"Tonight was fun," Drew said, without looking up.
"Mm."
"Ruben is in on the next round. I could tell from the way he was talking about the infrastructure play. And Brian might come in too, once the Lisbon fund closes."
"Good." She rubbed lotion into her hands, working it between her fingers. The skin was still pink from the hot water earlier. "Drew."
"Yeah?"
"When did you and Victoria go to that restaurant? The one in Rittenhouse."
He scrolled something on his laptop. "Which one?"
"The carbonara place."
"Oh. Couple weeks ago, maybe? After the Keirson meeting. The whole team went. Why?"
The whole team. She turned that over. Victoria hadn't saidthe whole team. Victoria had saidremember that carbonaraas if two people who'd shared something, not six.
"She made it sound like it was just the two of you."
Drew looked up then. His face had the expression she'd come to recognize over seven years of marriage: a slight contraction around the eyes, a micro-adjustment of the mouth, as if he’d been asked to solve a problem he didn't think existed. "It wasn't. Priya was there, and Tom, and I think maybe Jordan? I don't know, Mad. It was a work dinner."
"I know."
"Then what's the question?"
She folded her hands in her lap. The lotion was making her fingers slide against each other. "There's no question. I just noticed some things tonight and I want to talk about them."
Drew closed his laptop halfway. A concession. His version of turning toward her. "Okay."
"Victoria interrupted your San Francisco story to correct you. Do you remember?"
"That's what's bothering you? She was joking."
"I know she was joking. The thing that caught my attention was that you told me that story two weeks ago, at this table, and you didn't mention her. You told it like you handled the pitch alone. Tonight she told a version where she rescued it, and you agreed with her version. In front of everyone."
"Because her version was funnier."
"Maybe. But yours was the one you told your wife."
Irritation shifted behind his eyes. She watched it happen: the flicker of recognition, the half-second where he heard what she was saying, followed by the shutter coming down. He opened his laptop again. "Maddie. She's my business partner. We were at the same meeting. She filled in a detail I left out. That's all that happened."
"That's not all I'm talking about."
"Then what are you talking about?"
She'd rehearsed this in the kitchen, standing at the sink with the hot water running. She'd planned to say it calmly, factually, presenting a case to a reasonable person. She was a reasonable person. She could do this without sounding jealous or insecure or any of the words wives got called when they named what they saw.
"You turned your chair away from Ruben to face her. You refilled her glass before mine, before anyone's. You have a restaurant you go to together that I didn't know about. When she walks into a room you look at her the way you used to look at me."
The last part came out before she could stop it, and it hung there, exposed, rawer than anything else she'd said.
Drew sat up against the headboard. He rubbed his face with both hands, and when he dropped them his expression had changed from defensive to something worse: patient. The long-suffering patience of a man being asked to address a concern he found beneath him.
"You're overthinking this."
He said them gently, which made it worse, because gentleness from Drew in this register wasn't tenderness. It was management. She'd seen him use the same tone on junior employees who brought problems he considered trivial.I hear you. Let me reframe this for you. The issue is smaller than you think.
