13. Josie
JOSIE
The elevator doors slid shut and my stomach dropped with the upward motion.
I didn't know what I'd find when they opened again. That was the thought that kept circling through my head, wearing a groove in my brain. I didn't know anything anymore.
I'd been gone two days. Two days staying at Rosa's, sleeping on her couch that smelled like garlic and old leather.
Two days of waking up to prep work in the kitchen below, the clatter of pots and the hiss of gas burners coming to life before dawn.
Two days of Rosa not asking questions, just handing me coffee and toast like it was the most natural thing in the world that I'd shown up with an overnight bag and nothing to say.
Two days of telling myself I was overreacting.
Then Harlow walked into Mercer's this afternoon and smiled at me like we were friends.
My hand found the iron ring in my pocket without me deciding to reach for it.
The metal was warm from my body heat, the edges smooth where Vince's hands had worked them nine years ago.
I'd grabbed it two days ago when I packed my bag and left, stuffing it in my pocket without thinking.
I didn't know why I'd taken it then and I didn't know why I was carrying it now, but my fingers kept going to it like they had a mind of their own.
The elevator climbed. Eighteen floors. Twenty. Twenty-five.
I kept seeing Harlow's face. The way she'd leaned against my counter, casual as anything, running one manicured finger along the edge of the glass case. The way she'd looked at me when she said it.
God, I wanted it to be a lie.
But I'd seen her touch his arm two days ago in his office, seen the way she looked at him, and the sick feeling in my stomach told me it probably wasn't.
The doors opened on forty and I stepped out.
I stepped out and the scent hit me immediately. That perfume Harlow wore, expensive and cloying, the kind that announced itself before she even entered a room. My breath caught and I stopped in the doorway, one hand braced on the frame, and my throat went tight.
Then I took another breath, deeper this time, and realized.
It wasn't there.
The air smelled like nothing. Clean and empty and still, the way the penthouse always smelled. Like money and furniture polish and absolutely nothing personal.
I'd come up expecting that perfume and so I'd smelled it anyway, like my own mind was working against me. My pulse was hammering and my hands had gone cold and I'd been so sure the scent was real.
I stood there for a moment, hating myself for the spike of hope that went through my chest. Because it settled nothing. The perfume being gone didn't prove anything. It had been a day since Harlow said she was here. More than enough time for it to fade.
It proved absolutely nothing and I was an idiot for hoping it did.
I made myself step into the penthouse. The city sprawled beyond the windows, a carpet of lights stretching to the horizon. The penthouse was dark except for that glow. Vince was sitting on the couch with his back to me, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing.
He looked up when he heard me. For a second he just stared like he couldn't quite believe I was real. Then he stood up, fast enough that he caught his balance on the arm of the couch.
"Josie."
Just my name. He said it like a prayer, or maybe like a question. He started walking toward me and every muscle in my body went tight.
"Stop."
I held up one hand and he stopped. Just like that. Three steps between us. Not far enough.
His shirt was wrinkled and his tie was gone and he looked like he hadn't slept since I left. Shadows under his eyes, jaw dark with stubble, hair a mess like he'd been running his hands through it. He looked wrecked.
I couldn't let that matter. I couldn't let anything about him matter right now or I'd lose my nerve entirely.
"Harlow came to the shop today," I said.
My voice came out steadier than I'd expected. Flat. Like I was telling him about the weather.
"Was she here?"
His jaw worked and something moved behind his eyes. "Yes."
That single word landed like a fist to my chest. All the air went out of my lungs and for a second I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but stand there and feel that word sink into me.
I'd known it. Harlow had told me and I'd known it was true, but some part of me had been hoping anyway.
"Josie, let me explain?—"
"No."
The word came out sharp enough that he flinched. I saw it happen, saw him pull back, and I felt nothing.
"You need to listen to me." He took a step closer and I moved back, my spine hitting the wall. "She let herself in. I don't know how she got a key but?—"
"Stop."
"Josie, please, I didn't?—"
"I said stop."
I laughed and it sounded ugly. Bitter. He stood there with his mouth still half-open, words caught behind his teeth that I'd never let him say.
"She was here," I said. "In our home. In our bed, in our—" My voice cracked and I stopped, biting down hard on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. I would not cry in front of him.
"It wasn't like that." His hands were out now like he was trying to calm a spooked animal. "Just let me tell you what happened. Five minutes. That's all I'm asking. Five minutes and you'll understand."
"I said no, Vince."
"Goddammit, Josie, I'm trying to explain?—"
"You don't get to do this!" The words tore out of me and I was shaking now, trembling so hard my teeth were chattering. "You don't get to bring another woman into our home and then ask me to listen while you explain it away like it's something I'm supposed to just understand and forgive."
He went absolutely still. "Is that what you think this is?"
"What else am I supposed to think?"
Neither of us said anything. The silence stretched out between us, heavy and terrible, broken only by the faint hum of the ventilation and the distant sound of traffic forty floors below. Vince just stood there looking at me like I'd gutted him.
"Tell me what she said to you." His voice had gone quiet, careful. "At the shop. What did Harlow tell you?"
I shook my head. My hand found the ring in my pocket again and I closed my fist around it until the edges bit into my palm. The pain felt good. Real.
"It doesn't matter."
"It does to me."
"Well it shouldn't." I pulled in a breath and it rattled in my chest. "You should have thought about that before you gave her a reason to come find me in the first place."
"Josie, please?—"
His hand closed around my wrist.
Not hard. His grip was loose, almost gentle, his thumb pressed against the inside of my wrist where my pulse was jumping. But I jerked back like he'd burned me, wrenching my arm away, and he let go immediately. His hand dropped to his side and he stared at it like he didn't recognize it.
"Don't touch me."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I just—" He ran that hand through his hair, making it stand up in spikes. He looked lost. Desperate. "Please. Just talk to me. Tell me what happened at the shop. Tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it."
"You can't fix this."
"Let me try. Josie, please, just let me try."
God, he sounded so earnest. Like he really believed there was something he could say that would make this okay. Like we could just talk it out and everything would go back to the way it was.
Back to him disappearing into his work sixteen hours a day. Back to me waiting at home like an idiot, pretending I didn't know what everyone else could see. Back to living in this beautiful empty box while the neighborhood we came from crumbled forty floors below and he never once looked down.
I'd been pretending for nine years. I was so tired of pretending.
"I want a divorce."
The words came out quietly. I'd thought they'd be hard to say, that I'd have to force them past my teeth. But they just fell out of me easy as breathing, like something I'd been holding too long and finally had to let go.
For a moment I thought he hadn't heard me. He just stood there staring at me, his face blank. Then something changed. Something in his eyes went dark and distant and my heart started pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
Say something, I thought. The words screamed through my head. Fight me on it. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you want me to stay.
But he didn't.
He just looked at me with those dark eyes and said nothing.
The silence went on forever. I watched something die in his face and felt the last thread of hope I'd been holding snap clean through.
"Okay," he said finally.
The word was so quiet I almost didn't hear it.
Okay.
Like it was nothing. Like nine years of marriage could be summed up in one word and dismissed just as easily. Like he'd been waiting for me to say it and now that I had he could finally stop going through the motions.
I couldn't breathe. The air in the room had gone thin and my chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped a steel band around my ribs.
"That's it?" My voice came out small and broken. "That's all you have to say?"
He didn't answer. He just stood there with his hands loose at his sides and his face carefully empty, and I understood.
He wasn't going to deny it. He wasn't going to tell me Harlow was lying. He wasn't going to fight for this.
Because there was nothing to fight for. Not anymore.
Maybe there never had been.
I turned around and walked toward the door. My legs felt strange, disconnected. Like I was watching myself from a distance, seeing some other woman walk out of some other marriage.
But it was real. My hand found the door handle. I pulled it open.
I made it three steps into the hallway before I had to stop. I pressed the elevator button and stood there staring at my own reflection in the brushed steel doors. The woman staring back looked like a stranger.
The elevator arrived immediately. Of course nothing would slow this down or give him time to change his mind or give me one single reason to turn around.
I stepped inside and turned around. Vince was standing in the doorway, one hand braced on the frame. The distance between us felt enormous, like I was looking at him from the wrong end of a telescope.
"Vince," I said.
He looked up and for just a second something moved behind his eyes.
"I needed you to fight for this." The words came out clear and cold and final. "I needed you to fight for me. Just once."
The doors slid shut before he could answer.
I made it to the parking garage before the tears came.
I unlocked the car with shaking hands and got in and sat there in the driver's seat, staring at nothing. The iron ring was still in my pocket. I couldn't get the key in the ignition. My hands were shaking too hard and I couldn't see straight.
I pressed my palms against my eyes and the dam broke.
It wasn't pretty crying. Not the kind you see in movies where a single perfect tear rolls down a flawless cheek.
This was ugly. Raw. It tore out of me in great gasping sobs that hurt my chest and made my whole body shake.
Snot ran down my face and my throat felt scraped raw and I couldn't stop, couldn't get control of myself, couldn't do anything but sit there alone in the dark and cry like my heart was breaking.
Because it was.
I'd walked into that penthouse tonight hoping he'd tell me Harlow was lying. That he'd have an explanation. That everything would be okay.
Instead he'd asked me to listen and I'd refused. And when I'd asked for a divorce he'd just looked at me with empty eyes and said okay.
Like he'd been expecting it.
Like maybe he'd wanted it too.
I cried until there was nothing left, until my eyes were swollen almost shut and my face felt hot and puffy and my breath came in shaky gasps. Then I just sat there in the silence, staring at nothing, feeling absolutely empty.
Hollowed out.
The ring was still in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at it in the dim yellow light from the parking garage.
It was small and plain and imperfect, the metal dark with age, the band slightly uneven where Vince had hammered it into shape with his own hands because he couldn't afford anything better.
He'd had nothing when he gave this to me. Nothing but a dream and a promise and twenty dollars' worth of iron he'd shaped into a circle in Omar's father's shop, working after his shifts ended, learning how to use tools he'd never touched before.
Now he could buy me a hundred diamonds and it wouldn't mean a damn thing.
I closed my fist around the ring and pressed it against my chest, right over my heart, and let myself cry again.