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“She marriedthatman?”
“Arthur, yes. He plays golf with my father.”
An icy cold hand grips my spine, and I come to an abrupt stop. “When did they get married?”
“Almost a decade ago now, I believe.”
My stomach turns. It’s the flip you experience on a roller coaster, that shift when gravity drops out beneath you, but you haven’t started to fall yet.
But you know it’s coming.
“Please tell me it’s not what I think it is.”
His brow furrows, his face turning tight. “Fuck, I wish I could. Sophia, wait, let me explain—”
“No.”
I don’t want to hear it. Not while I’m free-falling, imagining Isaac, the Isaac I know, doingthatwith her. Sneaking away in hotel rooms and helping her break her marriage vows andhe had an affair with a married woman.
They all have affairs here.
Infidelity is like a drug for the incestuous, status-obsessed, insular New York upper class. Is wealth so boring, then, that you take to ending marriages just to keep life interesting?
“Sophia, their situation isn’t anything like yours,” he says. There’s urgency in his deep voice now. “It’s not the same.”
“Oh, really?” My heels tap sharply with every furious step. “They don’t wear wedding bands on their ring fingers?”
“They do,” he says. “Sophia, I wanted to tell you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t, and that mistake is on me.”
“As is fucking a married woman!” I say. The fury burns through my veins, my atoms, into my very soul. It feels like I’ve been slapped, a betrayal, yet again.
Cheating is everywhere in this world.
Everywhere.
“Sophia,” he says. “I will tell you anything you want to know. Their marriage isn’t a true partnership, it’s not a—”
“Excuses,” I say. “Howcouldyou?”
He’s quiet, and in the charged silence I hear the sound of us breaking. Fracturing right down the middle, as clearly as if the sidewalk had opened up between us, and turned into a gaping chasm.
“It’s not something I’m proud of,” he says quietly. “Sweetheart, this doesn’t change a single thing about us, or how I feel about you.”
No. I can’t handle that endearment, not right now. “There’s a reason I didn’t want to date Upper East Side men,” I say. “There’s a reason I was done,and damn you for making me reconsider. Damn you for doing this. Notyou. It wasn’t supposed to be you, too!”
He stands there, gilded beneath the streetlamp. Pain is etched into the planes of his face. “Let me take you home,” he says.
“No.” This conversation won’t get us anywhere. My hands shake, and I don’t know if it’s the cold or the anger. Both. Neither. Maybe I’m just that close to exploding, to fleeing New York, to never return.
“Sophia, let me drop you off back home.”
“I can take a cab.”
“It’s not as safe—”
