2. Anika
— ? —
Anika
Sleep wasn’t happening.
I’d tried everything. The silk eye mask, the weighted blanket, the meditation app with the British woman telling me to imagine a peaceful beach.
Nothing worked. My brain kept replaying the evening in a loop.
His hands on my skin, his laugh against my throat, the way his whole body changed when Giovani whispered those words.
At two-thirty, I gave up and went to my studio.
Painting at night usually helped. The darkness outside the windows made me feel contained, focused, like the world had shrunk to just me and the canvas. Tonight, though, I just stared at my brushes and tried to remember the last time I’d finished anything I was proud of.
What do you want this show to be about?
Anwesha had asked me that on the phone. I’d stammered something about emotion, about capturing moments people couldn’t photograph. She’d made a thoughtful humming sound and said, “Dig deeper, darling. I want your guts on the walls.”
I didn’t know what my guts looked like. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
The soft beep of the front door made me freeze.
He came home.
I set down my brush and headed downstairs, already composing the speech in my head. You said you’ll be home before I sleep but I’m glad you’re back. I understand work is important. But tonight was supposed to be ours…
I heard the laugh first.
Neil’s laugh. Warm, easy, the one he used at galas and board meetings when he wanted people to feel like they were in on the joke.
And then a voice. Female.
“I couldn’t believe it when Mateo said you needed someone immediately. I thought he was joking.”
“Mateo never jokes about business.”
I stopped at the top of the stairs. My husband stood in the entryway below, still in his dinner jacket, looking rumpled and alive in a way that made my chest ache. Beside him was a woman I’d never seen before.
She was beautiful. Tall and willowy, dark hair spilling over her shoulders in waves that looked effortless but probably took an hour to achieve.
She was wearing something silky that caught the light when she moved, and she had her hand on Neil’s arm.
She was looking up at him with obvious adoration.
I made some noise. I don’t know what. They both looked up.
“Anika.” Neil’s face broke into a smile, a real one. “You’re still awake.”
“It’s three in the morning. I was waiting for you.”
“I’m sorry, we got caught up.” He gestured toward the woman. “This is Karina. Mateo’s sister. She’s going to be my new secretary.”
The woman named Karina offered me a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Mrs. Franco. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Have you?”
“Neil never stops talking about you. It’s honestly exhausting.” She laughed, a tinkling sound that grated against my nerves. “I’m so sorry to impose like this. I just flew in this afternoon, and the apartment Neil arranged isn’t ready yet.”
“She’s staying in the guest room,” Neil said, already heading for the stairs.
He moved past me with a brush of his hand against my hip, casual, proprietary.
“Just for tonight. Her flight was delayed, the timing got all messed up. I would have booked her a hotel, but she has anxiety about being alone in new places. Hotels make it worse.”
He said it like he was reading from a script. Like he’d been told what to say and hadn’t thought to question it.
I watched Karina kick off her heels like she lived here. Like she’d been here before, even though I knew she hadn’t. There was something too comfortable about the way she moved through my home, something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“Why didn’t you just… call ahead? Let me know you were bringing someone home?”
“It all happened so fast. Mateo called about the position while I was dealing with the Sundream thing, and Karina was already on a flight…” Neil ran a hand through his hair, looking genuinely exhausted. “I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”
You didn’t think. That’s the problem.
But I didn’t say it. The night was already ruined. Starting a fight at three in the morning wouldn’t fix anything.
“Of course,” I heard myself say. “The guest room is the second door on the left. Fresh towels in the bathroom.”
“You’re an angel.” Karina squeezed my arm as she passed. Her perfume was expensive. Jasmine and something that made me think of midnight and bad decisions. “We’ll get out of your hair first thing tomorrow.”
She disappeared down the hall. Neil started up the stairs toward me, reaching for my hand.
“Thank you for being understanding,” he said. “I know tonight didn’t go how we planned.”
“No. It didn’t.”
“I’ll make it up to you. The whole weekend. We’ll redo it. Whatever you want.”
Whatever I want. The words sat heavy on my tongue. What I wanted was for him to see it. To understand why my stomach was churning and my hands were clenched at my sides. To ask, just once, how I was feeling instead of telling me how I should feel.
But his eyes were already distant. I could see him running through tomorrow’s schedule in his head, calculating, prioritizing, slotting me in somewhere between conference calls.
“Go to bed,” I said. “It’s late.”
He kissed my forehead. There it was again, that brief, distracted kiss. Then he headed for our bedroom. I stayed on the stairs for a long time, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of a stranger settling into my home.
Morning came too early.
I’d managed maybe three hours of sleep, and my head was pounding when I walked into the kitchen to find the table already set. Andrés, our private chef, was flipping something at the stove. The smell of bacon and fresh coffee filled the air.
Neil was at the head of the table, looking unfairly refreshed in a navy sweater and slacks. He was scrolling through his phone while he ate, his brow furrowed in concentration, completely absorbed in whatever crisis was unfolding on that screen. And across from him…
My feet stopped moving.
Karina was wearing a chemise. There was no robe over the chemise.
Not even a sweater thrown over pajamas. Just the chemise.
Pale pink silk that skimmed her thighs and left absolutely nothing to the imagination.
The fabric was thin enough that I could see the outline of her nipples, and she was leaning forward on her elbows in a way that made everything worse.
“Good morning!” She beamed at me. “I hope you don’t mind. Andrés made enough for everyone. This frittata is incredible.”
I poured myself a coffee, my eyes not leaving her, hoping she’d take the hint.
“Sit down,” Neil said, barely glancing up from his phone. “Andrés made your favorite.”
I sat. Karina was in my usual chair. The one that faced the windows, the one I’d sat in every morning for years. She didn’t offer to move, and I wasn’t going to ask.
“So Neil tells me you’re an artist,” Karina said, spearing a piece of melon with her fork. “That’s so interesting. I could never be creative like that. I’m all numbers and spreadsheets.”
“Mmm.”
“What do you paint? Like landscapes? Portraits?”
“Depends on how I feel.”
“Oh, how fun!” She turned to Neil, touching his arm. Her fingers lingered there, tracing small circles against his sweater. “Do you remember when Mateo and I tried to take that painting class in college? You came to pick us up and we were both covered in blue paint?”
Neil laughed. That social laugh again, easy and warm. “You got it in your hair. Took three showers to get it out. You were like the Smurf siblings.”
“Four! And Mateo was no help at all, he just kept taking pictures.” She turned back to me, still touching him. Her hand had migrated from his arm to his shoulder now. “We’ve known each other forever. Neil’s practically my second brother.”
“How nice.”
Something in my voice must have landed, because Neil finally looked up from his phone. His eyes moved between us. Me in my robe and yesterday’s smudged mascara. Karina in her silk nothing with her hand on his shoulder, her hair tumbling artfully around her face.
He didn’t react. Didn’t move away from her touch. Just took another bite of frittata.
“So what’s on the agenda today?” Karina asked brightly. “I have a few hours before my apartment’s ready. I was hoping you could show me around the office, get me oriented.”
“Of course.” Neil checked his watch. “We should leave in about twenty minutes. Anika, you good?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t forget you have that call with Anwesha at noon.”
He’d remembered. Or more likely, he’d seen it on the shared calendar and filed it away. Either way, he knew the time. He just didn’t know what it was about, what it meant to me, why my hands shook every time I thought about thirty canvases waiting to be displayed.
“I won’t forget.”
“Great.” He pushed back from the table, already reaching for his phone again. “I’ll be in the office if you need me.”
He left. Karina stayed.
She looked at me across the table. The bubbly warmth was gone from her expression, replaced by something that made me think of a cat studying a mouse.
“It was lovely meeting you,” she said. “I’m sure we’re going to be great friends.”
Then she stood, stretched, and walked past me to the guest room. The silk of her chemise whispered against her thighs, and I caught another wave of that expensive perfume.
I sat alone at my kitchen table, holding my coffee, watching the empty doorway where my husband had been.
Great friends, I thought. Sure.
The housekeeper arrived at nine. I had the whole triplex to myself, three floors of glass and steel and someone else’s decorating choices, and I couldn’t settle anywhere.
I tried my studio. Picked up a brush, then put it down. The blank canvas seemed to mock me.
I thought about Karina’s hand on Neil’s arm. The inside jokes I wasn’t part of. The way he’d laughed with her. Easy and present in a way he hadn’t been with me in months.
When did that start?
I couldn’t pinpoint it. The pulling away had been so gradual, so gentle, that I hadn’t noticed until I was already far from shore. It was like drowning in slow motion. By the time you realized you couldn’t touch the bottom anymore, you’d forgotten what the bottom felt like.
The housekeeper was running the vacuum somewhere below. I sat in my empty studio, surrounded by brushes I couldn’t use and canvases I couldn’t fill, and tried to remember the last time my husband had looked at me the way he’d looked at his phone.