1. Flora
— ? —
Flora
Three years of marriage, and I’m sitting alone at our anniversary dinner watching the candle burn down to a stub of wax while strangers take photos of me with their phones.
The reservation was for seven o’clock and it’s now eight forty-three.
The waiter has refilled my water glass four times, and each time he walks by his expression gets a little more pitying.
I’ve memorized the entire menu. I’ve rearranged the silverware twice.
I’ve smiled at three different tables full of people who definitely recognize me as Aster Golding’s wife, the woman he supposedly writes all those love songs about.
They probably think this is romantic, like he’s planning some grand surprise entrance, like he’s going to burst through the doors with flowers and a string quartet and sweep me off my feet.
They don’t know that this is just another Tuesday, another dinner reservation he’s going to be late for, another promise he’s going to break.
I got ready for four hours today. That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about while I sit here.
I went and got my hair done at a place where they charge more for a blowout than I used to make in three shifts, and I shaved my legs and put on the good underwear and stood in front of the closet for forty minutes trying to pick a dress that would make him look at me the way he looked at me in the diner.
I settled on the red one because he told me once, years ago, that red on me made him want to do things that would get us both arrested.
I doubt he remembers saying it. I doubt he’ll notice I’m wearing it.
My phone buzzes on the table and my heart jumps, and I hate that I still get hopeful every single time I see his name on my screen.
Aster: Running late, babe. Studio ran over. Order without me?
I stare at the words. Order without me, at our anniversary dinner, on our third fucking anniversary.
Me: It’s been almost two hours.
The three dots appear, disappear, appear again.
Aster: I know, I know. Twenty minutes, I swear.
Twenty minutes is always the number with him, twenty minutes that turn into forty, that turn into an hour, that turn into me eating cold pasta alone while the waitstaff gives me sympathetic looks.
I put my phone face-down on the table and take a long sip of wine. It’s expensive wine, because Aster always makes reservations at places with expensive wine, but it tastes sour tonight the way everything tastes sour when you’re choking down your own disappointment.
The restaurant is one of his, which is to say it’s one he chose, and it’s beautiful in a way that makes me feel like I’m trespassing.
Low gold light, waiters who move like they’re on wheels, a wine list that comes in a leather binder with a ribbon in it.
There’s a private room in the back where somebody famous is having a birthday, and every ten minutes the door opens and a burst of laughter escapes into the dining room and then gets shut away again.
I’ve been sitting here listening to other people’s laughter for an hour and a half.
The couple at the table next to me is holding hands across their bread plates.
They’re young, probably on a first or second date, and they keep looking at each other like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. I remember when Aster and I were like that, when he couldn’t keep his hands off me for more than five minutes, when he’d show up at the diner at 2 AM just to watch me work and be near me. Now I can’t get him to show up at all.
He walks in at nine-fifteen, looking gorgeous and disheveled in the way that only naturally beautiful people can pull off.
His hair is messy, like he’s been running his hands through it, and he’s still wearing the clothes he left the house in this morning, jeans and a button-down with the sleeves rolled up, showing off his forearms. I notice his forearms because I always notice his forearms, and I resent that my body still responds to him even when my brain is furious.
He slides into the booth across from me and leans over to kiss my cheek, and I catch his scent, studio air and expensive cologne and that particular smell that’s just him, the one I used to bury my face in his chest to breathe in.
“Happy anniversary, baby.” He’s grinning, that smile that made me fall in love with him in the first place. “You would not believe what happened today…”
“You’re two hours late.”
His smile falters, just a little. “I know, I know. But Flora, this soundtrack…”
“For our anniversary.”
He stops, actually stops talking, which is rare for him, and looks at me. Really looks, for the first time in I can’t even remember how long. I wonder what he sees. The same woman he married, or somebody different, somebody tired and sad and so fucking lonely she could scream.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice is softer now, the excitement dimmed. He reaches across the table for my hand. “I’ll make it up to you. I swear.”
I’ve heard that promise a hundred times, maybe a thousand.
I’ll make it up to you after this tour, after this album, after this interview, this show, this meeting, this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that somehow happens every single week.
I let him take my hand anyway, because I’m too tired to pull away.
The waiter appears immediately, probably relieved that the sad woman’s husband finally showed up.
We order, or rather Aster orders for both of us, rattling off dishes without asking what I want because he thinks he already knows.
He used to know. He used to pay attention to what I liked and what I craved and what made me moan when it hit my tongue.
Now he just orders the most expensive things on the menu because that’s what you do at a place like this.
His phone buzzes while we’re waiting for the appetizers. He glances at it, just a quick automatic glance, but I see it and my stomach drops because I know what’s coming next.
“Dylan says it’s happening,” he says, his eyes lighting up in that way they only do when he’s talking about work. “The movie soundtrack. It’s huge, Flora. Biggest thing I’ve ever done.”
“That’s wonderful.” I mean it, I really do, because I’ve always supported his dreams and cheered him on and been his biggest fan. “I’m very proud of you.”
“There’s a promotional tour attached. Two weeks, national, with the whole cast.”
My fork stops halfway to my mouth. “When?”
“Three weeks.”
“Three weeks. So the month after our anniversary you’ll be gone for two of them.”
“I know the timing isn’t…”
“You’re leaving for two weeks and you’re telling me at our anniversary dinner that you were two hours late to.”
“It’s a huge opportunity.”
“It’s always a huge opportunity, Aster.”
My voice comes out louder than I intended and the couple at the next table glances over. I see the woman’s eyes widen as she recognizes us, and I know this moment is already being filed away for later, another piece of gossip about Aster Golding’s wife who can’t keep it together in public.
“It’s always one more project,” I continue, lowering my voice even though it doesn’t matter anymore. “One more tour. One more thing that matters more than being here with me.”
His jaw tightens. I know that look, because that’s his defensive look, the one he gets when he thinks he’s being attacked unfairly.
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” I stare at him across the table, really studying his face in a way I haven’t in months.
He looks the same as always, gorgeous and golden and beautiful enough to stop traffic, but there’s a distance in his eyes that I don’t recognize.
“When was the last time you were home for a full week? Not between flights. Not recovering from tour. Actually home, present, with me.”
He opens his mouth to answer and then closes it again.
“You can’t even remember,” I say, and the disappointment in my own voice makes my eyes sting.
“Flora.”
“I have been asking you for a year.” The words come out harder than I mean them to, sharp-edged with all the frustration I’ve been swallowing.
“A vacation. A break. One month where we’re not living completely separate lives in the same house.
You keep saying ‘after this project’ and there’s always another goddamn project. ”
“My career isn’t something I can just pause whenever it’s convenient for you.”
“I’m not asking you to pause it.” My eyes are burning but I refuse to cry in this restaurant in front of all these people with their phones and their pitying stares. “I’m asking you to see me. I am asking my husband to remember that I fucking exist.”
“That’s not fair and you know it,” he says. “You’re the first thing I think about every single day.”
“Your phone is the first thing you think about every day. Your phone and Dylan’s calls and studio sessions and tour dates.
” I push my plate away, the food I was never hungry for in the first place.
“I can’t remember the last time you looked at me like you used to.
Like I was the most interesting thing in the room. ”
He flinches at that, and I’m glad, because I want him to flinch. I want him to feel even a fraction of what I’ve been feeling for the past year, invisible and unimportant and slowly fading into the background of my own life.
“You’re being dramatic.”
The word lands like a punch, because dramatic is his go-to dismissal, the card he plays when he doesn’t want to deal with anything real. I’ve heard it so many times that I’ve almost started to believe it myself.
“Maybe I am,” I say, pushing back from the table and grabbing my purse. “Or maybe I’ve been way too quiet for way too long, and you’ve completely forgotten what it sounds like when I’m not.”
“Flora, sit down.”
“No.” I’m already moving toward the exit, my heels clicking against the marble floor. “Enjoy your soundtrack, Aster. I hope it keeps you warm at night.”
I hear him say my name behind me and I hear the scrape of his chair as he stands up, but I don’t stop.
I push through the door and out into the cool night air and I don’t stop walking until I reach the valet stand, and that’s where he catches up with me, his hand closing around my arm, his face a mix of confusion and frustration and the beginning of real fear.
“Flora, stop. Can we please just talk about this?”
“Take the tour.” I turn to face him, and I can see the photographer across the street with his lens already pointed at us.
“Go do your two weeks. And while you’re gone, figure out what actually matters to you, Aster, because I can’t keep being the thing you get around to when you run out of everything else. ”
His face goes pale under the streetlights. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m tired.” My voice cracks despite my best efforts to hold it steady. “That’s all. I’m just so fucking tired.”
The valet pulls up with my car and I get in without kissing him goodbye. In the rearview mirror I watch him standing on the sidewalk looking lost, looking like he doesn’t understand what just happened. His phone buzzes in his hand and he looks down at it, and then he answers the call.
Halfway home, my phone lights up with a text.
Aster: I’m sorry. I’ll fix this. I love you.
I read it three times, waiting to feel anything other than exhausted and hollow and empty.
I don’t text back.