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“Tea? Hot cocoa?” I felt like we needed something to drink to have a heart-to-heart over.
“Would it make you feel better to make tea, Sophie?” he asked, seeing straight through me.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” I replied, though our Bunn kettle already held hot water. I filled two mugs and put them on a tray, then grabbed an assortment of tea bags, two spoons, and a small box of sugar cubes.
El-Mudad whistled sarcastically when it set it on the table. “Elegant.”
“Shut up. I’m American. We don’t know how to do this stuff.” I took a mug and pushed it toward him, careful not to slosh the water.
“Sophie...” he began, his tone changing slightly. I raised my eyebrows and made an affirmative noise to prompt him to continue. He said, “What do you mean, Neil has fucked up with you over Valerie before?”
Being so in love with El-Mudad, it was easy to remember that we hadn’t always all been together. He hadn’t been with us during those first early, turbulent years. And he probably thought the worst, when I’d phrased it that way. “Nothing like you’re thinking. I swear. He’s never cheated on me.”
El-Mudad’s shoulders relaxed, confirming my suspicions.
I went on. “It was not for lack of trying on her part.”
“She tried to seduce him?” His eyes narrowed, his already low opinion of Valerie visibly sinking further.
Maybe it would have been nice to have him on my side in loathing Valerie, but it wouldn’t have been fair of me to encourage him to hate her. “Not that I’m aware of. But she did try to sabotage our relationship. The first time I met her, I overheard her trying to shame Neil by saying I was his midlife crisis. At Emma’s wedding rehearsal dinner, I caught her bragging to someone about how she could break Neil and me up.”
El-Mudad leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
“I know, I know,” I said in response to his long, slow exhale. “And Neil didn’t react well to the situation, at all. He just tried to keep the peace. Which involved trying to convince himself that Valerie was completely uninterested in him. And trying to convince me of the same, despite everything I’d heard and seen. I mean, I basically threatened to beat her ass in a restaurant bathroom. It’s not like I didn’t know what was going on.”
El-Mudad closed his eyes and shook his head, as though he were in pain. “Why would he do that? Why would he not listen to his wife?”
“I wasn’t his wife at the time,” I clarified. “Although, that’s not an excuse. He was being clumsy. Not necessarily malicious. He’d just wanted everyone to get along, for Emma’s sake. I think he saw some point in the future when he and Valerie wouldn’t be forced into such close proximity as they were raising their daughter, then sending her off to college and getting her through early adulthood, then planning the wedding...”
“But they work together. They own a company together,” El-Mudad reminded me. “He was never planning for such a time.”
“The company is...that’s complicated.” I picked at my thumbnail. It was petty of me, but I hated seeing her name next to my husband’s every time the company was mentioned in the media or we had to visit the New York office. But I knew why he’d founded the company with her. “Elwood and Stern would never have been Elwood and Stern if he hadn’t gotten her pregnant. It’s as simple as that. He felt guilty for not staying with her, and apparently that was his version of atonement.”
“So, there is a lot of guilt there.” El-Mudad considered. “But you’ve yet to physically assault her, yes?”
I laughed, heat rising to my face. “Okay, that was not one of my finer moments. But things have gotten better.”
“Because of Olivia?” he guessed.
“No. Before that.” I thought back to the weeks before my wedding to Neil and how I’d had to track her down at her office to get her RSVP. “We had a talk. A not pleasant one. But she admitted to me that she was still in love with Neil, and that she had been for a very long time. Once it was out there between us and we’d both acknowledged it, Neil couldn’t deny it anymore. And after that, things really did get better. Before, that, even, if I’m being totally fair to her. Which isn’t something I’m great at. She helped me when Neil had some trouble after his mother died. She was there for me when no one else could be after his...bad time. Like, all I had to do was call her and she dropped everything and came through for me. She’s not a villain. She’s a person. Anything evil about her…I built that up in my head.”
