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“The job.” I laugh, glancing out the window again. I can’t help but think about the fact that if someone happens to walk past my home, glimpses inside the illuminated window, it won’t be one body they’ll see sitting at the table, eating alone. It’ll be two. “He was my boss. I’m a walking cliché, I know.”
“I wasn’t gonna say it.” Waylon smiles.
“But we didn’t meet at work,” I add. “We met before then.”
“So you quit the job so you could be together?”
“Pretty much. Sounds awful when you say it like that.”
“Did you like the job?”
“I loved it,” I say. “But I loved him, too.”
Waylon tosses some mushrooms into the skillet, and it hisses back to life. We’re quiet for a while, and I watch as he cooks, mixing in the Marsala wine, the chicken broth, the heavy cream. People always judge me when they find out about that—and to be honest, if it had happened to anyone but myself, I’d judge them, too. I never thought of myself asthatkind of girl: the kind who would intentionally shrink in order to fit neatly into the life of another.
But it wasn’t like that with Ben. It wasn’t.
I never even thought of what we had as an affair.That seemed too strong a word—too dirty, toowrong—and I think that’s because the relationship that had started to unfold between us was situated somewhere in the murky in-between: not wrong, exactly, but definitely not right, either. It was something that defied definition, something only we could understand. We didn’t cross any concrete lines; we didn’t break any rules. We never had sex—we never even kissed, apart from that night on the river, which, in my mind, didn’t even count.
I never thought of myself as theother womanwith Ben, because I wasn’t—but at the same time, I was. I know I was.
To Allison, I was. Or at least I would have been, had she known.
It seems naive now, maybe willfully so, but at twenty-five years old, I had painted a picture in my mind of whatcheatingwas, and it practically mirrored cable television: cheap motel rooms paid for in cash, burner phones, sleazy encounters that ended with shame and tears and lies. But it wasn’t like that with Ben, it never was. It was coffee together every morning, our faces pushed close in our favorite corner café. Memorizing each other’s orders and writing nicknames on the cup. It was inside jokes and multi-hour conversations, seamlessly switching between laid-back small talk and sharing our innermost thoughts, our deepest desires, as if we had known each other for years instead of months. Sharing a cocktail after work when everyone else had gone home, followed by late night text messages—I can’t sleep—the unspoken suggestion that he was lying awake, next to her, but still, thinking of me. In a way, the PG nature of our relationship made it even more intimate, more real. It was like a high school love that wasn’t yet cheapened by sex, something innocent and pure. It didn’t make me wonder if the physical aspect was all that he was really after, all that mattered. It didn’t make me wonder if he was just that kind of guy—a cheater—and it didn’t force me to look at myself in the mirror and decide if I was proud of who stared back.
At the time, it almost seemed valiant, to be honest: Ben’s refusal to get physically close. Like that very first time on the water, he had walked away and continued to do so every single time. I used to obsess over the way his mouth would hover inches from mine when we were deep in conversation; the way he would pull back slightly, licking his lips, like he was trying to taste me in the air between us. The way he would glance over his shoulder just one more time when he left the office at night, eying me at my desk, branding me into his brain before he went home to her. It made him seem like a good man, a noble man.
The kind of man who, if I could justhavehim, would always treat me right.
The irony, of course, was lost on me then: that he wasn’t being agood man to Allison, leading me on like that. He wasn’t treating her right. But in my mind, that was different.Shewas different. They didn’t have what we had.
Theyweren’tus.
I had underestimated one thing, though, and that was the danger in letting him fill every single crevice of my life. He was like water, pooling his way into my empty spots. He was my personal life and my professional life—he waseverythingto me—but I knew, deep down, that I wasn’t everything in return. I knew that despite what we had, Allison still had more. She had his last name, after all. His ring on her finger. She had his body in bed. I had come to think of him as a library book, entering my life on rented time. Something that I could enjoy for a few hours, curled up and comfortable, devouring as much of him as possible before our time was up. And because he wasn’t mine, I couldn’t scribble in the margins or write my name on the spine; I couldn’t leave my mark on him in any discernable way. Sometimes, when he stood up from his barstool—the room around us dark and quiet, his glass bone dry—I could feel him draining from me slowly, like blood seeping from an open wound.
When he opened the door and stepped out into the night, I was left with an overpowering emptiness, like I ceased to exist.
“I went freelance,” I say now, trying to make it sound exciting. Trying to convince Waylon that I do, in fact, work. “I got to write for all kinds of publications. I even traveled around a little, got to see different parts of the country.”
Waylon nods, dumps of a box of pasta into the boiling water.
“Freelance is nice.” His tone is polite, poised, like he’s commenting on the weather. “Working for yourself. There’s a freedom to it.”
“Ben was married when we met,” I blurt out, turning to the side. I don’t want to see the look on his face, the appraisal in his eyes. I don’t really want to be telling him this—it’s not something I’m proud of—but I know he’ll find out eventually, if he hasn’t already. He’s going to be talking to my friends and my neighbors. Detective Dozier. I’d rather him find out from me. “But I didn’t… we didn’t, you know. We weren’ttogetherwhen they were together.”
“They get divorced?” he asks, his voice clipped. We’re getting personal now, the mood veering quickly from easy small talk to something deeper. Neither of us is looking at the other.
“No,” I say, letting the silence stretch out for a beat too long. Then I turn toward him and take a deep breath. “She died.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ben hadn’t come into the office for three straight days.
I was starting to worry, wonder if maybe it had something to do with me. Maybe someone had found out—but found out aboutwhat, exactly? We hadn’t done anything wrong—or maybe he was having regrets, avoiding me. Trying to figure out how to end whatever it was that we had started. He wasn’t answering my texts; he hadn’t told me about any upcoming vacations. He didn’t have any work trips on his calendar.
All I knew was that on Monday, he was there. And then he wasn’t.
“Did you hear?”
