“I don’t know. I didn’t answer, and my phone is dead.” His mouth twists into a wry smile.
“We have a house phone.”
“I didn’t call her back.”
“She wasn’t calling about work, not that late.” Adrian is very, very good at his job. The only emergencies he has involve the entire financial market, and when those happen, his phone blows up.
He nods, but he doesn’t break eye contact. “Probably not.”
“Definitelynot.” I cup my coffee. The heat warms my palms. “Are you still fucking her?”
“No. I fucked her once. That’s all.”
“Is there someone else now?”
“No.” He tears his gaze away and stares out the window at the gardens. The wind is whipping red and yellow leaves off the branches of the hawthorn and Japanese maple. It’s going to be a cold one today. “There was no one else before her. And no one now.”
That’s the lie that men tell when they get caught.It was only one time. They must think it makes it less bad, but I don’t see how. It’s like a murderer saying, “I only shot him in the head once.” Once is enough.
I don’t believe him on principle, but I actually don’t think what he claims is outside the realm of possibility. For one, I’ve never known him to lie to smooth over other people’s hurt feelings. For another, if he was happily banging someone else, he wouldn’t have so much time to be up my ass.
“So why her? Why then?” It doesn’t really matter, but I’m only human. I’m curious.
He lifts his coffee to drink and then blinks in surprise that it’s empty. He places the cup back in front of him on the table, rests his hands palm down on either side, and stares at the decimated bread basket between us.
I expect him to say she came onto him. He was drunk.Maybe he’ll say he was lonely, although he’s smart enough to know I won’t believe it. He’s always alone in his own way. It’s his preferred state of being.
“I was on edge,” he says instead.
On edge? “What does that mean?”
He turns his gaze toward the window, but he doesn’t seem to be seeing anything. “It means on edge.”
It’s like talking to a surly, entitled Pearl. “Okay. You were on edge. Why?”
He finally looks back at me. “I don’t know.”
“Because of me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Maybe? Are you saying you were mad at me? Why?”
“I don’t know.” His mouth draws taut. He’s getting frustrated, too.
“Because you think I’m a gold digger?”
“I don’t think that.”
I scoff. “You said so yourself. I married you for an easy life.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Is thiseasy?” My fingers tighten around my cup. I want to throw it at his head and watch the coffee splash in an arc, splatter the crème grasscloth wallpaper, and drip from the chandelier.
I want him to fall in love with me—fall in love for the very first time in his life when he didn’t think such a feeling was even possible—and then I want to rip his whole life out from under him and tell him that he didn’t really love me, he was only with me for the money.
And then I want to kick him in the nuts.
