Page 35 of Two Couples

At least she’d told me what she was thinking. I should appreciate that, but I didn’t. She couldn’t walk out on a question like that. “Why do you need to get out of here? We were having a serious⁠—”

“We were not. You were badgering me and when I told you to back off, even if it wasn’t in so many words, you should have known. You accused me of cheating on you.”

“I didn’t accuse you. I asked you a question.”

“Same thing.” She moved toward the doorway.

I stood and followed her out of the room, headed toward our bedroom. She pulled off her shirt and unhooked her bra as if she wanted to make me more miserable. She put on a sports bra without even glancing at me to see my reaction.

“Please don’t walk out while we’re talking.”

“We were not talking. You were telling me you don’t trust me.”

“Can’t you see at all how you’ve changed? You used to text me constantly. You sent updates about where you were or what you were doing, pictures of your food when you were out with friends, emojis for no reason at all.”

“And now I don’t. It doesn’t mean anything. I realized it was a little ridiculous to be sending messages like insecure teenagers all the time.” She shrugged, then pulled a top over her head and began taking off her jeans.

“But when I ask you the simplest question, you’re evasive, or you give me an answer that’s clearly a lie.”

“And now we’re back where we started—calling me a liar.” She tugged off her jeans, pulled on the stretchy pants she wore for running, then grabbed her shoes, keys, and phone. She made a big arc around me and walked out of the room.

“Emily! Come on!” I followed her into the living room where she was putting on her shoes. “Please talk to me. I asked you a question, and I think I deserve an answer.”

“You don’t deserve an answer to a disrespectful, demeaning question like that.”

“So you’re not having an affair?”

“I’m not answering that. If you don’t trust me, what’s the point?” She jogged to the entryway and out the front door.

I returned to the kitchen where I refilled my wineglass. I thought about watching the show without her, but that wouldn’t do anything to bring us closer. I didn’t like how she’d turned this into an issue of me not trusting her. It felt like I was the one in the wrong here, but I wasn’t. She’d changed. She even admitted that. I asked a simple question that rational adults should be able to discuss. She’d turned it into an attack on her integrity. I hadn’t meant to do that, but I wanted an answer.

She didn’t get to pretend my question was so heinous, I didn’t deserve an answer. It wasn’t an attack of any kind. It was a question based on facts. Her profession required her to be rational and straightforward. Where had all that gone in the past hour?

I took my wine to the living room, sat in the armchair, and took a sip. It soothed me. I took another sip. I pulled out my phone and scrolled the news. It’s not what someone usually does to relax their mind, but right now, it felt bizarrely comforting. Maybe because I saw problems monumentally bigger than mine, causing the issues in my life to fade into the background.

She was gone for an hour. When she returned, she looked happy. Maybe she was calmer.

I went to the door and kissed her lightly on her lips.

“Don’t, I’m sweaty.”

“I don’t care. But before you shower, I need you to answer me. It was a simple question. It’s bothering me that you can’t give me a straightforward yes or no to a question as serious as this.”

“Okay. I’ll tell you. I’m hurt that you would even think that. It makes me feel like our marriage is on very shaky ground. But mostly, it makes me feel like you don’t believe that I love you. To think for even half a second that I would do that.”

At this point, I wasn’t sure I believed anything she said. Her response had taken too long, and she’d made it into too much. It almost felt as if she’d gone for a run so she could come up with that little smackdown. “We could recover from an affair,” I said, “but if you’re lying to me, it would be the death of our marriage.”

TWENTY-SIX

EMILY

Now

The sun had disappeared behind the mountains that circled the lake, leaving the sky inky blue. The four of us were on the back deck, sipping wine, lost in our own thoughts about the abrupt departure of Jordan and her mother.

Watching Keith drink his wine, I thought about the detente in our marriage. After he’d accused me of cheating on him a few months earlier, the two of us had settled back into our typical habits and usual topics of conversation. I’d never directly answered his question because I was deeply hurt that his immediate reaction to a decrease in the number of text messages I sent was the belief that I’d cheated on him. I adored Keith, and I thought he knew that without question. No matter how many small things he didn’t understand about me, I thought he knew that. I thought he knew he was the only man I could even think about, the only man I’d wanted since the moment we met.

Now, he was walking around me as if I were a firecracker with a short fuse. He still believed I was lying to him and he still believed he deserved an in-depth explanation. Sometimes, I couldn’t even explain myself to my own self. How could I explain everything to him? He would put the worst possible interpretation on everything. I was not cheating on him.