3. Jules
— ? —
Jules
I’m sitting at the kitchen island when he comes through the door.
The green dress I bought for tonight is wrinkled now. I’ve been sitting here for maybe ten minutes, since I gave up waiting at the restaurant and took a cab home. My shoes are off and my feet are cold. I cried in the cab, which I’m embarrassed about, but I’ve pulled myself together now.
Harry looks wrecked, with his tie loose and his hair a mess. He’s out of breath, and his eyes are wild and searching until they land on me.
“Jules,” he starts.
“I called you six times.”
He stops in the doorway. His hand goes to his pocket and pulls out his phone.
“My phone was on silent,” he says. “I never put it on silent.”
“Who had your phone, Harry?”
He stares at me. I watch him process the question, and I watch the answer arrive on his face.
“Avery,” he says slowly. “She borrowed it to call a tow truck. Her phone was dead.”
“Avery.”
“There was a flat tire, and she said there was a man following her. She was scared, Jules. You know how she gets.”
“I know exactly how she gets.”
“The tow truck never came, so I drove her home. I thought I had plenty of time, because the reservation got moved to nine.”
“Who told you the reservation got moved?”
He’s quiet for a second.
“Avery. She said the restaurant called, and that she’d already let you know.”
“I never got any message, Harry. Nobody told me anything. Avery told you the restaurant called, Avery had your phone in her hands, and Avery kept you in a parking garage while I sat alone in our restaurant for ninety minutes.”
“I didn’t know…”
“She texted you last night. After the dinner, almost midnight, asking if you wanted to talk about how badly it went ‘because of me.’”
He blinks. “I didn’t think anything of it. She was being supportive.”
“How did she know about the dinner? We didn’t tell anyone what happened. How did she know?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and I can see him reaching for explanations. “She must have heard through the office. Word travels fast.”
“At midnight?”
“She has contacts. People talk.”
“And the reservation? Did people talk about that too?”
“She must have forgotten to tell you in the chaos. And I probably silenced my phone in a meeting earlier without realizing it.”
I stare at him, because he’s making excuses again. He’s always making excuses for her, and I’m so tired of it I could scream.
“Do you remember our engagement party, when she sobbed and told you I’d been bullying her behind your back?”
“I didn’t believe her. You know I didn’t believe her.”
“And the gala last year, when her seating chart put me next to a woman you used to sleep with and put her next to you? The messages from me that she keeps forgetting to pass on? My birthday, when she had an emergency and you showed up an hour late?”
“Mistakes happen. She’s stretched thin, and…”
“There’s always a problem, Harry. There’s always an emergency that only you can fix, and she’s always right there, ready to cry on your shoulder and tell you how much she needs you.”
He’s standing in front of me now with his hands gripping the edge of the counter and his jaw tight.
“Avery is insecure,” he says. “She’s not malicious. She grew up the same way I did. She doesn’t have anyone else.”
“She has you.”
“As a little sister. That’s all she’s ever been to me.”
“Does she know that?”
“I’ve never touched her, Jules. I’ve never wanted to. You’re the only woman I’ve wanted since the day you walked into my office.”
“I know you’ve never touched her. That’s not what this is about.”
“Then what is it about?”
“It’s about the fact that I’ve been telling you for two years that this woman is trying to undermine our marriage, and you keep brushing me off.
” My voice cracks, and I hate it. I hate that she’s made me cry on my anniversary.
“It’s about the fact that you always have an excuse for her.
You always have a reason why I’m overreacting, or being paranoid, or should give her another chance. ”
He’s quiet, and his jaw is working the way it does when he’s trying to find the right words.
“You’re cute when you’re jealous,” he says finally, and there’s a teasing smile on his face, the one he uses when he’s trying to lighten the mood.
I could kill him.
“I’m not jealous, Harry. I’m exhausted. I’m tired of fighting for space in my own marriage. I’m tired of wondering whether the next ‘emergency’ is going to ruin another important day.”
“She doesn’t…”
“She wants you. She has always wanted you. The very first week I started working at that company, she cornered me and told me you’d get bored of me and throw me away like all the others. She’s been waiting for you to come to your senses and realize that she’s the one you’re supposed to be with.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
We stare at each other across the kitchen while the silence stretches. Then Harry exhales and his shoulders drop, and he comes around the island and crouches in front of my stool so he can look up at me.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I keep meaning it.” He takes my hands, and this time I let him. “I fucked up tonight. I should have called you the second the reservation changed. I should have checked my phone. I should have done everything differently.”
“Yes. You should have.”
“I love you.” His thumb is tracing circles on my palm. “You know that, right? You know that you’re everything to me?”
“I know you love me. That’s never been the question.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small velvet box.
“I was going to give you this at dinner,” he says. “Before everything went wrong.”
I don’t open it yet.
“It doesn’t fix anything.”
“I know. But I want you to have it anyway.”
I take the box. Inside is a delicate gold bracelet with small diamonds set along the chain. It’s beautiful, and it’s exactly my taste.
“Put it on me?”
He does, and his fingers are gentle as he clasps it around my wrist. The metal is cool against my skin.
“I had them engrave it,” he says. “On the inside of the clasp.”
I turn my wrist and squint at the tiny letters.
Forever, H.
My throat tightens.
I look at my husband, crouched on the kitchen floor in his expensive suit with his eyes desperate and sincere. I think about two years of being loved by this man, protected by him, wanted by him.
I think about ninety minutes in a restaurant, waiting for him to show up.
He’s very hard to stay angry at, and he always has been. The apology, the bracelet and the way he’s looking at me right now all make it so easy to let it go, and to tell myself that tonight was just a misunderstanding, that Avery’s part in it was a coincidence, that everything will be fine.
It would be so easy, and I’m so tired of fighting.
“I love you,” I say finally. “Even when you make me want to strangle you.”
“I love you too. Especially when you want to strangle me.”
He stands and pulls me off the stool into his arms. I let him hold me, with my face pressed against his chest and his heart beating under my ear.
“Let me salvage this night,” he says into my hair. “I’ll order the whole menu from the restaurant. We can have our anniversary dinner here.”
“That’s excessive.”
“You deserve excessive.”
I should say no. I should hold onto this anger and make him understand that this can’t keep happening.
But he’s warm and solid, and I’ve already spent ninety minutes alone tonight. I don’t want to spend the rest of it fighting.
“Okay,” I say.
***
An hour later, we’re on the kitchen floor with the restaurant’s entire menu spread out around us.
He ordered everything, the appetizers and the mains and the desserts and three different bottles of wine, which is more food than two people could eat in a week.
“This is ridiculous,” I tell him, gesturing at the containers covering every available inch of tile.
“This is aggressive carbohydrate delivery.” He hands me a fork and a container of pasta. “It’s how I apologize.”
I take a bite. It’s delicious, the same pasta I ate on our first date, and despite everything, I feel my shoulders start to unwind.
“So,” he says, settling back against the cabinet with his own container. “Tell me about tomorrow. You’ve been working on that presentation for weeks.”
“You actually want to hear about foundation budgets on our anniversary?”
“I want to hear about anything that matters to you.” He twirls pasta around his fork. “Besides, you get this look on your face when you talk about the foundation. Your eyes light up. I like watching it.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling. “Fine. So we’ve been running the same three programs for two years, and they’re good, they work, but I want to expand.
There’s a literacy initiative I’ve been researching.
We’d partner with schools in underserved areas, get books into homes, and train parents to read with their kids. ”
“How many schools?”
“Twelve to start. If we can show results in the first year, I want to scale to fifty.”
He nods, chewing. “What’s the holdup?”
“The usual. It’s new, it’s risky, it’s not what we’ve always done.” I stab at a piece of chicken. “Plus there’s this one guy, old money, very set in his ways. He thinks the foundation should stick to galas and photo ops.”
“What’s his name?”
“Why, so you can have him fired?”
“I can’t fire him. He doesn’t work for me.” He grins. “But I can make his life mildly inconvenient.”
“Down, boy.” I throw a piece of bread at him, and he catches it and takes a bite. “I don’t need you to fix it. I just need to make a good enough case that he can’t argue.”
“You will.” He says it with complete confidence. “You’re the most persuasive person I’ve ever met. Half the time I agree to things before I realize you’ve even asked.”
“That’s because you’re easy.”
“Only for you.”
We eat in comfortable silence for a minute, passing containers back and forth. He remembers that I don’t like the mushroom appetizer and moves it to his side without being asked. I steal the last piece of tiramisu before he can get to it.
“Hey,” he protests.
“Too slow.”
“You said that this morning.”
“It was true this morning too.”
He laughs, and my chest loosens at the sound. This is what we’re good at, the teasing and the easy back and forth and the way we fit together when there’s no one else around.
“What time is the presentation?” he asks.
“Two o’clock. I’ll probably be a nervous wreck by noon.”
“You’ll be brilliant by two-oh-five.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually.” He reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’ve seen you in action. They don’t stand a chance.”
I want to stay angry at him. I want to hold onto the image of myself sitting alone in that restaurant, checking my phone and watching the door. But he’s looking at me with such open warmth and such genuine belief in me that I can feel myself giving in.
Nothing is fixed, and I know it. But right now, on the kitchen floor surrounded by takeout containers, I let myself have this.
We clean up together afterward, stacking the leftovers in the fridge and loading the dishwasher, and we don’t talk about Avery or the restaurant or any of it.
Then we go upstairs. He unzips my dress and I unbutton his shirt, and we fall into bed tangled up in each other. It’s not sex, because we’re both too tired and too wrung out, but he holds me close and I listen to his heartbeat, and slowly I start to relax.
“I love you,” he says into the darkness.
“I love you too.”
I close my eyes.
At 1 a.m., his phone lights up.
I’m half asleep, but I feel him shift beside me, reach for the phone on the nightstand and look at the screen. Avery’s name glows in the darkness.
He gets out of bed.
I keep my eyes closed, but I’m wide awake now. Through the crack in the door I hear his voice in the hallway, low and muffled, and I can’t make out the words.
He’s gone for a few minutes.
When he comes back to bed, he slides under the covers and reaches for me. His arm settles around my waist and his chest is warm against my back.
I keep my eyes closed and I don’t say anything, and neither does he.
I lie there in the dark with my husband’s arm around me, and I stare at the wall until gray light starts to come through the curtains.
He took her call on our anniversary night, after everything.