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“I did. But I don’t see any point if you’re not going to be honest with me. You’ve been lying to me for months, and I’m over it.”
“This is hard—”
“Hard?” I echo his words in disbelief.
“Of course it is! It’s hard because I’ve hurt you, and that’s the last thing I ever wanted to do. I love you, Bailey. You gotta believe me. I love you so fucking much. Please, just let me explain.”
The seconds tick by as we stare at each other, a plea in his eyes. His shoulders sag when I sit back down.
He lets out a breath, rubbing his hands over his face. The silence stretches while he looks down at the floor, composing his thoughts.
“When I got that promotion, I felt like I was in over my head. Most days, I felt like I was drowning. Fuck, mostly, I was just winging it, pretending I knew what I was doing. Justine joined my team, and at first, I gave her easy things to handle, but she was good at what she did, so I gave her more and more. I started depending on her, which led to a lot of late nights.”
“Just the two of you?”
He nods. “But I swear to you, Bailey, it was just work. Anyway, we started talking. Mostly about work and how cutthroat the industry is. We developed a friendship, and I felt I could confide in her because she understood the environment.”
His words are tiny little arrows coated in poison.
“So, night after night, while I was waiting at home for you, you were at work confiding in another woman?”
“Yes,” he says, closing his eyes. “I can see now that it was completely inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate,” I muse, thinking about how inadequate that word is. When I’ve always been there for him. When I’ve never given him any reason to turn to someone else for support. When I’ve always thought we were a team.
The image of them on the couch, their intimate postures, his hand on her leg has been looping through my head all day, and the picture it paints screams to me that he’s a big, fat liar. That he’s trying to downplay what really went on.
“What I saw…” I shake my head and take a deep breath, forcing the words out through a tight throat. “…it didn’t look like two colleagues confiding in each other. It looked like more. A lot more.”
“Fuck, Bailey, I know it looked bad, but if you’d stayed, I could have explained it to you. Justine was upset about some personal issues, and what you saw was me trying to offer a friend some comfort in a difficult time. That’s all it was. I swear to you, on my life. Things have never been physical between us. I know I messed up big time. I let all the stress from work get to me, and I crossed a line I shouldn’t have, and I’m willing to do anything to make that up to you. I’ll go to counseling. We can do marriage counseling. Anything you want.”
I want to ask him about his ring, and I consider it for a moment, but my shoulders are drooping from exhaustion, and I just don’t have it in me.
“Okay, Quinn,” I say, standing up.
He stares at me in confusion, anxiety and relief warring with each other on his face.
“What does that mean?” he asks, jumping up and taking a cautious step toward me.
“It means I’ve listened to you, and now I’m done listening. I’m tired, and I’m going to bed.”
“But I made us dinner. Please, eat something at least.”
“I’m not hungry,” I say, hardening my heart against the plea in his voice. Too many times did he ignore my pleas.
*****
QUINN
I TRYto catch Justine’s eyes when I walk past her desk, but she keeps her eyes glued to her computer screen.
I know I have a lot of explaining to do. After Bailey left, I rushed back to my office to grab my phone and keys with hardly a word to Justine. I couldn’t, no, didn’t want to spare the time to reassure her. My only thought was to get to Bailey to try to salvage this huge cluster fuck I’m in.
I will never forget or forgive myself for the devastation on her face.
I close my office door behind me and drop my head in my hands. I have to let Justine go. I had a lot of time yesterday while waiting for Bailey to come home to come up with a plan to salvage this situation. Without losing both my wife and my career.
If I don’t handle this situation tactfully, Justine could decide that getting revenge is more important than Phillip’s regard. No matter how good I am at my job, I’ll be fired.
