Chapter 6
DOMINIC
Dominic had never been to Kate’s building.
He'd never had reason to, Charlotte's friendship with Kate existed in a separate compartment of her life, one he'd never tried to enter.
He hadn't known the address until twenty minutes ago, when he'd called in a favor with a contact who had access to things like addresses.
He stood on the sidewalk in his wedding suit, tie loosened, looking up at the third-floor windows. One of them had a light on. He checked his phone. Still nothing from Charlotte. Fourteen calls, nine texts, all unanswered. It had been six hours since the ceremony.
He climbed the stairs. The stairwell was narrow enough that his shoulders nearly brushed both walls.
The fluorescent bulb on the second-floor landing was out, and the carpet was worn through to the backing in places.
Charlotte's world. The world she'd lived in before he'd appeared with his rooftop bars, town cars and his family's money.
He'd never thought about this world. It had existed for him only as a backdrop: the "before" in the story of them, the humble origin that made Charlotte charming and relatable at dinners.
He knocked on the door of 3B.
Footsteps. A pause. Someone looking through the peephole. Then Kate's voice, flat and hard through the door.
"Go away, Dominic."
"I need to see her."
"She doesn't want to see you."
"Kate. Please. Five minutes."
A snort. “Like there's a version of this where five minutes fixes what you did."
He pressed his palm against the doorframe. "I understand she's upset—"
"She's not upset. Upset is when you forget an anniversary. Upset is when you leave the toilet seat up. What Charlotte is right now doesn't have a word."
"Just let me talk to her. If she hears me out—"
The door opened. Six inches, the chain still on. Kate's face appeared in the gap. She was still in her maid-of-honor dress, dark hair pulled back, eyes red-rimmed but dry. She glared at him.
"She's asleep," Kate said. "She cried for four hours and then she fell asleep on my couch holding a stuffed frog. Do you want to know what that looked like? Do you want me to describe it to you?"
Guilt simmered in his chest. He ignored it.
“I’ll wait. I need to explain."
"Explain what?" Kate's voice was low, controlled.
Dangerous in a way he hadn't expected from her.
He'd always thought of Kate as Charlotte's sharp-tongued sidekick: funny, protective, harmless.
"Explain how you said another woman’s name while your fiancée was standing there with her vows in her hand?
Vows she wrote. She cried while she wrote them. Did you know that?"
"I know."
"Do you? Because you stood there, heard those words and then you said Jacqueline."
"I want to see Charlotte," he repeated.
"No. And do you want to know something? She changed everything for you.
She changed her clothes, her schedule, her weekends.
She stopped seeing friends because your events were always on the same nights.
She learned which fork was for salad. She practiced.
She sat in my kitchen with a YouTube video and practiced which fork to use so she wouldn't embarrass you at your mother's dinner party.
And she never told you because she didn't want you to think she didn't belong. "
He opened his mouth. Kate held up a hand.
"She rearranged her entire life to fit into yours, and you couldn't even remember her name when it mattered."
The door closed. He heard the deadbolt turn. Then the chain slide into place. Then nothing.
He stood in the hallway. He knew he should leave. Kate wasn't going to open the door again. He should go home, regroup, come back tomorrow with a plan.
He knocked again.
"Dominic."
Not Kate's voice. Charlotte's.
The door opened. She was wearing a sweatshirt that was too big for her — Kate's, he guessed — and bare feet, her hair down. All those brown curls loose, tangled and falling past her shoulders. The elaborate updo undone. Her face was swollen. Her brown eyes were red and glassy. His chest tightened.
"Charlotte. Please let me —“
“Who is Jacqueline?"
He hadn’t expected that. At least, not yet. But the question landed between them. Direct, unavoidable. Charlotte’s eyes were locked on his through the six-inch gap, and there was nowhere to look except back at her.
"She's someone I used to know. It's over. It's been over for years."
"Then why was her name in your mouth?"
He didn't have an answer. Not one that would work here, in this hallway, with Charlotte looking at him with heartbreak in her eyes. Like she could see through every layer of strategy and self-preservation to the hollow space underneath. He was used to being looked at with admiration, with deference, with the automatic respect that money and a good surname purchased. From her, he was used to her looking at him like he was the air she breathed. He’d taken that look for granted.
"She's an ex — someone I dated years ago. It's been over for a long time."
Charlotte studied him. Her expression was unreadable.
"When you proposed to me," she said slowly. “Were you in love with me?"
"Charlotte—"
"Answer the question."
"Of course I was."
She didn't react. Didn't flinch, didn't soften, didn't break.
She just looked at him, and he realized that she didn't believe him. He wasn’t certain he was telling the truth himself.
She could see right through him, and the worst part — the part that made his hands start to shake inside his pockets — was that she wasn't even surprised by what she was seeing.
"What's my favorite color?" she asked.
He blinked. "What?"
"My favorite color. What is it?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. His mind raced through dinners, conversations, the apartment they'd shared for two months. Her side of the closet, her things in the bathroom, the throw pillows she'd picked for the couch. Had she told him? She must have told him. He must have heard it at some point.
Nothing.
"What about my favorite memory from growing up?" she said. "I told you that one. On our third date. I told you about the summer my dad drove us to Lake George in a car with no air conditioning and we ate gas station sandwiches and swam until dark. Do you remember that?"
He remembered the third date. He remembered the restaurant — Italian, his choice — the wine, and the way she'd looked in candlelight with her curls pinned up and her eyes shining.
He remembered thinking: She presents well.
He did not remember Lake George. He did not remember gas station sandwiches.
He'd been checking his phone under the table when she told him.
"I remember the date," he said.
"But not the story."
Silence.
Charlotte crossed her arms. Holding herself together.
"What about my students? I talk about them all the time.
I know I do, because Kate tells me I do it too much.
So tell me: what's the name of the boy who draws dragons during math?
The one I've been worried about all year because his mom is sick? "
He didn't know. He'd heard her talk about her students.
He knew that much, knew the sound of her voice when she talked about them, animated and warm, the most alive version of herself.
But the names, the details, the boy with the dragons and the sick mother — those had been background noise.
Nice background noise. It made her seem caring, grounded and good. But background noise all the same.
Charlotte watched him search for an answer he didn't have. She closed her eyes.
"You don't know," she said. "You don't know any of it.
Six months, and you don't know my favorite color, or my favorite memory, or the names of the kids I spend every day with.
You don't know that I hate olives, that I'm scared of elevators or that I sleep with a light on because I had nightmares as a kid.
" Her voice was even. Measured. Terrifying. "You don't know me. You never tried."
"That's not true. I—"
"What color are my eyes?"
"Brown," he said. Fast. Certain. "They're brown."
"Everyone knows that. You can see that from across a room. I'm not asking what you can see. I'm asking what you know."
Dominic opened his mouth and nothing came out. Charlotte didn't look triumphant or vindictive. She looked tired. Bone-deep tired. The tiredness of a woman who'd been performing for an audience of one and just realized the seat was empty.
"You didn't choose me,” she said. Her voice was low, the words delivered without heat. A fact. An observation. The conclusion of the math she'd been doing since the altar.
She stepped back to close the door.
"Charlotte, wait, please—"
She turned in the doorway. Kate was behind her, visible over her shoulder, arms crossed, standing guard.
"Go home, Dominic." Charlotte's hand was on the door. Her knuckles were white. "There's nothing to fix. You can't fix something that was never built."
The door closed. The deadbolt turned. The chain slid.
He stood on the third-floor landing, listened to the nothing that followed and waited for the door to open again, because it would open again.
It had to. Charlotte loved him — she'd said so, in front of everyone, in vows she'd written by hand — and love like that didn't just evaporate.
She was angry now, and hurt. She had every right to be.
But she'd cool down. She'd remember what they had.
She'd think about the rooftop, the peonies and the way he'd caught her drink.
She'd call him, and he'd explain, and they'd start over.
She'd call.
He adjusted his tie. A reflex. The tie was already ruined, loosened, pulled at and creased beyond repair. But his hands went to it anyway, because that was what he did when things were falling apart. He straightened what he could reach.
Dominic walked down the stairs and out into the night. Astoria was loud. Music from a bar, someone laughing on a fire escape, a car alarm bleating two blocks away. He stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the third-floor window. The light was still on. He couldn't see anyone.
His hands were shaking. He shoved them into his pockets and told himself it was the cold, even though it wasn't cold. He told himself again that she'd call, this was fixable, even though the look on her face — that devastating, disassembling calm — had said everything her words hadn't.
She wasn't angry. She wasn't heartbroken. She was done.
He'd never seen her like that. He had never once seen Charlotte look at him without warmth. The warmth was gone. Dominic understood dimly, distantly, in a place he wasn't yet ready to access, that warmth like Charlotte's didn't come back once you'd killed it.