11. Brittney
— ? —
Brittney
The vigil becomes routine.
Every night, his car at the end of the block. Every night, me pretending not to notice. Every night, the slow unwinding of something I’d knotted tight inside my chest.
I walk past him without stopping. Without looking. Without giving him the satisfaction of knowing I’ve noticed.
Until tonight.
Tonight, I stop.
He’s sitting on the hood of his car, legs stretched out in front of him, head tipped back against the windshield. The streetlight catches the planes of his face - sharper now, less soft. He’s lost weight. The stubble has become something closer to a beard.
“You’re still here.”
He doesn’t startle. Just turns his head to look at me.
“I said I would be.”
“You’ve been out here a long time.” I cross my arms against the evening chill. “Most people give up.”
“I’m not most people.” He slides off the hood, stands facing me. Close, but not too close. Careful. “And you’re not most wives.”
I study him in the yellow light. The shadows under his eyes. The wrinkled shirt he’s clearly been living in. The way his hands hang loose at his sides, like he’s trained himself not to reach for me.
“You look terrible.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
Something flickers across his face. Almost a smile.
“Same time tomorrow?” he asks.
I’m already walking away. “Don’t block the fire lane.”
The next night, I find myself walking closer.
He’s sitting on the hood again, and something glints at his wrist when he shifts. The watch. The one his father gave him. I’ve seen him touch it a thousand times - in meetings, at parties, whenever he’s nervous or overwhelmed.
“Why the watch?”
He looks up, startled. “What?”
“The watch thing.” I gesture at his wrist. “You’ve done it since college. I always wondered.”
He’s silent for a long beat. His thumb traces the face of the watch, that familiar unconscious gesture, and I watch his jaw work like he’s chewing on the words before he lets them out.
“My father gave it to me.” His voice is low. “The day he told me I’d be taking over the company someday. I was sixteen. He sat me down in his office and explained exactly what was expected of me. The schools I’d attend, the people I’d marry, the image I’d maintain.”
“The people you’d marry?”
“Someone appropriate. Someone who fit the Ross brand.” He looks at me, and something raw flickers in his eyes. “When I brought you home, he asked if I was out of my mind. Said you were a distraction. Said I’d outgrow you in a year.”
My stomach twists. “You never told me that.”
“I never told you a lot of things.” He turns his wrist, looks at the watch face. “Every time I touch it, I’m reminding myself of all the expectations I’m supposed to meet. All the things I’m supposed to be. Every time I reach for it, I’m reaching for him.”
“And tonight?”
His eyes meet mine.
“Tonight I’m touching it because I’m terrified.” His voice cracks on the last word. “Because the most important thing in my life is standing three feet away, and I don’t know if I’ll ever deserve to be close to her again.”
My chest aches. I hate that it aches.
“You’re getting more honest.”
“I’m trying.” He attempts a smile, but it doesn’t quite land. “It feels like learning a new language. One where I actually say what I mean instead of what keeps everyone comfortable.”
“I like this language better.”
“Yeah?” Something flickers in his eyes. Something that looks like hope.
“Don’t push it.”
But I’m almost smiling when I walk away.
The poker game happens on a Thursday.
My uncles have taken over the backyard, folding chairs arranged around a card table that’s seen better decades.
Citronella candles flicker against the gathering dusk.
Someone brought a cooler full of beer and someone else brought chips and salsa and the whole scene looks like something out of a movie about normal families having normal lives.
Shawn looks like a man bracing for impact. Mom opens the back gate and jerks her head toward the empty chair, and I see him hesitate before walking through.
I watch from the kitchen window as Uncle Dave deals him in with a skeptical look.
“You know how to play, rich boy?”
“I’ve played poker before.” Shawn’s voice drifts through the screen.
“Country club poker.” Uncle Dave snorts. “That’s not real poker. Real poker is when you’ve got nothing left to lose and you bet it anyway.”
I snort. Uncle Dave’s not wrong.
Three hands later, Shawn is down forty dollars and Uncle Dave is grinning like a shark who’s found a wounded seal.
“That’s not a legal move,” Shawn says, staring at the cards on the table.
“It’s called a bluff, rich boy.”
“It’s called cheating.”
Uncle Dave grins wider. “Same thing.”
Shawn laughs. Actually laughs - not the boardroom version, not the charity gala version. The real one I haven’t heard in years.
I step out onto the back porch, beer in hand, leaning against the doorframe.
“Hey,” he manages when he sees me.
“Hey.” I cross my arms. “You’re getting destroyed.”
“Completely annihilated.”
“Should’ve read the fine print.”
“I never read the fine print.” He holds my gaze across the yard, across the card table, across all the distance between us. “That’s why I lost you.”
The yard goes quiet. Even Uncle Dave stops shuffling.
I don’t look away.
Uncle Dave clears his throat. “We need more beers. Inside. Now.” He herds the uncles toward the house with the subtlety of a freight train, and suddenly we’re alone in the backyard with the citronella candles and the summer night pressing in around us.
“You didn’t have to do this.” My voice is softer now. “The poker. The waiting. You could’ve just sent lawyers.”
“Lawyers can’t make you love me again.”
He stands. Steps closer. Not touching - but close enough that I can feel his breath. Close enough that neither of us can pretend this isn’t charged.
I don’t step back.
We stand there, two feet apart, and the distance feels like nothing and everything.
“Britt.”
“Don’t.” I raise a hand, palm out. “Whatever you’re about to say-”
“I was going to say you have salsa on your chin.”
I blink. Touch my chin. My fingers come away red.
His mouth twitches. Then mine does. Then we’re both laughing - the real kind, the helpless kind - and for a moment nothing is broken.
When the laughter fades, the air between us is different. Softer. More dangerous.
“I don’t want to negotiate custody of a life we used to share.” His voice comes out steady, but I catch the slight tremor in his hands. “I want to earn back the right to stand next to you.”
“You’re different.”
“I’m trying to be.”
His hand finds my waist. Barely there. Testing. Like he’s asking permission with his fingertips instead of his words.
I should step back. I should put distance between us. I should remember all the reasons this is a terrible idea.
Instead, I watch my own hand reach up and rest against his chest.
I feel him stop breathing.
Under my palm, his heart is pounding - fast, uneven, terrified. His hand tightens on my waist, just slightly, and I feel the tremor in his fingers. He’s shaking. This man who could sit through hostile board meetings without breaking a sweat is shaking because I touched his chest.
“Britt.” My name comes out strangled.
“I know.” I don’t move my hand. “I know.”
“If you don’t step back in the next five seconds, I’m going to kiss you.” His voice is barely controlled. “And I promised myself I wouldn’t do that until you asked me to.”
Four seconds.
Three.
Two.
I step back.
His hand falls away from my waist. The loss of contact is almost painful.
My whole body protests it, leaning toward him before I catch myself.
“Same time tomorrow?” My voice isn’t steady.
“Same time tomorrow.” Neither is his. “But you’re still losing at poker.”
My laugh is shaky. His smile feels like sunrise.
I go inside. From the kitchen window, I watch him stand alone in the yard for a long time, head tipped back toward the stars.
***
Shawn
The community center on Delancey offers drop-in drawing classes for fifteen dollars. Cash only. No questions asked.
I tell everyone I have therapy on Tuesday nights. I do. Just not the kind they assume.
The first night I walked in here, I almost turned around and left. The room was full of retirees and teenagers and one very serious woman in paint-stained overalls who looked at me like I’d accidentally wandered into a church and didn’t know the hymns.
I didn’t belong. That was obvious. I was a man in a suit that cost more than most of these people’s monthly rent, holding a sketchbook I’d bought at a drugstore on my way over.
But then I thought about Brittney’s hands.
The way they never stopped moving. The way she’d sketch on napkins and receipts and the backs of envelopes. The way she’d lose herself in the lines, her whole body going still except for her fingers, and I’d watch her and feel… nothing.
Not nothing. Worse than nothing. Impatience. Irritation that she was distracted again, that she was somewhere I couldn’t follow, that she cared about something that wasn’t me or the company or the endless list of things that needed doing.
I was jealous of her art.
I was jealous of the thing that made her come alive, because it wasn’t me.
So I stayed. I sat down. I picked up a pencil and tried to draw a circle and produced something that looked like a deflated balloon having a panic attack.
With time I’ve gotten slightly better. Marginally. Margaret - the instructor - says I have “the artistic instincts of a drunk toddler, but at least you’re consistent.”
Tonight she’s standing over my shoulder, peering at my sketchbook through her reading glasses, mouth pursed.
“Your proportions are off again.” She taps the page with a charcoal-stained finger. “Head’s too big. Hands too small. You’re drawing what you think you see instead of what’s actually there.”
“I know.”
“But your shading’s improving.”
“Thanks.”
She studies me. Her eyes are sharp, assessing - the eyes of someone who’s spent decades learning to see the truth underneath the surface.
“Why are you really here?” she asks. “Man in a suit like yours doesn’t usually end up in my Tuesday night class.”