8. Az
— ? —
Az
The industry party is at some rooftop venue downtown, all string lights and open bars and people who look like they’ve never eaten a carb.
I’m twenty-one weeks pregnant with feet so swollen I had to force them into heels because Halo specifically requested I look “elevated,” and I’ve spent the last hour pressed against a wall watching my husband work the room with Brynn surgically attached to his side.
She’s wearing red. Of course she’s wearing red. It’s his favorite color on women, something I learned years ago when he said I looked “incredible” in a burgundy dress and then mentioned it three more times that night. Brynn would know that too. Brynn knows everything.
“Here.” Grayson appears with a chair. Actually pulls one from somewhere and sets it beside me like he knew I needed it before I did.
“Thanks.” I sink into it, and the relief in my feet is so intense I almost cry.
“Water, food, anything?”
“An exit strategy?”
He doesn’t laugh. “That bad?”
I look across the room. Eli’s got his arm around Brynn’s shoulders, leaning in to hear something she’s saying, and she’s got that laugh going, the one that’s too loud, too bright, designed to make everyone look. And everyone is looking. Including the photographers.
“I just want to sit with my husband for five minutes,” I say. “But apparently that’s not on the schedule tonight.”
Grayson follows my gaze. His jaw tightens, just slightly. “I can pull him over here. Make something up about a photo op.”
“Don’t. It’ll just make it weird.”
“It’s already weird, Az.” He says it carefully, like he’s been thinking it for a while. “What she’s doing. It’s not normal.”
“I know.”
“Does he know?”
I don’t answer. Across the room, Brynn whispers something in Eli’s ear, and he laughs, and I think about Roz’s face in the kitchen. Since she was nine. He laughed.
“Az.” Abbie’s suddenly beside me, hand on my arm. “Bathroom. Now.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not. Come on.”
I let her pull me up, let her guide me through the crowd to the bathroom, let her lock the door behind us while I lean over the sink and try to breathe.
“I’m going to be sick.”
“Okay. That’s okay.” She holds my hair back, rubs circles on my spine. “Just breathe.”
I don’t throw up. But I stay there for a while, head down, hands braced on the counter, staring at my own reflection. I look tired. I look sad. I look like a woman who’s been screaming into a void for months while her husband stands right next to her and pretends not to hear.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I say.
“Do what?”
“This.” I gesture vaguely. “The parties. The pretending. Standing there smiling while she-” My voice breaks. “She’s winning, Abbie. Whatever game she’s playing, she’s winning, and he can’t even see that there’s a game.”
“Then make him see.”
“How? I’ve tried talking. I’ve tried showing him. Every time I bring something up, he calls me crazy or jealous or hormonal. Every time.”
Abbie is quiet for a moment. Then: “Stop talking. Start doing.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’ve been trying to convince him with words, and words aren’t working. So show him. Go out there and say all of it, not to him privately, but where he can’t dismiss you. Where there are witnesses.”
“That sounds like a terrible idea.”
“Maybe.” She meets my eyes in the mirror. “Or maybe it’s the only idea you haven’t tried yet.”
The terrace is quieter than the main room. A few smokers, a couple arguing softly near the railing, the muffled bass of music through the glass doors. I find Eli by the bar, alone for once, and I walk up and take his arm before I can lose my nerve.
“Hey.” His smile is easy, automatic. “Having fun?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Now? I was about to go find Brynn, she wanted to introduce me to-”
“Eli.” My voice is harder than I mean it to be. “Please.”
Whatever’s in my voice reaches him, because he sets down his drink and follows me to a quiet corner of the terrace. The city glitters below us, all light and noise and life, and I feel very small against it.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“The concert.” I start there because it’s the beginning. “The seat I was supposed to have. The one with my name on it that you gave away.”
“Az-”
“No. You’re going to listen this time.” I take a breath. “At the shower, she was sitting in my chair, opening my presents. And the crib I chose? She changed the order without asking me. I had to send it back.”
“That’s not-”
“I’m doing this pregnancy alone.” The words come out cracked and raw.
“I’m doing it alone and I’m doing this marriage alone and she is standing where you should be.
Every single time, every appointment, every milestone.
She’s in the room before I even get there, and you let her be there because she makes your life easier and I-” I’m crying now, I can feel it, but I don’t care.
“I’m just supposed to be grateful. Patient, understanding, trusting. ”
Eli’s face has gone through several expressions, defensive, then confused, then what might be guilt. He scrubs a hand over his jaw. Looks at me. Really looks, maybe for the first time in months.
“The crib?” he says slowly. “She tried to replace your crib?”
“She canceled my order. Had some designer thing delivered that looked like a prop from a catalog. Left a note saying hers was safer.”
“She said you changed your mind.”
“She lied.”
He’s quiet. The party noise drifts through the doors, someone’s laughter, the clink of glasses, and I wait.
“The shower,” he says finally. “With the chair.”
“You weren’t there. You were on a call while she sat in my spot and opened presents and cried over my baby like she was the one pregnant.
Your aunts thought it was sweet. They didn’t know that I was inside crying in the bathroom because the same thing happened at your concert and you didn’t believe me then either. ”
“I believed you. I just thought-”
“You thought I was being dramatic. Crazy. Hormonal.” I swipe at my cheeks. “You thought whatever she told you to think, because she’s been managing your perception of me the same way she manages your calendar.”
“That’s-” He stops. Starts over. “That’s a big accusation.”
“She’s not helping, Eli. She’s replacing me. And you’ve been letting her because it’s easier than fighting with me.”
“I didn’t know,” he says.
“Because you didn’t look.”
“Because I trusted her.” He looks at me. “And I should have been trusting you.”
For a second, I can’t speak. This is what I’ve wanted, acknowledgment, recognition, the simple act of being believed. But it feels too late. It feels like a bandage on a wound that’s already infected.
“I’m sorry.” His voice is rough. “I didn’t realize she’d overstepped this much. I’ve been treating her like a fixture and treating you like you’d always be there. Like I didn’t have to try because you were locked in.”
“I’m not locked in.”
“I know. I know.” He takes my hands. His eyes are wet, and part of me wants to soften, but I can’t. Not yet. “I’ll push her back. I promise. I’ll set boundaries. She’s my tour manager, not my… she doesn’t get to have a place in our personal life anymore. Not like this.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“I mean it this time.”
“How do I know that?”
He looks at the city for a while. Then: “Let me prove it. Friday. I’ll book a table somewhere nice, just us. Belated birthday dinner, since I missed it.”
“You booked a show on my birthday and gave her my seat.”
“I know. And I’m sorry. But give me a chance to make it right. One dinner. Just us. No Brynn, no phones, no work. Let me show you I can be the husband you married.”
I want to say no. I want to say it’s too little, too late, that he’s had a hundred chances and blown every one.
But I look at him, at his wet eyes and his shaking hands and the way he’s holding onto me like I might disappear, and I remember the man I married in an LA courthouse, the one who promised I’d always have the front row.
“Friday,” I say.
“I’ll book it tonight.”
He pulls me into his arms, and I let him, and I breathe in the familiar smell of him, cologne and sweat and something underneath that’s just Eli, and I think: This is it. The last chance. The final test.
***
The car service takes me home alone. Eli had to stay for some closing thing, Halo’s orders, and I told him it was fine, go, I’ll see you at home. But I’m not fine. I’m hollowed out and exhausted and running on the last fumes of hope.
I sit in the back seat and watch the city scroll past. Think about Friday. About what it means, what it could mean, what it will mean if nothing changes.
If I still feel like a guest at that table, I’m done.