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She says my name as though she’s known me a long time. I shake my head to clear out the cobwebs. To try to, at least. “I, um… I don’t think I can keep anything down right now, to be honest.”
Bee nods. “Of course. You probably just want a hot shower and some clean clothes. Come with me; I’ve got you.”
I look around for Dmitri, but he disappeared when I wasn’t paying attention and left me with his ethereal fiancée. I have no choice but to follow her into the bowels of the massive penthouse.
All the interior details of this place are lost on me. It’s just one beautiful thing after the next, so endless that I don’t even bother trying to ooh and ahh over any of them.
What I do notice is the everyday stuff dotted here and there, almost as an afterthought. The framed engagement pictures of Dmitri and Bee hanging on the walls of the broad corridor she leads me down. The gorgeous pink stilettos lying discarded in a second sitting room next to a neatly-aligned pair of men’s leather oxfords.
It hurts how beautiful it is.
It hurts that each of them look like they belong here.
It hurts how much I don’t.
Bee swings open a door for me and steps aside to let me pass. “Here you go. Make yourself at home. There are fresh linens in the cabinet under the sink and I’ll leave some clean clothes on the bed for you to change into when you’re done showering.”
She gives me a smile that doesn’t betray even the slightest modicum of jealousy. Not that she has anything to be jealous of, but a lesser woman might resent the fact that a random stranger gets to carry her partner’s child.
I know I would in her position.
She’s already left before I remember that I didn’t even thank her. With a self-pitying grimace, I pull the door shut and turn to the guest bedroom.
The first thing that catches my attention is the view. It’s Chicago in every direction, Lake Michigan looming beyond in one huge, unbroken plane of blue-gray glass.
The second thing is the series of small, framed photographs standing on the sleek dressing table beside the windows. I squint closer.
Two young kids. The boy is dark-haired, silver-eyed, ridiculously beautiful. Easy enough to guess who that is.
The girl is blonde and pale with the same careless smile that she carried with her into adulthood. That’s an easy ID, too.
Maybe that’s why Bee can walk around in Dmitri’s space, amongst Dmitri’s things, and touch Dmitri’s chest with that infallible air of ownership: they must’ve just been together so long that there was never any question of being with anyone else.
I slide my gaze down the line to the next photo. Same duo, but they’re older in this one. She still has the softness of childhood but he looks like he’s well on his way to being a man. The lines of his face are hardening into place.
The last photograph takes them into their teenage years. Dmitri looks handsome as ever and that cocked eyebrow of his says that he knows it. Bee is standing next to him, looking to the side and laughing at something out of frame. She’s blossomed in the meantime; her long blonde hair almost touches her waist and, even in stillness, that laugh of hers is electric.
I’m not sure why tears jump to my eyes. It’s just the shock wearing off, I tell myself as I duck into the bathroom and strip naked.
But maybe it’s more than that.
Maybe, as I step under the rainfall showerhead in the huge, black-tiled stall, it’s the panic of a fish flopping around on dry land, realizing that it’s found itself somewhere it was never, ever meant to be.
I keep my head down and let the scorching water run all over me. It turns pink as it washes away the blood Dmitri didn’t already clean himself. When I reach out to adjust the water pressure, I see that my fingers are still trembling.
“Fuck,” I breathe to the empty bathroom.
Everything in here is soothing—the water, the temperature, the fruit-scented soaps that lather like a dream. But no matter how long I stay here, I can’t bring myself to relax.
Because I don’t belong here.
If anyone knows the feeling of not belonging, it’s me. Dad didn’t want me. My ex William didn’t, either. That didn’t stop me from thrusting my heart in both their hands and saying, Here, have everything.
I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised when they broke it.
Each time, I picked up the shattered pieces and promised myself that it would never happen again. I would make smart choices. I would be self-sufficient, independent, confident.
And yet here I am, in the middle of another man’s marriage.
