7. The Man on the Third Floor
Chapter Seven
THE MAN ON THE THIRD FLOOR
Bree quits three weeks after I file.
Officially, she found a better receptionist position. Unofficially, the atmosphere in our office has become uncomfortable for her.
I never make an announcement, but secrets don’t survive long when one participant in an affair is the receptionist and the other participant’s wife works in the same space.
My boss knows because I had to explain why I needed time off, Connie knew the moment we found the Harvest Days photographs, and Bree apparently told at least one coworker enough about it for the rest of the office to assemble the truth.
On her last afternoon, she stops beside my desk. “I hope you’re happy.”
I look up. “With what?”
“Everything.”
“What exactly do you think I did?”
“You didn’t have to tell people,” she says.
“I didn’t.”
Her expression tells me she doesn’t believe me.
“I told Connie because she was sitting beside me when I found out. I told Paul because you were an employee involved with my husband, and I needed time off. That’s it.”
She crosses her arms.
“I never tried to have you fired.”
“I know.”
“You’re leaving because it’s finally uncomfortable to work beside the woman whose husband you slept with.”
Her face crumples unexpectedly. “I thought he loved me.”
For the first time, I see her as something other than the person who participated in destroying my marriage. She’s twenty-three, young enough to make stupid choices, but not young enough to be absolved of them.
“Did he tell you he was leaving me?”
She looks away. “No.”
“Did he say we were separated?”
“No.”
“Did he tell you he’d filed for divorce?”
“No.”
“Then you believed what you wanted.”
She looks back at me. “So did you.”
The words hurt because they’re true in a way neither of us intended.
She realizes it immediately. “I’m sorry.”
I nod. “So am I.”
She leaves ten minutes later carrying a cardboard box of her belongings. I don’t hate her, but I’m not sure whether that’s maturity or exhaustion.
By mid-October, the office has a new receptionist named Dawn, who is fifty-eight, married for thirty-four years, and thinks pumpkin spice is “perfume pretending to be breakfast.”
I like her immediately.
The divorce moves forward without becoming the war Owen originally feared, although the settlement discussions aren’t exactly pleasant. He moves into a small apartment while I remain in the house until we decide whether to sell it or whether one of us will buy out the other.
For the first week after he leaves, I sleep poorly. The house feels too quiet, but then the quiet begins to feel peaceful. I stop listening for the garage door, stop adjusting dinner around his schedule, and stop wondering who he’s texting.
Mark becomes part of my life almost accidentally. We run into each other at the vending machine one afternoon when it steals my dollar, and I smack the glass.
“You’re violent,” he says behind me.
“It stole my peanut M&M’s.”
“Oh. Well, in that case, you’re not being violent enough.” He puts in a dollar, and the machine eats his, too. Mark stares at it. “Now it’s personal.”
The next morning, there’s a handwritten sign taped across the glass: OUT OF ORDER. MELANIE WON.
I smile every time I walk past it.
Sometimes Mark and I eat lunch with people from both offices. Sometimes we talk in the elevator. Once, I find him in the parking lot trying to fit a six-foot sample panel into his SUV.
“That seems optimistic.”
“It fit yesterday,” he says.
“The laws of geometry may have changed overnight.”
“That tracks.”
I help him angle it, and it eventually fits.
Another evening, we’re the last two people leaving the building.
Gary has decorated the lobby for Halloween, including a plastic skeleton sitting on the bench beside the elevator. Someone has tucked a Benson Commercial Design business card into its bony hand.
I point. “Networking?”
“Prospecting,” Mark says, “but I think the lead has gone cold.”
I cover my mouth as a laugh bursts out of me. Mark opens the door, and we step outside together. The air is finally cold enough to feel like autumn, and I pull my coat tighter around me as we cross the parking lot.
“Can I ask you something?” I say as Mark walks beside me toward the parking lot.
“Depends.”
“Were you ever married?”
He glances over. “Yes.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. What happened?”
For a moment, he watches the pavement. “We married young,” he says. “We were twenty-three and exceptionally wise.”
“Famously excellent age for making good decisions.”
“Exactly.” He smiles. “We changed.”
“It was that simple?”
“Not at the time. Near the end, we fought a lot. We tried counseling, but it didn’t work. We even tried pretending nothing was wrong, which was surprisingly ineffective.”
I smile.
“Eventually, we realized staying married was making us dislike each other.”
“Do you hate her?”
“No.” The answer comes without hesitation. “She’s a good person. We just weren’t good together.”
The lack of bitterness surprises me. Owen needed to tell Bree that I was boring, stale, practically a roommate. Mark can explain the end of his marriage without turning his former wife into a villain.
“That’s unusually civilized.”
“You should’ve seen us arguing about who got the dining table,” he says. “It was brutal.”
We reach my car, but neither of us immediately leaves.
I lean against the door. “Can I ask one more?”
He grins. “You’re really taking advantage of this.”
“Do men stop noticing their wives?”
His expression changes. “That’s not a fair question.”
“I know.”
“Are you wondering if Owen stopped noticing you?”
“I guess.” I look away. “Maybe I got boring.”
“You didn’t,” he says.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, in fact.” For the first time since I’ve known him, Mark looks genuinely uncomfortable.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Mark.”
He exhales. “I noticed you the first week we moved into the building.”
I blink. “You did?”
“You were downstairs fighting with the vending machine.”
“That’s apparently a recurring theme.”
There’s an odd smile on his face when he says, “You threatened to call its mother.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“What was I wearing?”
“A green dress.” His mouth twists, as though he regrets opening this conversation.
I remember the dress, but say, “You’re making that up.”
“You were laughing. I thought you were beautiful.”
My heartbeat speeds up.
“Then I saw your wedding ring,” he says.
I glance automatically at my left hand, where a pale indentation still marks the skin.
“So I stopped.”
“Stopped what?” I ask.
“Letting myself think about you that way.”
“That’s possible?”
He gives me a faint smile. “Yes.”
“Owen keeps talking about Bree flirting with him like attraction is something that just happened to him. He makes it sound like he couldn’t help what came next.”
Mark meets my eyes. “Being attracted to somebody doesn’t require you to do anything about it.”
The words have more of an impact than he knows. Mark was attracted to me, and he did nothing because it wasn’t right to act on it. Wanting something didn’t give him permission to try to get it.
Something shifts between us, and he sees it. I see him see it.
Then he steps back. “You’re still married.”
“Technically.”
“Technically counts.”
I smile. “So what does that make us?”
“Friends,” he says, making the word sound especially warm and appealing, even as he keeps his distance.
“Just friends?”
His gaze holds mine. “For now.”
I think about those two words the entire drive home.