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“It is safe,” I tell him, and yank my arm away. My words feel like they’re laced with venom and I know I need to get away, right now, or I’m going to start crying. “Thousands of people take cabs every damn day. I know how to take care of myself.”
“Okay,” he says. “Then at least let me know when you’re home.”
I shake my head. Everything inside me is vibrating, like I’m a bell that’s been struck. He slept with a married woman. He goes to parties with her and her husband. He acts like nothing’s out of the ordinary.
“I don’t think I will,” I say.
He drops his hand. “Please let me call you in a few days.”
I step off the curb. There’s a taxi approaching. They must have been tipped off about the large party here, or they’re just constantly in motion, having dropped off guests.
I flag it down.
“Sophia,” he says. “Please.”
“I thought you were nothing like Percy,” I say.
For a long moment, we look at each other. His eyes reflect the way I feel inside, but I’m the one who’s furious, I’m the one who’s hurt.And damn him,I think,for looking like I’m breaking his heart, when he’s the one breaking mine.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I should’ve told you.”
I slam the cab door behind me.
26
SOPHIA
Milo watches me accusingly from the couch. He’s been trying to nap, with his head on a pillow next to me, but I keep jostling him.
“Sorry,” I tell him, when I get up from the couch for the tenth time in an hour. I’m too jittery to stay still.
“For what?” my sister says. Her voice through my headphones makes me feel painfully homesick.
“Sorry, I was talking to the cat.”
She laughs. “That’s where we’re at now?”
“It’s your fault,” I say. “You’re the one who forced him on me.”
“There’s no forcing a kitten on anyone.”
“Yes, there is. You forced me to look at the absolute pinnacle of cuteness, and then I was lost.”
“He was the sweetest of the litter.”
“Perfect for me, then,” I say. “Famously the sweetest of women.”
She chuckles. “You are when you want to be, you know. The people who know you know that.”
I pour myself a cup of tea. It’s my fourth, and I’m not really in the mood for one, but I need to do something, anything, to quell the maelstrom inside me.
“Soph,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
I sigh. “Yeah, so am I.”
“Do you know the circumstances around it? Maybe they had an open marriage, you know. The trophy wife and her husband.”
“Maybe,” I say, but I sound unconvinced even to my own ears. “But I think he would have told me that right off the bat, if it was.”
