Page 69 of Happy Wife

—

We stayed late at the restaurant talking. I hadn’t realized how late it was until a server approached him to hand Marcus the keys for the night.

I looked around the dining room and saw it was empty.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Must be after ten.”

Hours had passed. I looked behind me, to the front door. It was dark outside and the lights from the lampposts that dotted the sidewalks were glowing.

“I should go,” I said, a little dazed. Marcus was just so easy to talk to.

“Want me to walk you to your car?” he offered, and I nodded. The crime rates in Winter Park weren’t exactly threatening statistics, but it was better to be safe than sorry. “Give me just a second to let the manager know I’ll be right back.”

Hopping off my barstool, I headed to the entrance. As I waited for Marcus, his team started to close down the space for the night—turning the lights up and the ambient music off. Without the crowds and low lighting that made the restaurant feel warm and inviting, there was a quieter energy to the space. It was a peekbehind the curtain that somehow felt intimate in a way the public wasn’t supposed to see.

“Ready?” Marcus met me by the door and we stepped onto the sidewalk.

Even at ten o’clock at night, the Florida heat was lingering in the air, and the temperature change from an air-conditioned restaurant to a humid evening sent goosebumps up my arms.

“I’m over there.” I pointed to my BMW X5 on the other side of the brick-paved avenue. I’d sold my Honda about a month after Will and I got married. He joked that parking the beat-up Accord in his driveway was bringing down the value of the real estate in the neighborhood as he handed me the keys to a brand-new car.

I’d loved that Honda. It’d given me my freedom since I was seventeen years old. But Will didn’t know that, and I know he didn’t mean it as an insult.

Marcus looked left and right and then reached his arm wide to gently touch my shoulder to guide me across. He wasn’t putting his arm around me, not really. But the contact still made me jump a little.

We walked to my car with an awkward silence hanging between us. I kept spinning my engagement ring—hooking the large stone with my thumb and turning it around my ring finger.

“Ohmygod.” I hit my hand to my head when we reached the car. “I just realized I didn’t pay for my meal.” I reached for my wallet.

“No,” Marcus said and put up a hand. “The Dear Prudence special is on the house.”

“Then how do you afford the royalties?”

My stomach did a little twist when I looked into his eyes. He casually pushed his hands into his pockets and laughed. Being with Marcus was like being under a spell. It was hard to reason or even describe, but I didn’t want the spell to break.

So, it was under the spell that I took a tentative step toward him, searching his eyes.

Can’t we just stay here? Can’t we pretend nothing—not the trouble back at my house or all the loneliness—nothing else is real?

He put his hands on my arms, rubbing at the goosebumps that wouldn’t fade. But he looked so sad.

“You should go home, Nora,” he said softly.

I knew he felt it, too. The pull between us. The almost-chemistry that almost gave way to a kiss. In another world, it might have been the end of a date or the start of something. And maybe one of us would have leaned in.

But this wasn’t that world.

I climbed into my car and headed home to my husband, leaving Marcus alone in the glow of a lone streetlamp, watching me go.

Chapter28

Seven days after

I made myself take a shower today. Though, I didn’t totally understand why I felt the pressure to do so.

Why exactly is it objectionable, when mourning, to look the part?

---