He sat in the meeting, his fist clenched on the table, stuttering out responses as it progressed, his mind elsewhere, reconciling, grasping, maneuvering in his head her text to him. Replaying each word. This was not supposed to happen. He had been certain of it. Once he fell for her, things were supposed to develop exactly the way he fantasized they would, escalating under his watch into something truly meaningful and exquisite. He hadn’t originally been planning for that, necessarily, but now that he was faced with this rejection, he realized that that was exactly what he’d wanted.

As Darren was jabbering on, Tom immersed himself in the moment he believed her tune had changed. Maybe at dinner, his and his wife’s old haunt? He hadn’t meant to be so rash with that decision; it was only when they sat down that he realized that any number of her friends could spot them. He only brought it up as an effect of his anxiety about it. And now, now he wished more than anything that he’d kept his mouth shut.

She had seemed cold to him, too, when he’d been on the phone with his wife about Penelope. But that was a domestic tiff; Vera had no idea what his wife was saying on the other end, and he couldn’t imagine that a woman like Vera, whom he was sure was used to putting people in their place, would be turned off by a slight show of frustration on his part. After all, he had only raised his voice a little to turn her on. Show off that he, too, was steeped in authority, no matter if it were family or work. But she’d run away, hadn’t she? She’d told him she hadn’t liked it, that Odilie didn’t deserve that.

“Tom?” Someone had been asking him something. And they’d had to repeat themselves. He cracked his neck, turning his head from side to side, forcing the room to hear his bones squelch.

“Sorry. What did you say?” Tom asked and Darren looked like he wanted to walk out, maybe punch Tom in the nose. But he remained vigilant, disciplined enough to keep his composure. Everyone else in the meeting shifted in place, visibly uncomfortable. Did he care? No, even as Darren spoke again, Tom’s mind inadvertently wandered to her text. He itched to look at his phone, to stare at it again, to read it like it was scripture, a holy text, to parse out meaning from the gray-and-black bubble.

When he arrived back home hours later, after taking himself to a bland-looking bar, the kind of place he hadn’t set foot in since college, he almost tripped over the suitcase flung open in the front hall, the contents spilling out like pus from an infected wound.

His wife was home. And she was angry about something.