Chapter 22 The Other Man #2
"And here is the part that has been sitting in my chest. The night I walked into The Butcher Block and saw them.
Three weeks before the celebration. He was being dosed then too.
She was testing his tolerance. Learning his body.
So that when the night of the celebration came, she would know exactly how much to give him.
She did it right in front of my eyes and I didn't even have a clue. "
"Jesus."
"She had been doing it for weeks. I have been carrying that night as the moment I saw the truth of who he was. The truth is I saw a test run. And he didn't know either. At the same time, he was choosing to be there with her. That was a conscious choice."
I don't say anything for a long time. Whiskey untouched in my hand. The office is quiet, the quiet it gets after midnight, the bar shut, the city pressing against the windows.
"The hotel."
"The Belmond Charleston Place. She had a room reserved earlier in the afternoon.
Before the celebration even started. She had the photographer paid to stay in the lobby and not follow them up.
She had the room on a corporate card. The hallway camera caught her supporting him to the door. He couldn't stand on his own."
"And inside the room."
"They don't know. Pants on. Belt buckled. No physical evidence either way. The report says, in plain English, that he is going to live the rest of his life not knowing what was done to his body that night."
The room is very quiet.
"And his father?"
"Eight years of embezzlement. Twelve million dollars, conservatively. Shell companies. Cayman accounts. The PI thinks I was removed from Colt's life because I was making Colt into a man his father couldn't control. Sonny needed a malleable son to keep the fraud running. I was in the way of that."
She lets that sit.
"All of this. All of it. For fucking money."
She looks at the envelope. Then at me.
"I don't know what to do with this, Sam."
I take a breath. I do what I've been practicing for three months. I am not her husband. I am not the man she is going to end up with. I am her friend, and her friend right now needs a person who isn't going to tell her what to feel.
"You don't have to do anything tonight."
"I have been doing nothing for two days and it is killing me."
"That isn't doing nothing."
"What does it mean, Sam? Tell me what it means."
"I can't tell you what it means."
"You can. You have a perspective. You always have a perspective."
"Mine isn't useful here."
"Try."
I set the whiskey on the table. Lean forward. Elbows on knees.
"The drugging changes things. It doesn't make any of it not real.
But it does mean what you saw on that phone screen isn't what was happening.
You have been grieving a husband who chose another woman.
The truth is more complicated. He didn't choose her that night.
He chose her every night before, in small ways, by being inside her orbit instead of yours.
And then on the night you saw the photos, somebody took the choice away from him entirely. "
"That's not better."
"It isn't supposed to be better. It's supposed to be true."
She is quiet. She holds the envelope against her chest like something she's protecting.
"How am I supposed to hold all of it?"
"The same way you have held everything else. By being honest about how hard it is."
"That isn't enough."
"It's never enough, Summer."
She closes her eyes. Leans her head back against the couch. The line of her throat is something I have trained myself to stop looking at over the last three months. I look at the floor instead.
"I am not telling you this to push you toward him. You know I wouldn't."
"I know."
"I am telling you because you deserve to grieve the right thing. And so does he."
"Yes."
She finally drinks the whiskey. All of it. Sets the glass down.
"I am going to have to see him."
"I think you should. Hear him out. Say what you truly need to say to him. Be honest and don't hold back."
She nods. Stands. Picks up the envelope. Carries it out of my office like a piece of evidence she still has to figure out what to do with.
***
There's a new regular at the bar.
Dominic. Colt's best friend. He's been here every night for three nights. Bourbon. Good bourbon. He watches the show with the kind of singular focus that usually means trouble.
Specifically, he watches Marisol.
Not how men usually watch Marisol. Not the slack-jawed, entitled ogling I've spent three years training security to redirect. He watches her like a sunset. With reverence and the bewildered awareness of seeing something too beautiful to last.
Tonight Marisol finished her set and went backstage and Dominic is staring into his bourbon like it contains the meaning of life.
"She has a kid." To the glass. Not to me. But I'm the only one here.
"She does."
"How old?"
"Two and a half."
He nods. Stares.
"I don't know what I'm doing."
"That's obvious."
He looks at me. I don't soften it.
"She's not a conquest. She's a single mother with a kid who depends on her. If you're not serious, if this is a phase or a fixation or a rich-guy fantasy about the beautiful dancer, walk away now. Tonight. Before she notices you enough to be hurt by your leaving."
"I don't know what I am. I've never felt this. I walked into this club for Colt and then she took the stage and I..." He shakes his head. "I can't stop showing up."
I recognize that honesty. Raw. Unpolished. Underneath the venture-capital swagger and the jaw that could cut glass, Dominic Vargas is genuinely, catastrophically undone.
"Then show up correctly. Don't lead with money. Don't lead with charm. Learn her daughter's name. And understand that she'll take a long time to trust you, and the process won't be on your schedule."
"I can do that."
"We'll see."
Marisol comes out from backstage with a sleeping Lucia draped over her shoulder. She walks past the bar. Nods at me. Glances at Dominic with the flat, unimpressed expression she reserves for men who occupy space she hasn't invited them into.
"Night, Sam."
She doesn't acknowledge Dominic. He watches her leave.
"She didn't even look at me."
"Correct."
"Is that... good?"
"It means she noticed you enough to deliberately not look. That's a start."
***