13. Andrea
— ? —
Andrea
The Whitmore Foundation’s annual gala. Clarence and Daniel convinced me to come.
“Show them you’re not defeated,” Clarence said when I tried to refuse. “The country club changed everything. People are on your side now. You need to show your face.”
So here I am. Wearing emerald green silk that skims over the first soft curve of my belly, twelve weeks now, a secret starting to announce itself. Clarence helped me pick the dress; Daniel did my hair. They’ve become my glam squad, my support system, my unlikely guardian angels.
The ballroom is stunning: crystal chandeliers, white flowers everywhere, a string quartet playing an elegant nothing in the corner. It’s the kind of event I used to dread, back when I was just Kirk’s unsuitable wife trying to prove I belonged.
Tonight, I’m done proving anything. Tonight, I just want to get through it.
I circulate with Clarence and Daniel, accepting murmured condolences and carefully worded support. The tide has turned completely. Where people once looked at me with contempt, now they offer sympathetic smiles and gentle squeezes of my hand.
I’m so sorry, Andrea.
We had no idea what Ethel was capable of.
If you need anything, anything at all-
I respond graciously because that’s the job.
And then Bitsy Monroe detaches from the crowd near the silent auction and bears down on me with both hands extended, bracelets announcing her three tables out.
“Andrea. Darling.” She clasps my hands as if we’ve survived a shipwreck together. “You look radiant. Doesn’t she look radiant? We have all been simply sick about what that woman put you through. Sick. I said to Richard, I said, I never believed a word of it, not one word-”
“Bitsy.” I keep my voice pleasant, the way you keep a knife in a drawer. “Ethel told exactly one person before it spread. Did you ever wonder who?”
The bracelets go quiet.
“I’m sure I don’t-”
“She called you the same afternoon she blew my marriage apart. You lunched at Armand’s.
Corner table. She cried into her Nicoise about her heartbreak, and by that Friday, four separate boards had heard I was pregnant by another man.
” I squeeze her hands gently, the way she’s squeezing mine.
“You made excellent time with it, Bitsy. Genuinely. The garden society has members in three counties.”
Her face performs a small landslide. Around us, two nearby conversations have stopped pretending not to listen.
“I was deceived,” she manages. “We were all deceived, she was very convincing-”
“She was. And you were very fast.” I release her hands and smile, because we’re at a gala, and I’ve learned this game from watching it played against me.
“It’s forgotten. Truly. Just do me one favor.
Whatever you hear about my family from now on, from anyone, run it past me before it runs past three counties.
You have my number. Use it before you use theirs. ”
“Of course. Of course, darling.” She retreats toward the auction tables at a speed just under a jog, and Clarence materializes at my elbow holding two glasses of sparkling water.
“I caught the back half of that,” he murmurs. “Remind me never to be on your list.”
“There’s no list.”
“There’s absolutely a list.”
“There’s a short list,” I concede, and clink my glass against his.
But my eyes keep scanning the room, searching for one face.
And then the whole room tilts toward the doors. A prickling awareness climbs my spine.
I turn toward the entrance, and there he is.
Kirk.
Navy suit. White shirt, open at the collar. Hair slightly disheveled, as if he ran his hands through it on the drive over. He looks exhausted and gorgeous and completely, devastatingly familiar.
My mouth goes dry.
Don’t, I tell myself. Don’t you dare.
But my eyes have a mind of their own. They track the line of his shoulders. The taper of his jacket at his waist. The veins visible on the backs of his hands as he accepts a glass of champagne from a passing server.
I remember those hands. I remember exactly what they feel like sliding up my thighs, tangling in my hair, pressing against the small of my back as he pulled me closer.
Stop it. Stop it right now.
I turn away, but I can still feel him. His presence is a gravitational pull, tugging at me from across the room.
“You okay?” Clarence murmurs. “You’ve gone pale.”
“Fine.” I take a sip of my sparkling water. “Just saw someone I wasn’t expecting.”
“Kirk?”
“Don’t look-”
Clarence looks. Of course he looks.
“He’s staring at you.”
“I know.”
“He looks like someone killed his dog.”
“Good.”
But it doesn’t feel good. It feels like torture, sharing a room with him, breathing the same air, while my body screams at me to close the distance between us.
I try to focus on the conversations around me. I try to smile at the people offering support. I try to be present, engaged, normal.
But his eyes stay on me the entire time. Every time I glance up, he’s watching - not approaching, just watching. As if he’s afraid to come closer. As if he’s waiting for permission.
I don’t give it. I stay in orbit with Clarence and Daniel, making small talk, performing fine. But underneath the performance, my skin buzzes. My pulse won’t settle. My body keeps orienting toward him, a compass finding north.
This is pathetic, I think. He destroyed your marriage. He doesn’t get to make you feel like this anymore.
But feelings don’t care about fairness. And right now, what I’m feeling is hunger. Pure, physical, completely inappropriate hunger.
I excuse myself from a conversation I’m no longer following and slip through the crowd toward the terrace doors. I need air. I need space. I need five minutes without my estranged husband in my sightline.
The terrace is empty, thank God. I lean against the railing and let the cool night wash over me. The city glitters below, oblivious to my crisis.
I’m counting my breaths, in for four, out for four, when the door opens behind me.
I know who it is without turning around. Sandalwood and cedar, the same scent he’s worn since we met. The scent that used to mean home and safe and loved.
Now it just means complicated.
“Andrea.”
His voice is low. Rough. It sends a shiver down my spine that has nothing to do with the cool air.
“Kirk.”
“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to see me. But I need-” He stops. Breathes. “I need to talk to you. Please.”
I should tell him to leave. I should walk back inside and let Clarence and Daniel shield me from this conversation.
Instead, I turn around.
He’s closer than I expected. Just a few feet away, close enough to see the pulse jumping in his throat. Close enough to watch his chest rise and fall with each breath.
Don’t notice that, I tell myself. Don’t notice anything about him.
But I notice everything. The way his jaw tightens when he swallows. The slight tremor in his hands. The way his eyes, those dark, familiar eyes, are red-rimmed and desperate.
“Talk,” I say. My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
“I’ve started seeing a therapist. Twice a week. Working on why I let my mother control my thoughts for so long.”
I wasn’t expecting that. “You hate therapy.”
“I hate losing you more.” He meets my eyes, and the honesty there makes my chest ache. “I’ve been unpacking a lot of ugly things, Andrea. But I need to do it. I need to understand why I was so afraid of trusting you.”
“Kirk-”
“I’m not telling you this to get credit. I’m telling you because you deserve to know I’m trying. Actually trying. Not just promising to be better and then falling back into old patterns.”
“What’s it like?” The question surprises me as much as him. “Therapy. The actual room.”
“Humiliating. Then boring. Then, about four sessions in, terrifying.” He huffs a breath that isn’t quite a laugh.
“Dr. Okafor has a way of asking a small question and then just - waiting. Week two she asked me when I first learned that love had entry requirements. I talked for forty minutes. I don’t remember deciding to.
When I stopped, she said, ‘You were nine in every story you just told me.’” He looks out over the city lights.
“I drove home and sat in the driveway for an hour.”
“Kirk-”
“I’m not telling you for sympathy either. I’m answering the question. That’s what it’s like. It’s finding out the house you grew up in was built on a fault line, and then going back every Tuesday and Thursday with a flashlight.”
The words land deep in my chest. He’s always promised to be better. During the near-divorce, after our fights, every time his mother made me feel small. But this is different. This is action instead of words.
“I should go inside,” I say, to neither of us. “Find my table. Let you-”
“Stay.” His hand lifts, stops short of my arm. “Please. Just a little longer.”
I should pull away. I should remember every hurt, every betrayal, every night I cried on my sister’s couch.
But I’m so tired of being angry. So tired of sleeping alone. So tired of missing him while I’m furious at him.
“This is a bad idea,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“I’m still angry.”
“I know.”
“I’m so tired of being angry.” My voice breaks. “I’m so tired of missing you while I want to kill you.”
His hand comes up, hovers near my cheek. “Can I touch you?”
I should say no.
“Yes.”
His palm cradles my face. His thumb traces my cheekbone, soft and reverent, as if I’m precious and he’s terrified of breaking me.
The touch is electric. Heat floods through me, pooling low in my belly. My breathing forgets its rhythm.
“Andrea.” My name on his lips sounds like prayer.
I close the distance between us.
The kiss isn’t gentle. I don’t have gentle in me right now. I grab his lapels and drag his mouth to mine, and I kiss him as punishment, all teeth and desperation, fury and longing tangled up together. I bite his lip hard enough to taste copper.
He groans, a ragged, broken sound that I feel in my bones, and his hands fist in my hair, and he kisses me back the way drowning men grab rope.
“This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I gasp against his mouth.
“I know.” His lips find my jaw. My throat. That spot behind my ear that weakens my knees.
“This doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know.” His hands slide down my sides, stopping just short of my hips. Waiting. Asking.
“I still don’t trust you.”
He pulls back. Meets my eyes. His are dark, desperate, wet with tears I didn’t see him shed.
“Then let me earn it. Let me prove I’ll never doubt you again.”
I’m trembling. My whole body is trembling: with want, with rage, with the terrible vulnerability of needing the person who hurt you.
His mouth finds mine again, softer this time. Questioning. His hands cup my face as if I’m sacred.
I should stop this. I should-
The terrace door opens.
Clarence stands silhouetted against the light from the ballroom. His face is carefully blank, but I can see the question in his eyes.
“Andrea? Everything okay out here?”
I push Kirk away, chest heaving. Lips swollen. Heart pounding hard enough to hear.
“Fine.” My voice doesn’t sound fine. It sounds wrecked. “We’re done here.”
I smooth down my dress with shaking hands and walk back inside without looking at Kirk.
His eyes follow me for the rest of the night.
I don’t let myself look back.