“Where’s your husband?”
“He’s not here tonight.”
“I gathered. Where is he?”
“Out of town,” I said.
“How’d you meet him?” he asked. “And don’t say it’s not my business, Olivia. Just answer me.”
My breathing sped. He said my name as if it belonged to him, a collar around my neck to which only he held the key. And he made demands the same way, as if he knew without a shadow of a doubt that I’d answer. And I did.
“We met at work,” I said. “Kind of. Our offices were in the same building, and we’d take our breaks in the courtyard at the same time.”
“And he asked you to marry him?”
The absurdity of the question made me laugh. “Not right away. We were friends for a while.”
“How long?”
I shook my head. It wasn’t as if these were intimate details about my relationship—anyone who knew us had heard the story of how we’d met. Yet I felt as if I was doing something wrong. Sharing intel with the enemy, however harmless. “I don’t know,” I said. “Six months maybe.”
He grunted. “Six months. Six fucking months he waited to ask you out.”
I drew my eyebrows together. “Plus one day. Since you want to get specific.”
“Idowant to get specific. Very specific.” He stepped closer to me, and my heart rate kicked up. “Why one day?”
“I . . . I had to think it over.”
He dropped his eyes to my lips. “What made you say yes?”
“I realized he’d become more than a friend.” I watched the way David watched my mouth. “Do I have something in my teeth?”
David seemed to be getting closer. He was so tall, so wide, I couldn’t even see if the other women were still on the balcony. I couldn’t see the door. He raised his eyes from my mouth. “So you took pity on him. That’s why you agreed to go out with him?”
“No,” I said. “It was more than that. I was attracted to him.”
“Was?”
“Am.”
“You were attracted to him.” David tilted his head. “And it took him six months to notice.”
Now, we were getting into gray area, into the details only Lucy and Gretchen knew. I hadn’t even shared this with Bill. But the deeper David probed, the more uncomfortable I was—and that was something I hadn’t felt in a while. My friends and family knew my limits.
Discomfort meant things were too real.
“Answer me, Olivia,” he said, leaving no room for argument.
“The attraction wasn’t . . . it didn’t build. It just happened. I didn’t see Bill that way. But the day he asked me out, that night, I had this dream . . .”
David put one hand on the railing next to me. After a few moments of silence, he said, “I don’t think I need to hear the dream.”
“We made love.” It came out unbidden, but I got a sense of satisfaction with the way David’s jaw ticked. He’d made me squirm, and now it was his turn. “And it seemed so real, the sex. Even to this day, it feels more like a memory than a dream. And after that, he was no longer a friend in my eyes.”
David took another step. He was so close now, I had to tilt my head back to look up at him. “You’ve been married for . . . how long?”
“Five years.”
