2. The Prettier Version #2
The silence held for a single second. “Of course,” he said.
“Of course it does. That’s the whole point.
It’s open, it’s equal.” He smiled, and under the smile sat the exact thing I’d heard in the bathroom.
It was the snort, the ‘parade float’, the ‘who’s-lining-up-for-that’.
He thought it cost him nothing. He thought he was agreeing to a thing that would never happen.
“Both of us,” I pressed gently, like I needed the reassurance. “If you get to see other people, so do I. Even now. Even like this.” I touched my belly.
“Even like that.” He kissed my forehead. He couldn’t quite keep the amusement off his features. He didn’t try very hard, mostly because he assumed I was too naive to spot it. “Maeve, you can do whatever brings you joy. I mean it. I need you to feel entirely free too.”
“You’re sure? You won’t get jealous?”
He actually chuckled. It was the ‘client laugh’, warm and easy, the one I’d heard through a crack in a door six hours ago.
“I trust you,” he said. “And honestly? It’d be good for you. Get you out of the house. Get your confidence back.”
He wasn’t granting me anything. He was managing me, the way you’d hand a restless child a toy you knew they’d lose interest in.
“You’ve been so wrapped up in the nursery and the doctor stuff, you’ve kind of let yourself go quiet,” he continued. “Go be social. Make a friend. Whatever you need.”
He was so certain. He was handing me a loaded weapon and calling it a ‘hall pass’, patting my head while he did it. Never mind that he’d been the one who’d forced me into this silence. Who’d taken my confidence away from me.
Truthfully, I couldn’t blame him for his skepticism. Because it was true. Like this, carrying a baby… I wasn’t exactly prime dating material. But I didn’t have to be. Surely, someone out there would find me pretty enough to fuck.
“Thank you for being honest with me,” I told my cheating husband.
“Always.” He kissed me once, on the mouth this time. I held myself perfectly rigid and fought the instinct to pull away.
“I’m going to go change. This is good, Maeve. This is the start of something good for us.”
He headed up the stairs with a lighter step than when he’d arrived, taking them two at a time. I stood alone in the kitchen with the smell of roast chicken and cut lemon. My hands had started to shake, so I pressed them flat to the counter until they stopped.
It goes both ways, I told myself over and over. It has to. You can find a new start, too.
I had to believe that, because otherwise, I’d completely lose my mind.
We ate dinner together that night.
He came down in a soft old T-shirt, relaxed and happy. He sat across from me, his posture entirely loose and careless, acting like a massive burden had just been lifted. He served himself, took a bite, and started talking. He hadn’t talked to me across this table in months.
“God, what a day.” He speared a piece of chicken, and for a half-second, I wished I could do that to his face.
“Cogswell kept the whole team hostage in the conference room until almost two. Two hours on an allocation he was always going to approve anyway, just so he could hear himself ask questions.”
“That sounds exhausting, honey.” I gave him the sympathy he’d come down the stairs hunting for, served warm, on time.
“You have no idea.” He grimaced, clearly enjoying his own complaints. “I finally had to just tell him, ‘Bill, we can keep circling this or we can both go have a life.’ You’d have been proud of me.”
“I’m always proud of you.” I cut a piece of chicken I had no intention of eating. “No matter what.”
He beamed, a small flash of triumph crossing his face, and reached for the wine.
“That’s what I’m talking about. Us, on the same page.
” He topped off his glass and didn’t offer me any but remembered halfway that he couldn’t, turning the ‘not-offering’ into another little ‘virtue’.
“Anyway. Then he wants the Pemberton review moved up, which, fine, but he tells me at four o’clock today—”
I let him continue to rant, making the right sounds in the right places. He complained about his boss and coworkers. Then he trotted out the clever, biting retort he desperately wished he had delivered. He served it to me now as though he actually had spoken the words.
The whole time a second conversation ran underneath the first, silent, only mine. You were not in a conference room. I smelled her on the towel. I heard what you called me through the wall.
Watching him reach for his wine and admire his reflection in the dark window behind me, I understood what this was.
He’d been doing it for months. The easy fluency of the lying was practiced.
This was simply what dinner had become a long time ago.
Him narrating a life I was no longer in, me nodding along.
The only thing different tonight was that now I knew.
“This is so good.” He meant the chicken, the night, all of it. “We should do this more. Just talk like this.”
“We should,” I agreed.
Afterward, he gave himself a little pat on the back for being such a ‘good and honest husband’ by loading the dishwasher, something he never did. Then he kissed the top of my head and went up to bed. I told him I’d be up soon. I needed to finish the kitchen.
Once he was upstairs, I stood alone in the dark.
He thought he had won. But I refused to let him get away with his lies. Now it was my turn to play.