts. Not jewelry or dinners or vacations. Practical things. Career things.
He rewrote my résumé. He coached my interview technique.
He introduced me to Sarah Brennan, the regional operations supervisor, during her branch visit.
He recommended three books on leadership that I actually read and that actually helped.
He shared insights about how Linda evaluates candidates.
He told me which questions she asked during his own interview for assistant branch manager.
Every single one of these advantages came to me because Travis wanted to keep me comfortable and content and oblivious. He invested in my success as a way of investing in his cover. And now that I know what he is, I can see clearly that the best thing he ever did for me was underestimate me.
He thought I was too kind to be strategic. Too loyal to be calculating. Too trusting to be smart.
He was wrong about all of it.
Friday comes and Kendra walks into the bank at her usual time. She hands me the school deposit envelope and we exchange a look that says everything without either of us opening our mouths. Travis is in his office. He doesn’t come out to greet her this time, which tells me he’s texting her instead.
"Friday night plans?" she asks casually, loud enough for Melissa to hear.
"Travis is cooking dinner at his place. Something about a new recipe he found."
"Sounds nice. Have fun."
She leaves and I watch her go. My best friend is carrying a secret that she never asked for and she’s carrying it with grace because that’s who Kendra Jones is.
She could have told me sooner. She could have waited longer.
She could have blocked Travis and pretended nothing happened and hoped it would go away.
Instead she gathered evidence and sat me down and told me the truth, knowing it would hurt me and knowing I might blame her and knowing that our friendship might not survive it.
But she told me anyway. Because she loves me more than she fears losing me.
The interview is on Monday. Three days from now. I’m ready. I’m more ready than I’ve ever been for anything in my life. And when I walk into that room and I sit down across from Linda Carpenter and she asks me why I deserve this position, I’m going to tell her the truth.
I deserve it because I’ve earned it. Every early morning. Every perfect drawer count. Every difficult customer I handled with patience. Every new hire I trained. Every problem I solved without being asked.
I deserve it because I’m good at this job.
And the man who helped me see that clearly will never know that his coaching sessions were the last useful thing he ever gave me.
I drive home Friday night. Travis calls at eight to tell me he’s running late for dinner because something came up at the bank. I tell him it’s fine and I’ll see him when he gets there. I hang up and check the time stamp on Kendra’s last received text from him.
Seven forty-seven p.m.
Thirteen minutes before he called me with his excuse.
I set my phone down and I start getting dressed for dinner. The last dinner I’ll eat at his table while pretending everything is fine. The last weekend I’ll spend playing this role.
I look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I look tired. But underneath the tiredness I look focused. I look clear. I look like a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing and why.
Monday is coming. The promotion comes first. Then the reckoning.
I just have to hold on a little longer.