3. Josie
JOSIE
The eggs were cold by the time I gave up pretending he was coming home.
I sat at the table with breakfast for two going to waste in front of me.
Toast, scrambled eggs with the cheese he liked, coffee brewed exactly how he preferred it—strong enough to strip paint, he used to say, back when he had time to make jokes like that.
His chair sat empty across from me. I'd woken up alone, reached for him in the sheets, found nothing but cool cotton where his body should have been.
The bed had been cold on his side. He'd never come home last night.
I picked at my eggs with my fork and tried to remember the last time we'd actually sat down to breakfast together, just the two of us. A week ago? Two? Three? God, I couldn't even keep track anymore. The days all blurred together now.
The elevator chimed.
My pulse kicked up before I could stop it.
I stood without thinking, smoothed my hands down my jeans even though there was nothing to smooth, realized I was being completely ridiculous and sat back down hard enough to make the chair scrape.
I was his wife, not some anxious girlfriend waiting around.
But my throat went tight anyway when the door slid open and Vince walked in, and I hated myself for caring this much.
He looked exhausted. His tie was loosened, hanging crooked, the top button of his shirt undone, and his jacket was slung over one arm.
He'd slept in those clothes. I could see it in the wrinkles creased across his shoulders, in the way his hair stuck up on one side where he'd probably been leaning against something.
He dropped his briefcase by the door with a heavy thud and ran a hand through his hair, making it worse.
"Morning," he said. His voice was rough.
"Morning." I watched him cross the room, his stride long and familiar. "Coffee's hot."
"Thanks." He poured himself a cup and drank half of it in one long swallow like he needed it just to stay upright.
I waited for him to turn around and explain where he'd been. To say something that would make this feel less like living with a stranger. I'm sorry, Josie. I got caught up. I should have called. Anything.
He didn't.
He just sat down across from me, set his cup on the table, and glanced at the plate I'd fixed for him. The food I'd gotten up early to make because some stupid part of me thought maybe this would be the morning he came home and we could sit here like normal people.
I waited for him to say something about it. About not coming home. About leaving me alone all night.
He didn't say a word.
He just picked up his fork and pushed the scrambled eggs around on his plate like he was going through motions he didn't care about, like eating breakfast with me was just one more thing on his list.
My chest tightened until it was hard to breathe.
He'd slept at the office. I knew that without asking.
I could smell it on him—the stale air of that building, burnt coffee.
This wasn't the first time he'd done this, and it wouldn't be the last. He didn't think it needed explaining because to him, it didn't.
He took one bite of toast, chewed it slowly, and set it back down on his plate.
I ate a forkful of eggs that tasted like sawdust in my mouth and tried to think of something to say that wouldn't sound like nagging. That wouldn't make him look at me the way he sometimes did lately, like I was just one more obligation.
"Vince," I said. My voice came out quieter than I wanted.
He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, the whites streaked with red. "Yeah?"
My stomach flipped over itself. God, why was this so hard? I'd been married to this man for nine years. Nine years, and I still got nervous asking him for the smallest thing.
"I was thinking," I said carefully. "Maybe we could take a day. Just one day. Any day that works for you, I don't care which one."
He set his fork down with a soft clink. "A day."
"Yeah. Together." I swallowed hard. "We could—" Go back to the old neighborhood.
Walk the streets we grew up on together.
Remember what it felt like before you turned into someone I don't recognize.
But I didn't say that. I'd tried that once, two years ago, and he'd looked at me like I'd asked him to set himself on fire.
"We could just spend some time. You and me. That's all I'm asking for."
He looked at me for a long moment, and I couldn't read his expression. It wasn't anger. It wasn't irritation. It was just… blank. Empty. Not a no. Not a yes. Just nothing, and somehow that was worse than either.
"I'll check the schedule," he said finally.
That was it. I'll check the schedule. Not yes, Josie, I'd like that or let me see what I can move or even I'll try, I promise. Just the same vague non-answer he'd been giving me for nine years straight, the one that meant maybe and always, always turned into no.
My throat went tight, and I hated that it did. Hated that I cared this much. That I wanted so badly for him to say yes, to look at me the way he used to.
I made myself smile even though it felt like stretching scar tissue. "Okay."
He went back to his eggs. Took another bite, chewed it slowly like he was thinking about something a thousand miles away from this table, from me.
I watched him and felt something inside my chest crack open just a little bit more. He barely touched the food. Three bites, maybe four, and then he was just sitting there staring at his plate.
"Or dinner," I said. The words came out before I could stop them.
He looked up again, and I felt like an idiot. Like a dog with a bone, unable to let go.
"Just dinner," I said quickly, before he could shut me down. "One evening this week. We don't have to go anywhere fancy or do anything special. I could cook something you like, or we could just order in. Whatever you want, Vince."
He exhaled through his nose, a long slow breath, and I knew that sound. It was the one he made when he was already saying no in his head.
"Josie—"
"I know you're busy," I said, and the words came out too fast. "I know you've got a million things going on right now. I'm not asking for a whole weekend or some big trip. Just a few hours. That's all I want."
"It's not that simple." He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, and I could see the tension locked in his shoulders.
"I've got the Riverside project eating up every spare minute I have right now.
The zoning hearing's on Thursday, and if that doesn't go through the whole deal falls apart and we lose everything.
Gideon's been riding me about the waterfront numbers because the investors are getting nervous, and I still haven't gotten the environmental reports back from the city.
" He dropped his hands and looked at me.
"I'm not blowing you off, Josie. I swear to God I'm not.
It's just—it's work. It's always work right now, and I don't know how to make it stop. "
And he meant it. I could see it written all over his face, in the exhaustion pulling at the corners of his eyes. He wasn't being cruel. He wasn't trying to hurt me. He was just drowning in it, and I was one more person asking for something he didn't have.
I looked down at my plate and felt my throat burn. "Okay."
"I'll try," he said quietly, and his voice had gone soft. "I will, Josie. As soon as this deal closes?—"
But he wouldn't. We both knew it. As soon as this deal closed there would be another one waiting.
His phone rang.
He pulled it out of his pocket without hesitation, glanced at the screen, and answered it before it could ring twice. "Harlow. Yeah, I'm here."
I picked up my coffee cup and stared down into it like there was something fascinating in the bottom. There wasn't. Just the dregs, bitter and going cold.
"No, that works," Vince said. He was already standing, already moving toward the floor-to-ceiling windows with the phone pressed to his ear. "I can do Friday. What time works for you?"
Friday.
The day I'd just asked him for. The day he couldn't commit to because his schedule was completely underwater.
My stomach dropped straight through the floor.
"One o'clock?" He nodded even though she couldn't see him, his free hand shoved in his pocket. "Yeah, that's perfect. I'll meet you there. Tell the mayor I'll have the numbers he wants, and tell him they're good. This is going to work."
He hung up.
I sat there and waited. Waited for him to turn around and notice what he'd just done. To remember that thirty seconds ago he'd told me he couldn't commit to anything, and he'd just given Harlow an entire Friday afternoon without even pausing. I waited for him to realize.
He didn't.
He just turned back to me, slipping his phone into his pocket. "I'm not going to make it home for dinner tonight."
Of course he wasn't.
"Okay," I said. The word tasted like ashes in my mouth.
He crossed the room in three long strides, leaned down, and kissed me.
It was quick. Light. The kind of kiss you give someone when you're already halfway out the door.
His mouth was warm against mine, but there was nothing behind it.
No heat. No want. No Josie, I love you, I'm sorry. Just muscle memory and habit.
He pulled back and looked at me.
"You going to the shop today?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"Good. That's good." He grabbed his briefcase. "I'll see you tonight. Or tomorrow morning. Whenever I can get back."
And then he was gone. The elevator doors slid shut behind him, and I sat there at the table, staring at the empty space where he'd been, and finished my breakfast alone.
The eggs were rubbery now, gone completely cold.
The toast was stiff enough to snap in half.
But I ate them anyway because throwing them away felt like admitting something I wasn't ready to admit yet.
That this was what we were now. That this was what we'd become.
Two people living in the same penthouse, sleeping in the same bed when he actually bothered to come home, and we were further apart than we'd ever been when we were just two kids from the same bad neighborhood with nothing but dreams and each other.
He used to make time for me. He used to look at me like I was the only person in the room. Now I couldn't even get him to commit to dinner, and Harlow got Friday without him blinking an eye.
I thought about her. About the way he always had time for her, always picked up when she called, always rearranged his entire schedule to make whatever she needed happen.
She was his liaison to the mayor's office, the woman who raised the money and greased the wheels. She was important. Useful. Necessary.
And me?
I was just the girl he'd married nine years ago. The one he'd left behind when he climbed his way up. The one he'd promised forever to with an iron ring he'd made with his own hands when he had nothing, and then forgot about the second the work started calling his name louder than I ever could.
God, what was I even doing?
I stared down at my hands where they rested on the table, at the ring on my left finger.
The diamond caught the morning light streaming in through the windows, and it glittered, cold and flawless.
He'd given it to me four years ago, replaced the simple iron band he'd made when he had nothing but rough hands and love.
He'd thought this ring was better. Worth more. He'd thought he was being generous.
I'd kept the iron ring in my nightstand drawer, and I'd never told him.
An hour later I scraped Vince's plate into the trash. The eggs he'd barely touched, the toast he'd taken two bites of, the coffee that had gone cold in his cup. All of it gone, wasted, like he'd never been here at all.
I washed the dishes and put them away. I stood in the kitchen and looked around the penthouse we lived in, at the floor-to-ceiling windows that showed off the whole city stretched out below us. It was beautiful. It was everything he'd worked for.
It was empty.
I grabbed my bag and my keys from the counter and took the elevator down to the parking garage.
I slid behind the wheel, started the engine, pulled out onto the street.
I'd drive there the way I always did, past the buildings Vince bought and sold, past the neighborhoods he'd escaped from and never once looked back at.
I'd go to Mercer's, the shop my father had left me when he died five years ago.
The one Vince had never once set foot in since the day we got married, even though it stood on the exact same corner we'd both grown up on.
I'd walk through that door, and Rosa and Omar and the others would smile at me and ask how I was doing, and I'd lie through my teeth and tell them everything was fine, just fine, couldn't be better.
And I'd spend the day making jewelry with my own hands, one careful piece at a time, trying not to think about the man I'd married and the life I'd thought we were going to build together.
The morning light hit my hand on the steering wheel. The diamond glittered too brightly.