The car ride home was twenty-three minutes. I know because I counted every single one of them. Counting was easier than thinking. Thinking meant replaying what I saw and I wasn't ready to do that yet so I counted instead.
Julian was talking. Something about how well the party went. How his mother really outdid herself. How so-and-so from the board showed up which was apparently a big deal. His hand was on my thigh the way it always was when he drove. Casual. Possessive. Like my leg was the armrest and he had every right to it.
I was looking out the window. Manhattan at night was beautiful if you didn't think too hard about it. All those lights in all those buildings and behind every window was somebody living a life you knew nothing about. Somebody happy. Somebody sad. Somebody lying next to a person they didn't recognize anymore.
"You okay?" Julian glanced at me. "You've been quiet."
"Tired," I said. My voice sounded normal. I don't know how.
He squeezed my thigh. "You were perfect tonight. Everyone loved you."
Everyone loved me. I wanted to ask him if he loved me. Not the way you love something you own but the way you love something you're terrified of losing. I wanted to ask him who Camille was to him. I wanted to ask him why he held her head like that. Why he called her baby in the same voice he used on me.
I didn't ask anything. I just watched the city blur past my window and counted the minutes until I could be alone.
When we got home Julian tossed his keys on the counter and loosened his tie. A man with absolutely nothing on his conscience. He poured himself water and leaned against the kitchen island scrolling through his phone with one hand.
"Camille seems cool," he said without looking up.
My stomach dropped so fast I almost grabbed the counter.
"Your friend. The one you introduced me to." He looked up. "Where'd you meet her again?"
He was asking about her. Standing in our kitchen in the suit he wore while he held her and he was asking about her like she was just a name. Like he hadn't had his mouth on her forehead two hours ago. Like his hands didn't know her body.
"Gym," I said. The lie came out so smooth I almost believed it myself. I couldn't even remember where Camille and I actually met because my brain was too busy trying to figure out if his question was genuine or if he was testing me to see if I knew.
"She's pretty," he said. Then he locked his phone and smiled at me. "Not as pretty as you though."
I smiled back..I don't know how my face did it but it did. The fucking audacity of this man.
We went to bed. Julian fell asleep in under ten minutes because that's what men with no guilt do. They sleep like the dead while the person next to them lies awake rearranging every memory they have ,looking for the lies they missed.
I stared at the ceiling.
Baby. I'm sorry.
The way he pulled her into his chest ,So Gently.
How long? That was the question that kept circling my brain like a car on a track. How long had this been happening? Before the proposal? During? Was he sleeping with her the night before he got on one knee? Did he go from her bed to that restaurant where he asked me to spend the rest of my life with him?
And Camille. My friend Camille. The girl who texted me good morning some days. Who recommended a hair stylist last month. Who sat across from me at brunch and laughed at my jokes and asked about wedding planning like she cared. Was any of it real? Was she sitting there the whole time knowing she had been in my fiancé's bed the night before?I must have looked like a complete clown to her.
I turned on my side and looked at Julian's face. He was handsome when he slept. The sharpness that made him attractive when he was awake smoothed out into something almost innocent. I used to love watching him sleep. Used to trace the line of his jaw with my finger and feel lucky.
Now I was looking at him trying to figure out how many times he had lied to me. Every late meeting. Every work dinner. Every night he came home and showered before touching me. I used to think he was being considerate. Clean. Now I wondered whose smell he was washing off.
My throat tightened and my eyes burned but I forced it down. Not here. Not next to him. I would not give him the satisfaction of crying in a bed he paid for. I swallowed it. All of it. Pushed it so far down I could almost pretend it wasn't there.
Almost.
Morning came the way it always did. Sun through the curtains. Julian's alarm at seven. Him reaching over to silence it then reaching for me. His arm slid around my waist and he pulled me close, pressing his face into my neck. His morning routine. Every single day for the last two years he did this. Held me for a few minutes before getting up. I used to melt into it. Let my body curve into his and feel safe.
This morning I lay there stiff as a board.
He didn't notice. Or maybe he did and didn't care. He kissed my shoulder and got up. I listened to him shower. Listened to him get dressed. Listened to his footsteps in the kitchen. The coffee machine. His keys. His watch clicking around his wrist.
"I've got meetings all day. I'll be back late." He appeared in the bedroom doorway fully dressed. Navy suit. White shirt. No tie today. He looked good.
"Okay," I said from the bed.
He came over and kissed my forehead. His lips were warm and dry and I wanted to scream.
"Love you."
"Love you too."
The front door opened and closed. The lock turned. And then silence.
I lasted about ninety seconds.
I made it to the bathroom before my legs gave out. My knees hit the tile and the sound echoed off the walls and then everything I had been holding in since that hallway at the engagement party came out of me like something being exorcised.
I cried so hard I couldn't breathe. The kind of crying where your body folds in on itself and you're making sounds that don't even sound human. I pressed my forehead against the cold floor and just let it take me because I didn't have the strength to fight it.
Three years. Three years I gave this man. I left my job for him. A job I was good at and got payed so well.Where I had built something. I walked away from Dominic's office with that resignation letter and I felt like I was doing the right thing because Julian said it was time. Because he said we were building a life together and working for his uncle complicated things. And I believed him because why would I question the man I loved?
I stopped talking about the restaurant. My restaurant. The notebook with the recipes and the floor plans and the stupid little sketches of what the dining room would look like. I put it in a drawer and left it there because Julian smiled and said "that's nice babe" the way you talk to a child showing you a drawing and I got the message. My dream was cute but not serious. Not compared to his world. Not compared to Laurent money and Laurent plans and Laurent everything.
And sex. Was I not enough? Was my body not enough? I gave him everything. Every part of me. Willingly. Enthusiastically. I thought we were good. I thought that part of us at least was solid. But clearly something about me wasn't sufficient because he went and found it somewhere else.
I lay on that bathroom floor until the tile warmed under my body and my tears ran out. Then I lay there some more because getting up meant going back to performing and I was so tired already.
Eventually I got up. I washed my face. The woman in the mirror looked exactly like me but her eyes were different,Like someone had turned the light off behind them.
I brushed my teeth. Did my skin routine. Made myself presentable. Because that's what you do. That's what women like me do. We fall apart in private and put ourselves back together before anyone can see the cracks.
By the time Julian came home that evening I was on the couch watching something I wasn't paying attention to. The apartment was clean. Dinner was made. I was showered and dressed and looked like a woman who had spent a perfectly normal day doing perfectly normal things.
He walked in carrying takeout even though I had already cooked. He didn't check the kitchen. Didn't ask if I made anything. Just assumed I hadn't.
"Got your favorite," he said, holding up a bag.
"Thanks," I said.
We ate on the couch. He talked about his day. I nodded. He showed me something on his phone and I laughed at the right moment. He pulled my feet into his lap and rubbed them while we watched TV and I let him because every act of normalcy was a brick in the wall I was building between what I knew and what I was willing to deal with right now.