"Hey," she said. Her voice was thick, slurred just slightly. "Thought you'd never get home."
I stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked at her. The smudged makeup, the messy hair, the way she was sitting there like she didn't know where else to go.
"Angela." My first instinct was concern, automatic and immediate. "What happened? Are you okay? Did Bryan?—"
"Bryan?" She laughed, but the sound was bitter. "No. Bryan's not like that. He didn't kick me out or hurt me or whatever you're thinking." She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. "He's just done. We're done. Says he wants a divorce. He was very clear about that."
I stood there, not knowing what to say. What was there to say?
"Can I come in?" Angela asked. "I've been sitting out here for like an hour and it's fucking freezing."
The smart thing would've been to call her a cab, make sure she got home safe, and close the door on this whole mess. Leave her out here with her problems and go inside to deal with my own.
But she looked so small and wrecked sitting there. And that same instinct that had gotten me into this disaster in the first place—the one that wanted to help, to fix, to be needed—wouldn't let me walk away.
"Yeah," I said. "Come on."
I unlocked the door and we went inside.
The house was dark and quiet, still smelling faintly of the cleaning products I'd used obsessively for days. Angela kicked off her shoes by the door and followed me into the kitchen, dropping her purse on the counter with a thud.
I grabbed two glasses from the cabinet and the whisky from the shelf above the fridge. It was probably the last thing she needed, but we were well past sensible tonight. I poured two fingers in each, slid one across the counter to her.
She picked it up and drank half of it in one go.
"So," I said. "Bryan."
"Bryan." She stared down at her glass. "He saw the video. Watched the whole thing, apparently. Then he just... sat there. He didn't yell, you know? Didn't break anything. Just sat there looking at me like I was a stranger. It hurt, Matt, it really hurt." She swallowed hard. "I kept thinking maybe you’d call, you know? Or… something. But you didn’t."
Her words made me flinch before I could stop myself. Being needed was the one thing I’d ever been good at, and I hadn’t even managed that. Not with her. Not with anyone.
"Anyway, he asked me to leave," Angela continued. "Packed a bag for me and said he needed time to think, to figure things out. That I should find somewhere else to stay. So I went to a hotel. And then I just..." She gestured vaguely. "I don't know. I’ve been going crazy sitting in that hotel room. I needed to talk to someone who understood. Someone who's going through the same thing."
I nodded slowly. We were both losing everything. Both watching our marriages implode because we'd been selfish and stupid and thought we could get away with it.
"I went to see Elena today," I said. "She pointed a shotgun at me and gave me two minutes. That was it. Two minutes to explain eight years, and then she closed the door."
"Jesus." Angela drank the rest of her whisky. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah. Me too."
We sat there in the quiet for a moment, both of us staring at our glasses, both of us knowing we'd done this to ourselves but still wanting someone to tell us it would be okay.
Angela poured herself another drink, her hand shaking slightly as she lifted the glass.
"I'm going to lose the clinic," she said. " Without him, it's done. I'll have to close it, sell off the equipment, probably file for bankruptcy." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Andthe house. God, the house. That's his too, really. He paid for most of it. I'll be lucky if I walk away with anything."
I thought about this house. About divorce lawyers and asset division and how fast a life could be dismantled and divided up like it had never existed at all.
"Me too," I said. "The house. Everything."
"So we're both fucked." She drank again. "Completely and totally fucked."
"Yeah."
She was quiet for a long moment. "But at least we have each other, right?"
I looked up at her.
