I clicked through to Emma’s page, then wished I hadn’t.
There was a photograph from a dinner party six days before Sophia gave me the ultimatum. I recognized the restaurant because Sophia had told me she’d gone there with Emma and some women from work. Eight people stood around a table. Sophia was beside David, one hand resting against his chest. He was leaning toward her, smiling.
It didn’t prove she’d cheated. I knew that.
But it proved she’d met the rich man before she told me I wasn’t enough.
I called her.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Marcus?”
“Were you seeing David before you moved out?”
Silence.
“Who told you about David?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’m allowed to move on.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“We were having problems for months.”
“Were you seeing him?”
Her voice hardened. “You want a confession so you can tell yourself I was the villain. Fine. Emma introduced us. We talked. I realized there were other possibilities. Happy?”
“No.”
“Marcus, I spent a year waiting for you to take our future seriously.”
“My father died.”
She stopped.
“What?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“I didn’t know.”
“He was in the hospital when you left. You knew how sick he was.”
“I’m sorry about Richard.” Her voice was smaller now. “I really am.”
I waited. I didn’t know what for.
Then she said, “I can’t do this tonight. David’s waiting for me.”
I ended the call.
I stood there with the phone in my hand until the dishwasher began beeping because I’d left its door open. I tried to stay away from their lives after that.
It would have been easier if Jay hadn’t known everybody. He worked in commercial real estate, went to the same fundraisers as Emma, and had a habit of calling whenever something interesting happened. I asked him not to tell me about Sophia anymore.
For almost four months, he respected that.
During those months, I worked with Helen’s team. I attended board meetings where men twice my age talked about fuel hedges and property tax assessments as if they were weather reports. I asked stupid questions, took notes, and found out they weren’t stupid after all. One operations director showed me a plan to close a smaller warehouse and lay off forty-seven people. The numbers supported it. So did the alternative proposal that would save the jobs if we invested in upgrading the site.
“Which one would my father have chosen?” I asked.
“He would have made us show our work on both,” she said.
I told them to show me the work.
At night, I returned to my apartment and the silence there. Some evenings I missed Sophia so badly I almost forgot what had happened. Grief did that: blurred the people who’d left until they resembled the people you wanted back.
Then one afternoon Jay called twice in a row.
I answered because I thought something was wrong.
“David dumped her,” he said.
I closed my eyes. “Jay.”
“I know you said no updates. But she’s asking people about you.”
I sat down.
“Why?”
“Apparently David found out she met him while she was engaged. She told him you two were basically finished months earlier. Someone showed him that dinner photo, and he started asking questions.”
“That’s between them.”
“Yeah. Just—be careful.”
That evening, a message came through from Sophia.
I know I don’t deserve a reply. Could we talk? There are things I should have said a long time ago.
I stared at it until the screen went black.
The next day there was another.
Emma got into my head about money. That’s not an excuse. I was wrong about you. I miss us.
I didn’t answer.
Then a third message arrived.
I heard about your dad. I’m sorry I didn’t show up for you. Please don’t think I never cared.
That one hurt more than the others because I believed she meant it, at least in the moment she wrote it. She could have cared about me and still chosen to hurt me. I was slowly learning those two things could exist together.
