3. Eliza
— ? —
Eliza
The trip evaporated midweek.
I found out from a text message. Not from Gordon, of course not from Gordon, but from his assistant’s assistant, some twenty-two-year-old named Mia or Maya or something, apologizing for “the schedule change” and asking if I wanted the hotel deposit refunded to my card or his.
I didn’t even know there was a hotel. I didn’t know he’d actually booked something.
He mentioned Bali that night in the bedroom, mentioned clearing his schedule, mentioned making it happen.
And apparently, he actually tried. He found a resort and put down a deposit. For one brief moment, he did something.
Then Sloane moved it.
The text was professional and bloodless: Due to unavoidable scheduling conflicts, Mr. Bryce’s travel plans have been adjusted. Please advise on refund preferences.
I stared at that message for a long time, sitting at the kitchen island with my coffee going cold, reading those words over and over like they might rearrange themselves into something that made sense. Due to unavoidable conflicts. Travel plans adjusted. Please advise.
Like I was a vendor. Like I was a scheduling conflict to be managed.
I thought about calling Gordon. I thought about driving to his office and demanding an explanation. I thought about screaming at him until he understood what it felt like to be erased from his life one calendar adjustment at a time.
Instead, I texted back his card and put my phone down and went upstairs and took a shower and cried where nobody could hear me.
That was Tuesday.
Today is Friday, our anniversary, and I’m standing outside Gordon’s office building at 8:15 p.m., wearing the midnight-blue dress he used to love, the one that makes my eyes look darker.
I baked a cake this morning, his aunt’s chocolate layer recipe, the one he used to request for every birthday.
It’s sitting on the kitchen counter at home, waiting for a celebration that probably isn’t going to happen.
But I called in a favor and got us a table at the restaurant where we had our first anniversary dinner, ten years ago when we were still broke and stupid and happy.
If I can’t have the trip, I can at least have the night.
I can at least make him sit across from me and look at my face and remember that he has a wife.
The lobby is all glass and marble, soaring ceilings and abstract art and aggressive minimalism.
I’ve been here before, a handful of times over the years, but I still feel out of place every time I walk through the doors.
Too small, too soft, too ordinary for a building that cost more than my entire hometown.
The woman at the front desk looks up as I approach. She’s polished in a way I’ll never be: perfect hair, perfect makeup, a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Gordon Bryce.”
She glances at her tablet. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I’m his wife.”
Her expression shifts, skepticism or maybe pity, and I feel my cheeks flush with humiliation. She doesn’t believe me. Or worse, she does believe me and feels sorry for me, the sad little wife showing up unannounced to beg for scraps of her husband’s attention.
“Let me call up,” she says, her voice carefully neutral.
She makes the call, and I wait. The lobby is busy this time of evening, people in expensive suits rushing past, talking on phones, looking important. Nobody looks at me. I’m invisible here, just like I’m invisible everywhere else in Gordon’s life.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bryce.” The receptionist sets down the phone, her expression apologetic but firm. “Mr. Bryce is in a meeting and can’t be disturbed. If you’d like to leave a message-”
“I’ll wait.”
She hesitates, clearly not thrilled with this answer, but she doesn’t argue. She just gestures toward a seating area by the windows and goes back to her computer.
I sit down on a leather chair that probably costs more than a month’s rent in our old apartment, and I wait.
I check my phone and smooth the fabric of my dress.
I tell myself this is fine, this is normal, couples do this all the time.
You show up at your husband’s office to surprise him for your anniversary.
You wait in the lobby for a few minutes. It’s romantic. It’s sweet.
It doesn’t feel romantic. It feels desperate.
I think about our first anniversary while I wait, because it’s better than thinking about this one.
We had forty-three dollars between us after rent, and we spent thirty-eight of them at that restaurant, splitting one entrée and drinking tap water and stealing bites off each other’s fork anyway, out of habit.
When the tiramisu came out for the table next to us, Gordon asked the waiter, dead serious, if there was a version of it for five dollars, and the waiter brought us one slice with two spoons and never put it on the bill.
We laughed the whole way home. We laughed about everything back then.
The minutes tick by. I watch the elevator bank, waiting for those silver doors to open and Gordon to walk through them.
Fifteen minutes pass, then twenty, then thirty.
The lobby starts to empty as people head home for the night.
The receptionist glances at me occasionally, her expression somewhere between sympathy and secondhand embarrassment.
I’m about to give up, to accept that this was a stupid idea, that I should just go home and eat the cake by myself, when the elevator finally opens.
Gordon walks out.
My heart lurches at the sight of him. He’s surrounded by people in expensive suits, laughing at something someone said, his whole face animated in a way I haven’t seen at home in months. He looks energized, engaged, alive.
And next to him, her hand resting on his arm in a gesture of easy familiarity, is Sloane.
She’s striking in a way that makes me feel small: red hair, sharp features, a body that moves like she owns every room she walks into. She’s Gordon’s publicist, his right hand, the person who manages his image and his calendar and, apparently, his marriage.
She sees me before he does.
Our eyes meet across the lobby. I watch recognition flicker across her face. She knows who I am, she knows exactly who I am, and I wait for her to say something. To tap Gordon’s shoulder. To point me out.
She doesn’t.
Instead, she leans closer to him, says something that makes him smile, and steers him toward the exit. Her hand tightens on his arm. Her body angles between us, a deliberate shield.
He doesn’t look back.
“Gordon!”
My voice comes out louder than I intended, echoing off the marble floors. The whole lobby turns to look at me, the receptionist, the security guard, the stragglers heading for the doors.
Gordon stops and turns. His eyes find me, and for a second, I see it: a flash of guilt, bright and unmistakable.
Then it’s gone.
“Liz, hey.” He crosses to me, but he doesn’t touch me, doesn’t kiss me. He just stands there with his hands in his pockets, looking at me like I’m a problem that’s appeared on his schedule without warning. “What are you doing here?”
“Our anniversary dinner. You were supposed to be done an hour ago.”
His face runs through emotions I can read too easily: guilt, confusion, the dawning horror of someone realizing they’ve fucked up badly. He’s trying to remember, and he can’t, and the fact that he can’t makes something inside me go very cold.
“Shit.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Shit, I’m sorry, the meeting ran long, and I completely - look, can we reschedule? I’ve got this dinner tonight that I can’t miss.”
“Reschedule our anniversary.”
“I know how it sounds-”
“Do you?”
“-but this is huge, Liz. This could be the difference between this whole thing going off perfectly and everything we built falling apart. I can’t just bail on-”
“On our marriage? No, of course not. You’d never bail on our marriage. You’d just forget it exists entirely.”
His jaw tightens. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?”
We stare at each other. Around us, people are watching, trying to pretend they’re not. I can feel their eyes on me, curious and pitying, and I want to sink through the floor.
“It’s fine,” I hear myself say. The words come from somewhere cold and dead, somewhere that stopped caring about fairness a long time ago. “Go to your dinner.”
“Liz-”
“I said it’s fine. I’ll see you at home.”
He looks at me, searching my face for something. Forgiveness, maybe. Or permission. I don’t give him either.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he says finally. “I swear. I’ll call you tonight, okay? We’ll figure something out.”
He kisses my cheek, a nothing kiss, a habit.
Then he turns and walks toward the doors, where Sloane is waiting with her phone in her hand and an expression I can’t read.
I watch him go.
The worst part isn’t that he forgot our anniversary. The worst part isn’t the humiliation of standing in this lobby in my best dress, being pitied by strangers.
The worst part is his face when he sees Sloane waiting for him.
He looks relieved to be walking away from me.
The doors close behind them. I’m left alone in the lobby, surrounded by marble and glass and the cold silence of a building that has no use for me.
The receptionist is watching me. I can feel her eyes on my back, full of that awful sympathetic pity.
I don’t cry and I don’t scream. I just turn around and walk out of the building, my heels clicking against the floor with every step.
My car is in the parking structure across the street. I make it all the way there before I let myself stop, leaning against the driver’s side door, pressing my palms against the cold metal, trying to breathe.
I’m still standing there, trying to pull myself together, when I hear a car engine start nearby. I look up just in time to see Gordon’s black sedan pulling out of a reserved spot on the other side of the structure.
Sloane is in the passenger seat.
She’s laughing, her head thrown back, one hand touching his arm the way it always seems to be touching his arm. Gordon is smiling too, his face relaxed, looking more at ease than I’ve seen him in weeks.
He drives right past me.
He doesn’t look back.
I stand there for a long time after his taillights disappear, watching the empty space where his car used to be, and somewhere in those minutes I stop waiting for him to turn around.
Then I get in my car and I drive home.
The drive takes forty minutes, up into the Hollywood Hills, past the gates and the hedges and the houses where nobody’s ever standing in the windows.
I don’t turn on the radio. I don’t call Gabriella, even though my thumb hovers over her name at every red light.
If I hear her voice I’ll start crying, and if I start crying I’ll stop being angry, and I need the anger tonight.
The anger is the only thing keeping me upright.
The house is dark when I walk in. The cake is still sitting on the kitchen counter where I left it, covered in plastic wrap.
I step out of my heels at the door and leave them there on the mat, side by side, and I walk into my kitchen barefoot.
I don’t turn on the lights.
I sit down at the kitchen island, in the dark, in my midnight-blue dress, and I wait. The cake sits beside me, untouched.
The clock on the microwave ticks past midnight, past one, past two, past three.
I don’t move, I don’t eat, I don’t cry.
I just sit there, in the dark, thinking about what I’m going to say when he finally walks through that door. Thinking about whether there’s anything left to say at all.
At 4:07 a.m., headlights sweep across the kitchen windows.
The garage door rumbles open, the alarm system beeps, and then there are footsteps in the hallway, heavy and hesitant.
He’s home.