2. Oliver
— ? —
Oliver
I’ve been staring at the same slide for six minutes. The numbers haven’t changed but my ability to focus on them has.
My pen taps the edge of the table. I stop it and it starts again.
The image keeps returning. In flashes, sliding in between the data points and the projections, lodging itself in the back of my skull where I can’t reach it to pull it out.
Eloise in my shirt. My shirt.
The navy one, the one she thinks I don’t know she wears, and I do know, I’ve known for months, and I have never said a word because the moment I saw her in it, padding barefoot through the kitchen with the hem at mid-thigh and the collar falling open against her neck, a door opened in my chest that I have not been able to close since.
It’s mine. The shirt is mine and she’s wearing it and there is no rational reason why that fact should affect me the way it does.
But it does. Every time.
I’ve started leaving them out, the navy one, the gray one, draped over the chair or left on the bathroom floor where she’ll find them, and I’ve never once told her because telling her would mean explaining why, and the why lives in a part of me I haven’t mapped yet.
All I know is that the sight of my wife in my clothes undoes me in a way no quarterly report has ever managed.
Six days later I can still see it. Her fingers on my tie, the knot pulling through, the silk tightening.
Her knuckles brushing my collar, and the way my jaw locked on instinct because her hands were warm and so close that I could smell her shampoo.
For a moment, the only thought in my head was the distance between her fingers and my skin.
My pen taps again. I flatten my hand over it and press it still.
“…and if we’re looking at the adjusted margins going into next quarter…”
I blink. Shift in my seat, crossing one leg over the other, and force my eyes to the screen as I try to hold them there, trying to follow the numbers moving across the projection the way I’ve followed numbers my entire career.
Easily, instinctively, the way breathing works when you’re not thinking about it.
My foot is also tapping under the table but I stop it.
Oliver Ellington does not fidget in meetings, does not check his watch mid-presentation, does not sit in a room full of senior analysts counting the hours until he’s home with the wife he left standing barefoot in his foyer wearing nothing but his shirt.
I check my watch. 1:47.
The pen finds my fingers again and I let it.
Because the other thing my hand remembers is worse.
The forehead kiss. My mouth on her skin, the way she closed her eyes, the stillness in her body that I read as tolerance and keep coming back to, wondering if it was patience instead.
Wondering what would have happened if I’d moved lower… Jaw, cheek, mouth. The thought is new and persistent, and I don’t think I know what to do with it.
“Oliver?”
Rutherfield is looking at me. The entire room is looking at me.
How long has he been talking? I adjust my cuffs and meet his eyes.
“The adjusted timeline,” he says. “Do you want to push Q3 implementation to September or hold at August?”
“August. Hold the original date.” My voice comes out level because level is the only setting I own. “Send the revised deck to my office. I’ll review it on the flight.”
I stand before Rutherfield has finished nodding. The chair pushes back and I’m buttoning my jacket and crossing the room in the same motion. Behind me, I can hear Seth scrambling, the leather portfolio hitting the table, his chair scraping as he tries to match my pace.
“Mr. Ellington, sir, I have the updated briefs for the call and your father’s office sent over the Dorian dinner confirm…”
Seth is twenty-four, efficient, and permanently half a step behind me because I walk the way I think, fast and without warning turns. His footsteps quicken to keep up as we move down the corridor toward the elevators.
“Send the briefs to my email. Confirm the dinner. Move the call to Thursday.”
“Thursday you have the board prep at nine and the…”
“Then move the board prep. I’ll be home by then.”
“Sir, you’re not scheduled back until Fri…”
“Thursday, Seth.” I don’t raise my voice but I turn my head just enough to look at him, and whatever he sees in my expression stops the rest of the sentence in his throat.
He swallows. “Yes, sir. The car is already downstairs. Your bags are loaded.”
“Good.”
That was the arrangement. Bags packed, car waiting, schedule compressed, everything pointing toward the 3 p.m. flight that didn’t exist until I created it two days ago by pushing every remaining meeting into a single morning.
My team handled this with the careful silence they reserve for decisions they don’t understand.
I don’t understand it either. I was supposed to fly back Friday. It’s Wednesday. And the pull toward home has been building since the second morning I woke up in a hotel room that didn’t smell of the familiar scent ingrained in my mind now.
The car moves through traffic toward the airport.
Seth is beside me, typing into his phone, rebuilding the schedule I just dismantled. I watch the city pass the window and open my phone to text Eloise, then close it. Then open it again.
I’ve done this four times since leaving the office.
Texting is not a skill I’ve developed. My inbox is contracts, briefs, confirmations. Functional communication with a clear purpose and an expected response. I’ve never had anyone to text outside of business, and three years of marriage hasn’t changed that because what would I say?
That the meetings went long? That the hotel coffee was adequate? That I’ve been carrying the image of her in my doorway for six days and it’s starting to interfere with my ability to run a company?
She doesn’t want to hear about projections and adjusted timelines. She gets enough of that at the dinner table. And the things I can’t say, the things that live in the part of me I haven’t figured out, don’t translate into words on a screen. They barely translate into thoughts.
I type and delete. My thumb hovers, then commits.
: Landing early. Home for dinner.
Five words. The most reasonable version of every unreasonable thing I wanted to say.
Her reply comes in under a minute.
Eloise (Wife): Oh! Great. I’ll let Edna know. Lamb or the sea bass?
The question sits on my screen longer than it warrants because I’ve never had a preference. Three years of dinners and she’s asked every time, and I’ve never found myself minding the answer. Just the company.
: Either is fine. Your call.
I pocket the phone as the car pulls to the curb.
The airport is busy for a Wednesday. Seth handles check-in while I move through security, and by the time he catches up with the boarding passes, I’m already walking the terminal concourse toward the gate in long strides with the pace I use when my body has decided on a destination before my brain has approved it.
And then I stop.
Seth doesn’t get the memo. He walks directly into my back, the portfolio hitting my shoulder blade, and stumbles sideways with a sound that is half apology and half alarm.
“Sir, I’m so sorry, I…”
I’m not listening because I’m looking at the shop window to my right. One of the high-end jewelers that line every terminal I’ve ever walked through, which I’ve passed a thousand times without turning my head because there’s never been a reason to.
The display is minimal. Black velvet, warm lighting. And in the center, a pendant on a thin gold chain. A small gardenia, petals carved in mother-of-pearl, delicate enough to look real from a distance.
Gardenias which she keeps in every room.
The kitchen counter, the hallway table, the nightstand on her side.
I never asked why, never commented, but I’ve learned the scent the way I’ve learned everything about her, by proximity and silence.
I could identify it in a dark room. I have identified it in a dark room, lying in bed beside her, breathing it in off of her hair without her knowing.
The gold catches the overhead light and I am standing in the middle of an airport terminal, briefcase in hand, gate twenty minutes away, and it’s the first time that one of these windows has stopped me.
Because I’m thinking about the chain against her neck.
How it would sit in the hollow of her throat, right where the collar of my shirt fell open against her skin. How her fingers would find it the way they find the collar of my shirts when she wears them, tracing the edge absently, a habit she doesn’t know she has and I’ve never told her I watch for.
“Sir?” Seth’s voice, cautious now. “The gate is…”
“Give me two minutes.”
I walk in. The woman behind the counter looks up and I point at the window display.
“The gardenia pendant. The gold one.”
She wraps it in tissue paper and places it in a small velvet box. I hand over my card and pocket it before I can change my mind, and the entire transaction takes less than three minutes, and I have no explanation for any of it.
I don’t buy gifts. Never have, for anyone.
The first year I tried, thinking it’s what a husband does and I got her earrings for her birthday that I selected myself.
Eloise thanked me graciously and I never saw her wear them.
Found them two months later in the back of her dresser drawer, still in the tissue paper.
Over time, I learned that she wasn’t being cruel. She just didn’t choose them, and Eloise needs to choose.
So I gave her the card instead. Told her to get what she wanted because the card is easier. The card doesn’t require me to guess.
Most people get a first date before they get a wife. I got the marriage and skipped everything that was supposed to come before it, and three years in, I’m still catching up.
This velvet box is me guessing again.
***
Home is the same as I left it.
The same clean lines, the same curated silence, the same hallway that smells faintly of gardenias because Eloise puts them in every room.