"What's my favorite color?" she asked.
He blinked. "What?"
"My favorite color. What is it?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. His mind raced through dinners, conversations, the apartment they'd shared for two months. Her side of the closet, her things in the bathroom, the throw pillows she'd picked for the couch. Had she told him? She must have told him. He must have heard it at some point.
Nothing.
"What about my favorite memory from growing up?" she said. "I told you that one. On our third date. I told you about the summer my dad drove us to Lake George in a car with no air conditioning and we ate gas station sandwiches and swam until dark. Do you remember that?"
He remembered the third date. He remembered the restaurant — Italian, his choice — the wine, and the way she'd looked in candlelight with her curls pinned up and her eyes shining. He remembered thinking:She presents well.He did not remember Lake George. He did not remember gas station sandwiches. He'd been checking his phone under the table when she told him.
"I remember the date," he said.
"But not the story."
Silence.
Charlotte crossed her arms. Holding herself together. "What about my students? I talk about them all the time. I know I do, because Kate tells me I do it too much. So tell me: what's the name of the boy who draws dragons during math? The one I've been worried about all year because his mom is sick?"
He didn't know. He'd heard her talk about her students. He knew that much, knew the sound of her voice when she talked about them, animated and warm, the most alive version of herself. But the names, the details, the boy with the dragons and the sick mother — those had been background noise. Nice background noise. It made her seem caring, grounded and good. But background noise all the same.
Charlotte watched him search for an answer he didn't have. She closed her eyes.
"You don't know," she said. "You don't know any of it. Six months, and you don't know my favorite color, or my favorite memory, or the names of the kids I spend every day with. Youdon't know that I hate olives, that I'm scared of elevators or that I sleep with a light on because I had nightmares as a kid." Her voice was even. Measured. Terrifying. "You don't know me. You never tried."
"That's not true. I?—"
"What color are my eyes?"
"Brown," he said. Fast. Certain. "They're brown."
"Everyone knows that. You can see that from across a room. I'm not asking what you cansee. I'm asking what youknow."
Dominic opened his mouth and nothing came out. Charlotte didn't look triumphant or vindictive. She looked tired. Bone-deep tired. The tiredness of a woman who'd been performing for an audience of one and just realized the seat was empty.
"You didn't choose me,” she said. Her voice was low, the words delivered without heat. A fact. An observation. The conclusion of the math she'd been doing since the altar.
She stepped back to close the door.
"Charlotte, wait, please?—"
She turned in the doorway. Kate was behind her, visible over her shoulder, arms crossed, standing guard.
"Go home, Dominic." Charlotte's hand was on the door. Her knuckles were white. "There's nothing to fix. You can't fix something that was never built."
The door closed. The deadbolt turned. The chain slid.
He stood on the third-floor landing, listened to the nothing that followed and waited for the door to open again, because it would open again. It had to. Charlotte loved him — she'd said so, in front of everyone, in vows she'd written by hand — and love like that didn't just evaporate. She was angry now, and hurt. She had every right to be. But she'd cool down. She'd remember what they had. She'd think about the rooftop, the peonies and the way he'd caught her drink. She'd call him, and he'd explain, and they'd start over.
She'd call.
He adjusted his tie. A reflex. The tie was already ruined, loosened, pulled at and creased beyond repair. But his hands went to it anyway, because that was what he did when things were falling apart. He straightened what he could reach.
Dominic walked down the stairs and out into the night. Astoria was loud. Music from a bar, someone laughing on a fire escape, a car alarm bleating two blocks away. He stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the third-floor window. The light was still on. He couldn't see anyone.
His hands were shaking. He shoved them into his pockets and told himself it was the cold, even though it wasn't cold. He told himself again that she'd call, this was fixable, even though the look on her face — that devastating, disassembling calm — had said everything her words hadn't.
