21. Madison
— ? —
Madison
I woke in a bed that smelled like Ford with the wedding still glittering in my memory, and by the time my feet hit the floor I had already begun the work of convincing myself it had been a mistake.
The hotel room was unfamiliar in the gray morning light. Ford’s jacket was draped over a chair. His shoes were by the door. He was still asleep beside me, his breathing slow and even, one arm stretched across the space where I’d been lying.
We’d ended up here after going back to the reception eventually. Neither of us had said anything when I’d taken his hand and led him here.
Thank God for the Bancrofts’ booking rooms for the bridal party!
I slipped out of bed and found my dress crumpled on the floor. I pulled it on as quietly as I could, not bothering with the zipper, just holding it closed against my chest while I searched for my shoes.
“You’re leaving.”
His voice made me freeze. I turned and found him propped on one elbow, watching me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“I have to get back. I have work today.”
“It’s Sunday.”
“I have work every day right now. The project doesn’t stop because it’s the weekend.”
He sat up slowly, the sheet pooling around his waist. I looked away because looking at his bare chest made it harder to do what I needed to do.
“Can we just talk about what happened?”
“What happened was a wedding. Emotions were high, there was wine, we got caught up in the moment.” I found one shoe under the couch and shoved my foot into it. “It doesn’t have to mean anything more than that.”
“It meant something to me.”
“I’m sure it did. But that doesn’t change the reality of our situation.” I found the other shoe and straightened up, finally meeting his eyes. “We’re divorced. One night doesn’t undo that.”
He was quiet for a moment, just looking at me. I braced for the argument.
“Okay,” he said instead. “It doesn’t change anything. If that’s what you need to believe right now, I’m not going to fight you on it.”
I hadn’t expected that. The lack of resistance threw me off balance.
“But I still want you. That hasn’t changed.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, reaching for his pants. “Last night wasn’t just wedding emotions for me. It was real. And whether you admit it or not, I think it was real for you too.”
“You don’t know what it was for me.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” He pulled on his pants and crossed the room to stand in front of me.
“But I know how you looked at me during the vows. I know how you kissed me on that dance floor. And I know how you said my name when you came. Multiple times, in so many positions.” He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
“That wasn’t pretend. That wasn’t wine. That was us. ”
I stepped back from his touch. “I need to go.”
He didn’t follow me. “I’ll see you around. Whenever you’re ready to stop running.”
I left before he could say anything else.
The next two weeks, I buried myself in work.
The renovation became my entire world. I was at the site before dawn and stayed until after dark, losing myself in decisions about crown molding and paint samples and the endless details that kept my mind too full to think about anything else.
Ford’s coffee still appeared every morning.
He stopped by the site twice. Both times I was busy with Jason or on a call, and both times I saw him wait for a few minutes before leaving without trying to interrupt.
He was giving me space. And I didn’t know how to feel about that.
The third week, Emery and Greer showed up at my rental unannounced.
“We’re staging an intervention,” Emery said, pushing past me with a bottle of wine in each hand. “You’ve been avoiding us for two weeks and I’m over it.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you. I’ve been working.”
“Same thing.” Greer followed her in, closing the door behind her. “Working is how you avoid dealing with things. We know you.”
They settled onto my couch and Emery was already opening the wine before I could protest.
“So.” She poured three glasses and handed me one. “What happened at the wedding? You disappeared for two hours and came back looking like you’d been hit by a truck. A sexy truck.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Bullshit.” Greer took a sip of her wine. “You had sex hair. I know sex hair when I see it.”
“I did not have sex hair.”
“You absolutely had sex hair. Your mascara was smudged under your left eye and your dress was zipped wrong.” Emery pointed at me with her wine glass. “Don’t lie to us. We’re your best friends. We will find out eventually.”
I took a long drink of wine. Then another.
“I slept with Ford.”
Emery choked on her wine. Greer’s mouth fell open.
“Shut the fuck up.” Emery set down her glass so hard wine sloshed over the rim. “Are you serious right now?”
“At the wedding.” I couldn’t look at either of them. “During the reception. In some room down the hall from the ballroom. And then again in his hotel room.”
“Oh my God.” Greer pressed her hands to her face. “Oh my God, I knew it. I knew something happened. Graham said Ford disappeared at the same time you did and I told him he was imagining things.”
“He wasn’t imagining things.”
“Clearly.” Emery was staring at me like I’d grown a second head. “Okay, wait. Start from the beginning. How did this happen? One minute you’re dancing, the next minute you’re…”
“We were dancing. Graham’s vows had just happened, I was emotional, Ford was there, and then we were kissing in the middle of the dance floor and he just pulled me out of the room.”
“In front of everyone?”
“Pretty much.”
“Holy shit.” Emery grabbed her wine again. “Holy shit, Mads. This is insane. This is absolutely insane.”
“I know.”
“Was it good?” Greer asked.
“Greer!”
“What? It’s a valid question. You slept with your ex-husband at my wedding. I deserve details.”
I covered my face with my hands. “It was really good. It was really, really good. And now I don’t know what to do because I’ve spent months convincing myself I was over him and apparently I’m not over him at all.”
“Of course you’re not over him.” Emery leaned back into the couch. “You were married to the man for ten years. You don’t just get over that because you signed some papers.”
“I was supposed to be moving on. I was supposed to be building a new life. And instead I’m having sex with Ford in a storage room during a wedding reception.”
“It wasn’t a storage room, was it?”
“It had a couch. I don’t know what it was.”
“This is a lot to process.” Greer refilled her glass. “Okay. So you slept with him. What happened after?”
“I left. The next morning, I basically told him it was a mistake and I wasn’t interested in getting back together, and I’ve been avoiding him ever since.”
“Wait.” Emery held up a hand. “You just left? After sex that was, by your own admission, really really good?”
“What was I supposed to do, stay for breakfast? We’re divorced.”
“You’re divorced, not dead. You could have at least talked about it.”
“I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to pretend it never happened.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“Terribly. I can’t stop thinking about him. He keeps showing up at the site with coffee and being patient and giving me space, and every time I see him I remember how it felt to kiss him and I want to do it again.” I groaned and dropped my head back against the couch. “This is a disaster.”
“Speaking of showing up.” Greer’s voice got smaller. “I have to tell you something.”
I lifted my head. “What?”
“The night Ford crashed your date with Jason. The restaurant thing.” She winced. “I helped him set that up.”
“You what?”
“He begged me, Mads. Like, literally begged. He showed up at my house with this whole speech about how he’d messed everything up and he just needed one chance to talk to you, and I felt so bad for him I couldn’t say no.”
“You helped my ex-husband sabotage my date.”
“He also promised to do a show and tell for Grace’s class.” She held up her hands defensively. “He’s going to bring a boat model and everything. Do you know how hard it is to get someone good for show and tell? The last parent brought a stapler.”
“A stapler?”
“He works in an office supply company. It was very underwhelming.” Greer bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I know I should have told you. But he seemed so desperate and he was saying all the right things, and I just thought…”
“You thought maybe he deserved a chance.”
“I thought maybe you both did.”
I sat there processing this. Ford had begged Greer for help. He’d promised to do show and tell for a six-year-old’s class. He’d been planning and scheming and doing everything he could think of to get five minutes alone with me.
“Fuck,” I said quietly. “He was really trying, wasn’t he.”
“He’s been trying for months,” Emery said. “The coffee, the lunches, showing up at the site. He’s been doing all the things he never did when you were married.”
“That doesn’t mean…”
“I know it doesn’t mean anything automatically. But it’s something.” Emery shrugged. “At least he sees his mistakes now. At least he’s trying. That’s more than a lot of men ever do.”
There was something in her voice that made me look at her more closely. She was staring into her wine, her jaw tight.
“Em.” I set down my glass. “Is everything okay with you?”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“You’ve been weird for weeks. Every time your phone buzzes, you look like someone died.” I glanced at Greer, who was watching Emery with the same concern. “What’s going on with Raymond?”
“Nothing.” She said it too fast, too flat. “Raymond’s just Raymond. You know how he is.”
“That doesn’t sound fine.”
“It is fine.” She forced a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Forget about me, seriously. We’re here to talk about you and the fact that you fucked Ford at my wedding.”
“Greer’s wedding.”
“Whatever, I was there. Close enough.” She waved her hand. “Look, here’s my take. Fuck Ford. I mean, you already did, literally, but fuck him as a concept. If you don’t want to get back together, don’t. We’ll find you someone better. Someone who never ignored you in the first place.”
“And if I do want to get back together?”
“Then that’s your choice and we’ll support you.” Emery leaned forward. “But Mads, you need to be honest with yourself about what you actually want.”
“I don’t know what I want. That’s the problem.”
“Then figure it out. Because right now you’re hiding and pretending nothing happened, and that’s not going to make the question go away.”
Greer reached over and took my hand. “What are you actually afraid of?”
“I’m afraid of getting hurt again. I spent ten years feeling invisible.
And now he shows up being everything I always wanted him to be.
” I stared at our joined hands. “What if I let him back in and he goes right back to the phone, the empty chairs, the being everywhere except with me? I can survive leaving him once. I don’t think I can survive doing it twice. ”
“That’s fair,” Greer said quietly. “That’s a completely fair fear. But you’re never going to know if he’s changed unless you give him the chance to show you.”
“And if he hasn’t changed?”
“You’ve done it once, Mads. You’ll be fine.”
They stayed for another hour, the conversation drifting to lighter things. But I kept watching Emery, the way she checked her phone twice and shoved it back in her bag without responding. Something was wrong with her.
After they left, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.
The question wasn’t whether Ford wanted me. I knew he did.
But want had never been our problem.
The problem was the harder, quieter promise.
The one about showing up day after day, year after year, even when life got busy and there were a thousand other things competing for attention.
He’d made that promise once before, at our wedding.
And then he’d spent a decade breaking it.
I didn’t know if I could survive letting him break it again.