Page 5 of Little Gray Dress

“Emi, stop.” He grabs my arm and pulls me back in his office and shuts the door. “Let me explain.”

“Fuck you, Jack! There is nothing to explain. I saw what I saw.” I jerk the door open, slamming it against the bookcase behind it and speed-walk down the hall but stop momentarily just in front of Andy’s office when I hear Jack running behind me. Maybe it’s not what I think; he was wearing a lot more clothes than Madison. Yet somehow, she ended up nearly naked. That’s not nothing.

“Please, Ems.”

I turn to face him when Andy gets to his doorway to see what is happening. No, I can’t pretend like what I just saw was right on any level.

“You know what, Jack? She can have you.” I pull the 3-carat diamond ring off my finger and for a moment I just stare at it. I am supposed to be getting married in two days. I can feel my heart sinking in my chest as Jack starts to walk towards me with his eyes glistening with tears. “Don’t follow me.” I pitch the ring at his head and watch him duck before scrambling to grab it off the floor.

I run to the stairwell and when the heavy door booms shut behind me I run down three flights of stairs and the three blocks to a parking garage, where I disappear in between cars just in case he’s following me.

“Are you OK?” I hear a voice behind me and realize I’m leaning on this man's car, sobbing. “Can I get you some help?”

I shake my head and wander to the Max train platform to catch a ride anywhere but here. Where do I go? I pull out my phone and scroll through the contacts. Lily.

“Can I come over?” I sob into the phone, startling Lily out of her daytime TV trance.

“Of course, are you crying? What happened?”

“Crying? Yeah. It’s a long story. I’ll be there in a few.”

How do I explain over the phone that I just caught my fiancé, the man I fell in love with at first sight, underneath his nearly-nude receptionist, two days before our wedding? Or whatever it is he was doing. How could this happen? How could I not have seen this coming? I thought there were always signs to a cheating boyfriend, but I sure didn’t see any. He can’t possibly be that good a liar, can he? How do I explain this to the three hundred people who are expecting to watch us get married this weekend?

“What happened?” Lily ushers me into her apartment, wearing a look of worry I haven’t seen since my mother died.

“He’s cheating.” I cry it through the sobs and throw myself face first on to her couch. “I caught him with Madison in his office.”

“You what? No way, Ems, Jack would never—”

“He did.” I jerk up off the couch and yell it at her like poison. “I saw it. I’m not just imagining things. She was on him. ON him.” I exaggerate the words so she understands how serious this is.

“But it doesn’t make sense? Jack adores you.”

“Apparently not enough to keep his hands off his receptionist.” I lie back on the couch and cover my face with a blanket draped over the back.

I’m not sure what happened; one minute I’m sobbing to Lily about Jack, and the next I hear a door shutting and Lily is walking in with a pizza, her husband Josh behind her carrying two bottles of wine.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Um, you stopped making sense about ten minutes into your story so I may or may not have slipped you a Xanax.” Lily attempts to smile at me through clenched teeth. “After that you cried yourself to sleep, and I have been fighting off Jack all afternoon.”

“And I heard about all the crying and thought some booze was in order,” Josh says, not wasting any time filling his plate with a pile of pizza and shoving my legs off the couch so he can sit in his usual spot in front of the TV.

“He came here?” I pull the blanket off and make my way to the wine.

“Yeah, he actually sat in the hallway for about two hours before I finally agreed I’d try and convince you to go talk to him later.”

“No way.” I pour wine into the biggest milk glass I can find, all the way to the top, with Lily side-eying me from the opposite side of the table.

“That’s a lot of wine.”

“Not yet it isn’t.”

“Can I give you some advice?” Josh talks in between pizza bites. Putting down a plate of food, no matter how serious the situation may be, has never been Josh’s strong point.

“Do you have to?” I ask, having no patience for stupid ideas right now.

“Go talk to him. This isn’t like Jack. I’m sure there’s more to the story.” He bites off the end of a piece of pizza. “I’m not saying go forgive him and take him back, but at least hear him out.”

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