“I don’t know, Bea,” Kate said with a shrug. “It feels a little like you’re romanticizing patriarchy.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Sweet mercy, someone hide the comments section.”
“You think I’m…oppressed?”
“It sounds like you’re caught in systemic misogyny,” Kate said.
Maya threw both arms up in an X. “No. No politics at the birthday party.”
“It’s okay. I’m not bothered,” Bea said, and realized she meant it. A few years ago she might’ve parroted that samelanguage like scripture. Or stumbled to apologize and justify herself.
Tonight she didn’t feel the need to do either.
Kate’s mouth tightened. “So you’re fine withliterallybeing owned by your husband.”
“By Rafael Griffin?” Bea met her gaze. “Enthusiastically.”
Jenna let out a strangled laugh. “Bea.”
“Maybe I’d feel different if ithappenedto me. But it didn’t.”
Her gaze drifted across the room again. Rafael stood with the others, beer tipped to his mouth as he listened to her old friend Logan. Even relaxed, his body was angled slightly toward her, the habit of a man who always ensured she was in his line of sight.
As if her attention summoned him, his green eyes lifted and found hers. That slow, wicked half-smile curved his lips, entirely for her. A soft, victorious little smile touched Bea’s mouth in answer.
Bea turned back to the women. “I chose him.”
Epilogue
Late light stretched across the hardwood floors. Storage boxes were starting to pile up along the wall. Christmas decorations, gearing up for December 1st when she would turn this place into a winter wonderland, even if the UR insisted on being seasonally backward.
Fin Diesel lay sprawled on the rug, mortarboard askew beside Octavian, the orange octopus. Bea had staged them on the armchair earlier to send Claire photographic proof that her oversized graduation shark plush was being “successfully integrated into family life,” and not neglected in favor of his flashier sibling.
Bea picked them up and returned them to their spot on the seat.
Rafael’s leather notebook rested on the coffee table beside an unfinished glass of sparkling water. She picked it up to stack it with the others.
Something slipped free. A small square of cardboard drifted to the floor. She crouched and picked it up. It was a valet stub from a Northgate restaurant.
She turned it over. Blue ink. Slashing, unmistakable. His handwriting.
Dated just over a year ago.
She isn’t scared of me anymore
Her breathing slowed. Who wasshe? Bea opened the notebook. Inside, flattened between the pages, were dozens of similar ticket stubs, each one marked in the same hand. She lowered herself to the couch.
The ones on top were the oldest, nearly four years ago. When she first arrived in Northgate.
Met a small girl who bites back. She called me a shark.
Her mouth curved. She reached for another.
She studies me like I’m dangerous. And only looks when she thinks I’m not watching.
Heat rose faintly beneath her skin. At the end of that year:
She still doesn’t know the gym is mine.
