Page 84 of The Husband I Left

I grab my jacket and go after him.

I catch him at the door, one hand already on the brass handle. “Oliver.”

He turns. Under the entryway light his face goes from upset to blank again, and he says, “Genny, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have, the whole dinner, I made it awkward, I just—” He exhales. “I didn’t realize you were still with Evan. That’s all. I’ll get out of your way.”

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. What am I supposed to say? The truth is a whole tangled thing involving Oliver and Victoria and me and Evan and a revenge plot of my own, and I can’t seem to find the end of the thread.

Oliver takes my silence for something else. He looks down at the floor, then back up at me, and asks quietly, “Does he make you happy?”

“What?”

“Because that’s — that’s what matters,” he says, and now the words are picking up speed, tumbling out of him now. “I should have known. Of course. You’re — Genny, you’re wonderful, you’re the most — anyone who got to be with you, any man with a functioning brain, of course he wouldn’t give you up, why would he ever give you up, I certainly wouldn’t, I mean I did, obviously, that’s the whole, but he’s clearly smarter than I am. If he makes you laugh, if he makes you happy, then that’s—“

“Oliver.”

“—that’s what I want for you, that’s genuinely what I want, even if it — I just need you to know that I’m not going to make things difficult; I’ll back off.”

“Oliver.”

“—I can stop, I can absolutely stop, Mr. Hill says I have to respect—”

“Oliver!”

He stops. Blinks.

I take a breath. “Look at Evan and Leo.”

He frowns, glances back across the restaurant to our table, where Evan and Leo are exactly as we left them, heads bent together deep in conversation. He looks back at me. “What?”

“Look at them again,” I say. “Closely this time.”

He turns and really looks. I watch him look. I watch him take in the way Evan is leaning halfway across the table, the way Leo is leaning to meet him, the way Leo laughs at something and touches Evan’s forearm and leaves his hand there. The two of them are absorbed in each other so completely that neither has noticed both their dinner companions are gone.

“Oh,” Oliver says.

He thinks about it. I can actually see him thinking about it; the gears turning, months of assumptions rearranging themselves behind those blue eyes.

“Oh,” he says again, considerably louder.

I nod.

He turns back to me slowly. “So the two of you never—?”

I shake my head. “Evan has never been anything but a friend. Was never going to be anything but a friend.” I feel my cheeks heat. “The gala and everything that came after was an act Oliver. One for your benefit because I was hurt.”

“Oh,” Oliver says a third time. He looks nonplussed. He gives his head a little shake, as if he’s trying to reset his understanding of the world. When he looks at me again, there’s something new in his expression, something that makes my stomach do an unauthorized little flip.

“Genny,” he says. “Would you like to go get some ice cream with me?”

“Yes,” I reply. “I’d like that.”

His smile is the real one. The rare one. The one I used to think belonged only to me.

We both look back at the table one more time. Evan is telling a story, gesturing wildly with his hands, and Leo is laughing so hard he’s got his napkin pressed to his mouth. Neither of them has so much as glanced in our direction.

“Should we tell them we’re leaving?” I ask.

Oliver holds the door open for me, and the cool spring air rushes in to greet me.