Page 22 of I Do, You Don't
No one mentioned it, except for my boss and Drew. But I caught Carol at table five watching me, like she was waiting for me to break.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not there. Not in front of them.
I found myself staring instead, at the way Delilah leaned close when she spoke to him, at the way Gideon didn’t pull away. Were they together now? Had they already been?
Did he kiss her the way he used to kiss me?
Now I sit on the couch after work, lights low, cold creeping in through the windows. I can’t stop replaying it, Gideon acting like we’d never shared a life, a bed, a dream. It wasn’t silence; it was erasure.
Strangers. That’s what we are now. No, worse than strangers. Strangers can ask for a pen, or at least murmur “Sorry, sir,” when they bump shoulders. Not Gideon and me. We avoid.
Strangers are people you can still talk to.
And somehow, that’s what hurts most.
I wipe my eyes, unsure if they’re even wet anymore. Everything blurs. All that remains is the hollow pit in my stomach, the weight of desperation pressing down like stone.
And desperate people do desperate things.
The room is cluttered, cold, crowded with memories of him. Outside, the streetlamp below my apartment flickers, casting a wavering glow across the wall opposite the couch. I watch it, the light shifting like a ghost.
I feel it before I see him.
The air thickens—electric, bracing for a lightning strike. The hairs on my arms rise. My heart stutters once, then again, harder.
I’ve always had a visceral reaction when Gideon was near. We used to call it our “supernatural power,” half-joking.
But he isn’t here. So I ignore my body’s insistence that he is.
The couch creaks beneath me as I straighten. The streetlamp outside flickers again, casting erratic flashes across the wall. Strobes of warning. I sit motionless, holding my breath, watching the light dance.
Then—
The door slams open, the crash reverberating through the apartment.
I don’t need to turn. The air already told me. My bones already knew. I wasn’t wrong after all.
Gideon.
His cologne hits me first—sharp, familiar—dragging me back to a thousand moments I wish I could erase. His presence swallows the room, heavy and suffocating, like a storm about to break.
His voice slices the silence. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
I freeze. My breath catches—shallow, jagged. I want to speak, to stop him, but nothing comes.
“Answer me!” he snarls. “Did you think I was too stupid to see the truth? To figure out what was happening behind my back?”
His boots pound the floor like thunder. Each step rattles something loose inside me.
“You think I didn’t notice the way you two looked at each other?” he spits. “You and Calvin.”
There’s nothing left to say. He’s already chosen what to believe. Still, I refuse to let him cast me as the villain. “There’s something you don’t know, but it’s not what you think.”
“You slept with him,” he says, low and venomous.
“No.”
“How long, Lara? How long were you lying to me?”
