5. Josie
JOSIE
I stood on the sidewalk outside Vince's building with the lunch bag in my hand, feeling like an idiot.
The midday sun was brutal, pressing down on the pavement and making everything shimmer.
The street smelled like exhaust and hot garbage and somebody's sandwich cart parked on the corner.
I'd closed the shop for this — well, not closed it exactly, but I'd left Omar and Rosa to handle the afternoon rush while I stood here sweating in a dress I'd changed into twice before deciding it didn't matter what I wore because Vince probably wouldn't even notice.
God, what was I even doing?
I looked down at the bag. Inside were two sandwiches I'd made this morning before the sun came up, back when this whole thing had seemed like a good idea.
Turkey and provolone on the bread he liked, the kind with seeds that cost too much and tasted like every other bread as far as I could tell.
I'd cut them diagonal because that's how his mother used to do it.
I'd wrapped them in wax paper. I hadn't done this in probably two years, maybe longer, and standing here now I realized how desperate it looked.
Just go in. Give him the lunch. Leave.
The building was forty stories of glass and steel, all clean lines and money, the kind of place that made you check your shoes before you walked in.
I didn't come here often. Vince had never told me not to, but I could tell he didn't like it when I did.
Something about the way he'd walk me back to the elevator real quick, his hand on my back like he was steering me toward the exit. It was just easier to stay away.
But I'd woken up this morning thinking about the gala, about Harlow in that red dress standing too close to him, and I'd thought maybe if I reminded him I existed he'd remember to come home for dinner once in a while. Or at all.
Ridiculous.
I went in anyway.
The lobby was three stories tall with a ceiling I couldn't see the top of and a floor so polished it looked wet. The front desk was black and white marble, the expensive kind, and the woman sitting behind it had perfect hair and a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
She looked up when I walked in, and the smile got a little wider. Recognition.
"Mrs. Ardito," she said, like she'd been expecting me, like I came here every day. "How are you?"
"Fine. Thank you." I held up the bag. "I brought lunch for Vince. Is he upstairs?"
"He is." She was already reaching for the phone. "Let me just?—"
"Oh, you don't have to call up. I'll just surprise him."
She hesitated, her hand hovering over the phone, and I could see her doing the math. Was I allowed to go up unannounced? Was there some rule about wives? She decided it was fine.
"Of course," she said, and waved me toward the elevators. "Thirty-second floor. You know the way."
"I do. Thanks."
I walked across the lobby trying not to look like I was hurrying, trying not to feel like I didn't belong there even though I absolutely didn't. The elevator doors opened as soon as I pressed the button, and I stepped inside and turned around just as they closed, cutting off the lobby and the desk and the woman who was probably already back to whatever she'd been doing before I walked in.
The elevator was silent. Too silent. The kind of quiet that cost money, the kind you didn't get in normal buildings where the machinery hummed and the cables creaked.
My reflection stared back at me from the polished steel doors, pale and nervous and holding a paper bag like she was bringing lunch to her husband at school.
I looked away.
Don't overthink this. He'll be happy to see you.
The floors ticked by on the little screen above the doors. Twelve. Eighteen. Twenty-five. I focused on my breathing, on keeping my hands still, on not thinking about how long it had been since Vince and I had sat down and eaten a meal together. A week? Two weeks? Longer?
The doors opened on thirty-two.
The hallway was silent and expensive, all thick carpet and dark wood and lighting that didn't seem to come from anywhere.
Everything about it said this is where serious people do serious work, and I felt like a kid sneaking into her dad's office.
Nobody stopped me. A man in a suit walked past without looking up from his phone.
A woman with her arms full of folders gave me a little nod like I was supposed to be there.
I'd been here twice before. Once when we were engaged and Vince had wanted to show me his new office, walking me around and pointing out the view and the conference room and introducing me to people whose names I forgot immediately.
And once about four years ago when I'd shown up on his birthday with cupcakes I'd made from scratch, and he'd smiled and kissed me and walked me back to the elevator five minutes later because he had a meeting.
Both times I'd left feeling like I'd interrupted something important.
This was probably going to be the same.
His office was at the end of the hall, past a row of identical doors with little brass name plates I didn't bother reading. The door was heavy wood, dark, with his name engraved on a small plaque: Vincent Ardito. No title. He didn't need one.
I could hear voices before I got close.
Laughter.
I stopped walking. My stomach dropped like I'd missed a step on a staircase, and my hands went cold around the lunch bag.
I knew that laugh. The real one, not the polite version he used at dinners and meetings.
The one that came up from his chest and made his shoulders shake, the one I used to hear all the time when we first got married and almost never heard anymore.
He was laughing like that now.
The second voice was a woman's. Light and easy, like she'd just said the funniest thing in the world and knew it.
Oh God.
Harlow.
I knew it before I even heard her say anything else. I don't know how. Maybe I'd been waiting for it, expecting it, like some part of me had known this was coming ever since the gala when I'd seen her standing next to him with her hand on his arm like she had every right to be there.
I should have turned around. I should have walked straight back to the elevator and left the lunch at the desk downstairs and gone home and pretended I'd never come. That would have been the smart thing to do, the reasonable thing. But I didn't.
I took another step forward. And another. Until I was standing just outside his door.
It wasn't closed all the way. There was a gap where the door hadn't latched, maybe two inches, just enough to see through if you stood at the right angle.
I stood at the right angle.
Through the gap I could see a slice of the room — part of his desk, the big window behind it looking out over the city, the edge of one of the leather chairs he'd had custom-made. And I could see Vince.
He was leaning back against the front of his desk with his arms crossed and his tie loosened, still laughing, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows the way he used to roll them when we'd sit on the fire escape outside our first apartment and he'd tell me about the buildings he was going to buy someday.
He looked relaxed. Easy. Like someone had told him he didn't have to be in charge for five minutes and he'd actually believed them.
I hadn't seen him look like that in so long I'd started to think I'd imagined it.
Harlow was standing in front of him, closer than she needed to be, her head tilted back to look up at him.
She was saying something I couldn't hear, gesturing with one hand, and whatever it was made him shake his head and grin wider.
She laughed, that same light easy laugh, and reached out and put her hand on his arm.
Just her hand on his forearm. Light. Casual. Like it was nothing.
He didn't pull away.
He didn't even look at her hand. He just kept talking, kept smiling, like it was the most natural thing in the world for her to touch him. Like they did this all the time.
My throat closed up. My chest felt like someone had reached inside and grabbed everything and twisted it all the wrong way.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. The bag in my hand suddenly weighed a thousand pounds, and I couldn't remember why I'd thought this was a good idea, why I'd thought showing up here with sandwiches would make any kind of difference at all.
He's not doing anything wrong, I told myself. It's just his arm. It's nothing. You're being crazy.
But it wasn't nothing.
Or maybe it was nothing, and that was worse.
Maybe this was so normal for them, so everyday, that neither of them even noticed it anymore.
Maybe I was the one who didn't belong here, standing in the hallway with homemade sandwiches like some 1950s housewife who didn't understand that her husband had moved on to a different life, a life that didn't include her.
I stepped back from the door.
My hands were shaking. I pressed them against my sides, holding the bag tight against my hip so nobody would see. Not that there was anybody in the hallway. Not that it mattered.
I turned and walked back toward the elevators.
I kept my face blank. Shoulders straight.
Steps even and unhurried, like I'd just remembered I'd left something in the car, like I had somewhere else to be.
My heels made soft little sounds on the carpet, and I focused on that, on the rhythm of it, on putting one foot in front of the other and getting to the elevator before my knees gave out.
The elevator was right there. I pressed the button and the doors opened immediately, like the building itself wanted me gone. I stepped inside and turned around to face the hallway, watching the doors slide shut, and then I was alone.
I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.
The diamond on my hand caught the overhead light and threw little sparks across the steel walls.
I opened my eyes and looked down at it. Three carats, flawless, set in platinum with smaller diamonds all the way around the band.
He'd given it to me on our fifth anniversary, told me the first ring hadn't been good enough, told me he'd always wanted to give me something worthy of me.
I'd smiled. Thanked him. Slipped it on and watched it catch the light.
Then I'd gone home and put the iron ring — the one he'd made himself with his own hands when he had nothing, the one he'd proposed with on the corner outside my father's shop — into the drawer by the bed where I kept things I couldn't throw away.
The elevator slid downward, smooth and silent, and I pulled the ring off my finger. It came away easily. Too easily. I'd lost weight. I hadn't even noticed.
I opened the lunch bag and tucked the ring inside, down at the bottom under the sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, and folded the top of the bag closed again.
The doors opened on the lobby.
The same woman was still behind the desk, still smiling that professional smile. I walked over and set the bag down in front of her.
"For Vince," I said.
My voice came out steady, which surprised me.
She looked at the bag, then up at me, and I could see the question in her eyes — didn't you just go up there? — but she didn't ask it.
"Of course, Mrs. Ardito," she said, pulling the bag toward her like it was something important she'd been trusted with. "I'll make sure he gets it."
"Thank you."
I turned and walked toward the doors. The woman was probably watching me, probably wondering why I hadn't just taken the lunch up myself, why I was leaving so quickly. Let her wonder. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
I pushed through the glass doors and out onto the sidewalk.
The heat hit me all at once — the sun, the noise, the whole loud mess of the city pressing in from every side. I stood there for a second, blinking in the glare, trying to remember where I'd parked.
Then I started walking.