Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Caleb knows I have left before I finish carrying my boxes upstairs.
His first message is a photograph of our empty bedroom.
What did you do?
The second comes less than a minute later.
Dahlia, where are you?
Then he calls until I silence my phone.
Ivy orders Chinese food neither of us eats. We sit on the floor of my apartment because the sofa is still wedged in the stairwell. I used to love this place. It is small and old, with radiators that bang all winter and windows overlooking an alley, but it was mine for six years.
Tonight it feels like the waiting room outside my real life.
At nine, someone pounds on the door.
I know it is Caleb before he says my name.
Ivy rises. "I'll handle him."
"No."
"Dahlia."
"If he can make me leave my honeymoon, I can make him leave my hallway."
I stand on the other side of the locked door.
"Go home, Caleb."
His palm hits the wood. "You took your things."
"They belong to me."
"So do I."
"Apparently not."
"Open the door."
"No."
"I have the rest of the video."
My stomach tightens. "Congratulations."
"Jeremy sent me a clip. It shows me pushing her away. It shows what I said to him."
"Does it erase the kiss?"
"No, but it proves I didn't want it."
"You looked like you wanted it."
"Because he slowed it down and cut everything after it. He put music over it like it was some fucking romantic movie trailer."
"Did he digitally shove your tongue in her mouth, too? You know you broke my heart the first time, Caleb, you know I can’t do this again.”
Silence lands hard between us.
Behind me, Ivy mutters, "Jesus."
Caleb lowers his voice. "Please open the door."
"Why? So you can show me the good part after I finish watching you kiss her? Maybe he has you fucking her on film this time, so I can see the whole thing.”
I know I’m being dramatic but I feel very fucking dramatic at this moment.
"So I can see my wife."
"You should have thought about your wife while Sable was sitting on your lap."
"I thought she was you."
"Until you didn't."
He rests his forehead against the door. I can hear it in the change in his breathing.
"Jeremy told me you were there," he says. "I was so fucking drunk. They blindfolded me. She never spoke. The second I understood what they had done, I shoved her away."
"That isn't the second I care about."
"Dahlia."
"You recognized her. I watched it happen on your face. Then you kissed her again."
"I froze."
"No. Freezing would have been doing nothing. You pulled her closer."
His voice breaks. "I don't know why."
That answer hurts worse than any lie he could invent. I knew what I saw, no matter how it was edited, and he just confirmed it.
I unlock the chain but leave it caught, opening the door three inches.
Caleb looks terrible. His shirt is wrinkled, his eyes red, his hair still damp from the shower I left him taking sixteen hours ago. He stares at me as though I am the one who has become unrecognizable.
There is sand caught in the cuff of his pants.
The sight nearly undoes me. Maui traveled home with him. The beach where we walked last night, barefoot and laughing, is scattered across the hallway of my old apartment.
"Did you sleep?" he asks.
"That is not your concern."
"You look sick."
"I spent eleven hours watching you kiss Sable at thirty thousand feet."
He grips the doorframe. "I watched it too."
"Did you enjoy the soundtrack?"
"I threw up."
"That makes two of us. How romantic."
"I went to the airport barefoot," he says, as if the detail might matter. "The hotel sent someone after me with shoes. I missed you by twenty minutes."
"Would catching me have changed what happened?"
"No. It would have meant you were not alone."
"I was alone the minute that blindfold came off."
He swallows hard.
"I went back to the room after the airport," he says. "Your ring was still on the pillow. I thought I was going to die."
"You didn't."
"No."
"Neither did I. That seems to be the standard for success in your family."
"My mother called you?"
"Not yet. Apparently she is waiting until she can find the context in which this is my fault."
"Don't drag her into this."
"She is already in it. She wrote in the wedding group that I should not see the video. Everyone's first instinct was to manage me, including yours."
"My first instinct was to find you."
"After your first instinct was to hide it."
"Take off the chain," he says.
"No."
"I need to explain."
"Then explain through the gap."
"I love you."
"That is not an explanation."
"I didn't cheat on you."
"You kissed your ex three days before our wedding. What would you call it?"
"A setup. A disgusting prank. A mistake I stopped."
"Eventually."
His hand curls around the edge of the door. "I kissed her back. For a few seconds, I kissed her knowing exactly who she was. I am telling you the truth."
"You think admitting it makes it smaller?"
"No. I think lying would make it worse."
"I don't know how it could get worse."
His phone vibrates. Then mine. Then Ivy's.
Caleb looks down at the screen and goes white.
Before I see the new post, he pushes his phone through the gap.
"Look at the clip Jeremy sent me first."
I should refuse. Instead, I take it.
The video begins after the edited version ends. Caleb shoves Sable away and rises so quickly the chair overturns. There is no sound. The camera angle changes before I see what follows.
"This proves I stopped," he says.
"It proves you eventually stood up."
"What else could I have done?"
"Not kissed her after you saw her."
"I cannot go backward."
"Neither can I."
He reaches through the opening, his fingers brushing mine around the phone. Familiar heat moves through me, treacherous and immediate.
I drop the device. It lands on the hall carpet.
"Do not touch me."
Caleb jerks his hand back. "I wasn't trying to."
"You never try. That seems to be the theme. Things just happen to your hands and mouth."
He looks as though I struck him.
Then every phone vibrates, and Jeremy takes control of the story again.
Jeremy has posted another video.