5. Southbound
Southbound
Piper
The sauce had gone waxy around the edges of Nolan’s plate.
I dragged my fork through mine and watched the tines leave a pale track through the center.
Four hours in the kitchen had produced his favorite dinner, fresh bread, and a dessert I had hidden in the refrigerator.
I had lit candles, wanting tonight to feel like ours.
Now the candles had burned low, the food had cooled beyond saving, and the chair across from me remained empty.
“Come on,” I murmured, staring at the untouched place setting. “You can still make it home.”
The refrigerator hummed behind me.
I tried another bite and gave up before the fork reached my mouth.
The plate had stopped looking like dinner an hour ago.
It was a monument to how long I had been sitting there, reheating things, lifting lids, checking the time, convincing myself that Nolan might walk through the door before I surrendered.
Tonight was supposed to matter.
Not just because it was our anniversary.
My purse rested near the far end of the island, and the envelope inside it had occupied every thought since leaving the clinic.
I had pictured a dozen versions of telling him.
Maybe I would slide the sonogram across the table after dinner.
Maybe I would make him close his eyes first. Maybe I would lose my nerve and blurt it out before he even sat down.
In every version, Nolan was here.
I set the fork beside the plate and reached for my phone.
No missed calls.
No new messages.
The last notification on the lock screen was the text he had sent earlier, but I refused to reread it. Instead, I found his contact and dialed.
The first ring cut through the quiet of the kitchen.
Then another.
I stared at his plate while the line kept ringing. A ridiculous part of me imagined him seeing my name on the screen in some team meeting, standing up, telling everyone he had somewhere more important to be.
The call transferred.
“The number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone.”
I stared at the screen, letting the line beep.
“Just answer me, Nolan.”
Another second passed before I ended the call.
“Pick up the phone, Nolan. The food is completely cold.”
The words sounded pathetic in the empty room.
I opened our messages.
His excuse sat at the bottom of the thread, neat and ordinary beneath weeks of grocery reminders, travel updates, and scattered messages sent between practices.
“Babe, I’m so sorry, but the OC asked me to stay late to look at the third-down install for Sunday. I’m trapped in the film room tonight, but I’ll make it up to you before the flight.”
Third-down install.
The OC.
Sunday.
It sounded like Nolan because football had its own language, and after three years I knew enough of it to understand how easily one meeting became two, how one hour of film turned into three, how Reid could appear outside a practice room with another sponsor obligation and swallow whatever remained of our evening.
Yesterday, Nolan had walked away from me rather than admit Sloane had crossed a line.
Tonight, I had still cooked for him.
I pushed my plate across the island, leaving it next to his.
I wanted to be angry enough to throw the dinner in the trash. Instead, I looked toward the hallway one more time, as though the front door might open if I gave him another minute.
Nothing changed.
The refrigerator kept humming. The candles kept burning down. Nolan’s chair stayed empty.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard, but anything I typed now would become another argument squeezed between meetings and film sessions. I locked the phone instead, leaving it on the bare counter.
Before the flight.
He had promised before the flight.
I looked at the ruined dinner and accepted what the empty room had been telling me for hours.
Nolan wasn’t coming home tonight.
My phone buzzed sharply against the island.
For one stupid second, I thought it might be Nolan calling me back.
The lock screen lit up.
TMZ Sports.
“What now?”
I opened the alert.
A video started before I could read the headline. Camera flashes strobed across a sidewalk packed with photographers, and a reporter’s voice spilled from the speaker over the shouting.
Then the camera swung toward the building behind them.
McGinnis’s.
My hand froze over the screen.
No. There were hundreds of bars Nolan could have been photographed outside. Sports bars. Hotel bars. Sponsor venues with private rooms and velvet ropes.
But I knew that grimy front window. I knew the crooked sign over the entrance and the chipped brick beside the door because Nolan and I had spent more nights there than we could afford when we were broke college kids.
Our place.
The footage jumped closer as Nolan stepped outside with Sloane.
“Looks like QB1 is scoring off the field too! Franchise Quarterback Nolan Callahan and brand partner Sloane Prescott were caught looking incredibly cozy leaving McGinnis’s tonight, celebrating their massive new crossover campaign with a very public kiss!”
Sloane reached for him.
Her hand slid down his arm, her fingers intertwining with his.
“Move away.”
Nolan kept walking.
The flashes went white across the screen. Sloane leaned against his side, smiling toward the cameras as if she had practiced the angle. Then she rose onto her toes and pressed her lips to his cheek.
Nolan stopped.
He didn’t pull his hand free.
He didn’t step away from her.
He stood there while the cameras captured everything.
I scrubbed the video backward.
Again.
Sloane took his hand.
She leaned into him.
She kissed him.
And Nolan let her.
There was no film room. No offensive coordinator keeping him late. No third-down install to blame for ruining our anniversary.
He had looked me in the eye yesterday and told me I was making too much out of one photograph.
Tonight, he had lied so he could take the same woman to the bar that had belonged to us before anyone knew his name.
The video rolled on.
“Insiders say the apparel executives are thrilled with this powerhouse crossover couple heading into the back half of the season!”
Powerhouse couple.
The words kept coming from the phone while Nolan and Sloane disappeared behind a waiting car door.
My dinner sat inches away from the screen.
His plate was still untouched. The sauce had hardened around the edge. I had spent the afternoon cooking for a man who had been planning to sit across from another woman and walk out to paparazzi flashes.
“You let her touch you.”
My voice barely carried beyond the island.
“You took her to our spot, and you just gave it all away.”
I set the phone down.
The screen kept playing, bright against the counter, but I stepped away.
There was nothing left to misunderstand.
The man on that screen had lied to me and handed our private life to the cameras.
I left the phone beside the dinner.
There was nothing else to wait for. No call was going to change what I had just watched, and no explanation could put McGinnis’s back where it belonged. Nolan had taken something that had been ours and offered it up to the cameras because Reid wanted a better campaign angle.
“I’m not waiting here anymore.”
I turned my back on the kitchen and walked out.
The bedroom door stood open at the far end.
I headed straight into the closet, where three years of Nolan’s NFL money hung in neat rows around me.
Dresses I had worn once. Dresses I had never worn at all.
Team jackets Reid’s assistants kept sending because apparently even an invisible wife needed branded clothing.
I pulled the suitcase down from the top shelf. I carried it out to the bed, letting it drop onto the mattress with enough force to bounce once.
The zipper caught near one corner.
“Come on.”
I worked it free and opened the case.
I stared into the empty space.
This was really happening.
Not tomorrow after I slept on it. Not after Nolan came home with some expensive apology and told me I had misunderstood the pressures of his career. I was packing now, while he was still out celebrating with the woman Reid had chosen to stand beside him in public.
I turned back toward the closet.
A silver dress hung near the front, still inside the garment bag from some sponsor event I had never attended.
Beside it were two team jackets and a row of clothes chosen for luxury boxes, charity dinners, and the version of Nolan’s life where I was supposed to exist only when somebody decided I was useful.
I didn’t touch any of them.
“You can keep all of this.”
I pulled out an old college sweatshirt instead.
I added two worn T-shirts, jeans that had softened from years of washing, leggings, underwear, and the plain clothes I reached for whenever nobody was around to tell me what photographed well.
I folded none of it with care. Each piece went into the suitcase because it was useful, because it belonged to me, because I could wear it without thinking about whether Reid approved.
The closet looked absurd once I started choosing.
Thousands of dollars in dresses remained hanging while I searched the lower shelves for canvas shoes I had owned before Nolan signed his first professional contract. I found them behind a pair of heels still in their box.
The shoes went into the suitcase.
I added a sweater, a second pair of jeans, and enough basics to keep me moving until I figured out where I was headed.
That part could wait.
Tonight, all I needed was out.
I looked back at the rows of clothes and realized how little of this house I wanted to take with me. The expensive pieces had never made me feel more secure. They had made the cage prettier.
I looked down at the suitcase.
By the time I finished packing, there was nothing inside that belonged to his world.
I pulled the zipper shut and left the suitcase on the bed.
I grabbed my purse from the armchair near the window. The moment my fingers found the envelope inside, the rest of the empty house ceased to matter. I pulled it free and opened the flap.
The sonogram prints slid into my palm.