Chapter 3 The Window #2
I pick up my bag and start moving before he is out of his chair. Between the tables. Past the hostess. Through the door and into the dark.
If I sit there one more minute pretending I’m fine, I am going to come apart in the middle of the restaurant.
I will not do that where they can watch.
Colt catches up with me on the sidewalk.
The wind coming off the harbor smells like salt, pluff mud, and the jasmine that grows wherever it feels like it.
“You okay?”
“I’m great.” Bulletproof. “Just walking. The air feels nice.”
“Let me drive you.”
“No, thank you.”
I keep moving.
He says something behind me. Then something else.
I let the distance take his words.
I hold the smile until the end of the block because there are still people around. I make it around the corner on momentum and good posture. One more block after that.
Then my hands begin to shake.
They always do when I’ve been forcing them to stay still for too long.
I stop beside the brick wall of someone else’s building and let the market bag fall against my leg.
I stand alone in the dark and shake.
This time, there is no one here I have to smile for.
Colt
Cheyenne closes her laptop.
“We can keep working over food. My treat. You picked the place last time.”
I didn’t pick the place last time.
I almost correct her, but she’s already standing and reaching for her coat, and it doesn’t matter enough to turn into a conversation.
I get my jacket.
In the car, I text Summer.
Calloway’s being a pain. Still at the office grinding through it. Eat without me.
The office part isn’t true, and I know it when I send it.
But dinner was Cheyenne’s idea, and she has carried half this deal on her back for the last month. Telling her no would make it sound like she had crossed some line when all she suggested was food while we finished working.
It’s still Calloway. Still the deal.
Summer doesn’t need every detail of where we sit while we talk about it.
I drop my phone into the cup holder and drive.
The Butcher Block puts us at a table near the window because Cheyenne smiles at the hostess and asks if anything good is open.
She orders a bottle of red.
I don’t remember agreeing to that, but the waiter pours two glasses and leaves the bottle between us. There’s a candle on the table because there are candles on every table. None of it means anything.
For the first ten minutes, we talk about Calloway.
Then we don’t.
We talk about her sister’s wedding, a podcast I haven’t heard, and the house she grew up in. She rests her chin in her hand and asks what I was like as a kid.
I tell her about rugby. About breaking my collarbone at fourteen and my father standing over me on the field, telling me Bennets don’t cry.
“Did you?” she asks.
“Not where he could see.”
She waits.
I look down at my wine.
“I locked myself in the bathroom afterward.”
“I’m sorry.”
It’s the way she says it. No joke. No quick turn back to work. She just sits there and listens like there isn’t another person in the room.
“I’ve never told anyone that,” I say.
I don’t know why I say it. The wine, maybe. The month we’ve spent locked in conference rooms together. The relief of talking to someone who doesn’t already know how the story ends.
Cheyenne reaches across the table and squeezes my hand.
Her fingers stay there for a second too long.
I go still.
She draws back quickly, tucks her hair behind her ear, and laughs like she didn’t mean anything by it.
I pick up my wine and look at the candle instead of her.
By the time I put the glass down, the moment has passed.
Long day. Too much wine. Nothing worth making strange.
I reach for the bread.
Then Cheyenne looks past me, and her entire face changes.
It happens so quickly I almost miss it.
Her smile disappears. Her chin comes off her hand. Her arm slides back across the table. Her shoulders straighten, and suddenly she looks like she does in meetings.
I turn to see what she saw.
Summer is standing beside our table.
She’s wearing the green sweater I bought her in Asheville, and she’s smiling.
Something about the smile is wrong.
I know every smile she has. The private one. The polite one. The one she gives my mother when she’s trying not to bite through her own tongue.
I have never seen this one.
My stomach drops before I understand why.
I stand.
“Summer.”
The text I sent an hour ago rises with me.
Still at the office. Grinding through it. Eat without me.
Then I see the table from where she’s standing.
The candle. The wine. Cheyenne across from me.
“Hi.” Summer’s voice is bright and warm. “I got lost in my book and looked up and the whole afternoon was gone. I started craving their risotto. I had no idea you were here.”
“Yeah, we just…” I glance at Cheyenne. “Calloway stuff. Strategy session.”
I lean down to kiss Summer.
I mean to catch her mouth. Either she turns or I miss the angle, because my lips land on her cheek.
“You should join us.”
The words sound wrong as soon as they leave me.
Join us.
As though she is the interruption. As though this is our evening and I am making room for my wife inside it.
“I’d love to.” She looks around. “Can someone bring me a chair?”
The waiter is already on his way.
He brings a third chair, another place setting, and a wineglass. He pours from the bottle without asking.
Summer sits with Cheyenne across from her and me on her left.
“Cheyenne.” Summer gives her a wide smile. “It’s so good to see you outside the office. Colt talks about you constantly.”
Cheyenne pauses before answering.
Only half a second, but I feel it.
“He talks about you more, I promise.”
“I doubt it.” Summer’s smile doesn’t change. “He didn’t mention dinner. Was this last minute?”
“Calloway called this afternoon,” I say before Cheyenne can answer. “We needed to nail down the term sheet before Monday.”
The words come too fast.
I grip my water glass, turn it slightly, then let go.
I can feel Summer looking at me, but I don’t quite make it to her eyes.
“Mm.” She takes a drink. “So this is a working dinner.”
“Yes.”
“At The Butcher Block.”
“It was her suggestion.”
I hear how it sounds.
I hear myself putting the restaurant on Cheyenne, as though Summer asked me to assign blame.
But Cheyenne did suggest it. She chose the table. She ordered the wine.
Every individual piece of the night is true.
Put together, it looks like I lied to my wife so I could have dinner with another woman.
Because that is what I did.
I told myself the location didn’t matter. That leaving out one detail was different from lying.
Now Summer is sitting beside me, looking at the candle I pretended not to notice, and the distinction feels thin enough to tear.
“Well.” She sets down her glass. “I’ll order the risotto and let you two finish. What were you discussing when I came in?”
“Risk allocation,” Cheyenne says.
“Calloway’s portfolio,” I say.
We speak at the same time.
Silence settles over the table.
“Both,” Cheyenne says. “The conversation got a little wide-ranging.”
“I’ll bet.”
Summer orders the risotto.
Then she starts asking Cheyenne questions.
Her sister. Her hometown. How she got into the business.
Each one is soft and polite. Nothing she says is rude. Nothing she says can be challenged.
But there is something under every word, packed in so tightly I can feel it without knowing how to reach it.
Cheyenne answers just as carefully.
I sit between them with my wine and say almost nothing.
I should reach for Summer’s hand. I should tell her I’m glad she’s here. I should say something that puts me beside my wife instead of leaving her alone across the table from whatever this has become.
Instead, I wait too long.
The longer I wait, the harder it is to speak without making the silence obvious.
Under the table, I put my hand on Summer’s thigh.
I need some sign that we are still us. Something familiar I can touch and have touch me back.
She takes my wrist, lifts my hand from her leg, and places it on my own.
She never looks at me.
The movement is quiet enough that Cheyenne probably doesn’t see it.
It lands harder than if Summer had slapped me.
After that, Cheyenne and I stop looking directly at each other.
Whatever had been easy before Summer walked in is gone. We keep talking around the empty space it left, explaining risk allocation too loudly, trying to turn the evening back into the working dinner I said it was.
It doesn’t work.
Eventually, Cheyenne reaches for her bag.
“It was great seeing you, Summer.”
Her voice is warm. Professional. Easy.
Summer gives her the same polished smile.
Cheyenne leaves.
The moment she is gone, Summer picks up her bag.
I’m still trying to get my napkin off my lap when she starts through the restaurant.
“Summer.”
She doesn’t stop.
I throw cash onto the table without checking the amount and follow her outside.
I catch up with her on the sidewalk.
“You okay?”
“I’m great.” The wide smile is back. It doesn’t touch her eyes. “Just walking. The air feels nice.”
“Let me drive you.”
“No, thank you.”
She keeps moving.
“Summer, come on. Let me drive you.”
She doesn’t turn around.
I follow for half a block, still talking, but she walks faster, and finally I stop.
I watch my wife continue down King Street with her shoulders straight and a market bag hanging from one hand.
Something tight rises in the back of my throat.
It isn’t guilt.
I didn’t do anything.
I had dinner with a colleague. Summer happened to walk by. She joined us. The evening got uncomfortable, and now everyone is going home.
That is all that happened.
Except I can still see her face when she reached the table.
The smile she had to put on after she saw us.
Summer didn’t come to The Butcher Block because she suddenly wanted risotto. Not in that sweater. Not at that hour. Not with a market bag in her hand.
She saw us through the window.
She stood outside and looked in at me laughing with Cheyenne across a candlelit table after I told her I was at the office.
It was work.
We had a deadline. Cheyenne chose the restaurant because it was close. The candle was already there. The wine was part of dinner.
None of those things is a lie.