Page 74 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

He looks at me over the rim of his glass. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

His fingers tighten slightly around the stem.

“People always say they hate events like that,” I go on, twirling pasta around my fork. “But usually they mean they hate small talk or tuxedos or standing near shrimp while pretending they’re interested in supply chain reform.”

“You notice a lot.”

“I can’t help that.”

He sets his glass down. “I dislike being on display.”

The honesty of that lands quietly. I look at the tiredness in his face. The precision he never fully turns off. The way he sits like a man who’s always expecting to be needed.

And suddenly I understand something I hadn’t before.

It’s not the event.

It’s the exposure.

The performance of being fine in public.

“Because of your wife,” I say softly before I can stop myself.

Silence.

I immediately want to throw myself into the lake, because wow, Addy, beautiful. Delicate. Subtle. Truly a master of gentle conversation.

But Ethan doesn’t flinch, doesn’t shut down.

He just goes still, gaze dropping to the counter before lifting back to mine.

“Yes,” he says calmly.

I can feel the instinct to back off, to joke, to soften the moment with something ridiculous, but I don’t.

Instead, I say, “You don’t have to talk about it.”

He studies me for a long beat.

Then, surprising both of us, maybe, he says, “I know.”

The room feels smaller all of a sudden. Like the whole apartment has narrowed down to the island, the wine, the city lights beyond the glass, and this strange, fragile honesty stretching between us.

I take a sip of wine because my hands need a job.

“It’s okay if you hate it,” I say eventually. “The gala, I mean.”

A faint exhale leaves him. “I don’t hate the purpose of it.”

“Just the part where people look at you?”

“Yes.”

“That makes sense.”

I shift slightly on the stool, suddenly too aware of the space between us. Or rather, how little of it there really is.