It’s strange that I know this, and not strange at all.

The air beyond the comforter is cold and fresh. It makes me want to stay in bed all day. Rolling over, I bury my nose in Gabe’s pillow. It smells warm and like the spot behind his ear.

I’m pretty sure the tightness I feel in my chest is happiness.

I find my phone and blink at the screen.

My agent sent me the link to the Rumor Mill post.

Everyone is going to read your article, she writes.

I look at the pictures—clearly shot on someone’s cellphone from a table or two away. I hope they got good money for them.

The photos themselves are fairly innocuous. Nothing like the shots that had been circulating of Gabe and Jacinda in Paris all those years ago. Gabe and I seated on opposite sides of a table. Not touching. It’s mostly Gabe’s face and half of mine, shot from over my shoulder. We look, for all intents and purposes, like two people having a conversation.

There’s one shot of him greeting me, but even that is innocent, Gabe’s hand on my elbow.

The thing that makes all these images worthy of a post, worthy of attention, is the look on Gabe’s face.

He looks like a man in love.

I put my phone, facedown, on the bed.

Gabe comes into the bedroom, with tea, without a shirt. He stops in the doorway and I don’t blame him because I can feel the expression on my face. It’s heavy. Stormy.

He looks where I’ve put my phone.

“Bad news?” he asks.

I exchange my phone for the tea. He sits on the edge of the bed, his thumb scrolling through the pictures.

“Okay,” he says.

There’s a tinge of confusion in his voice. I can see that he doesn’t exactly understand what he’s looking at and why it has resulted in me doing an imitation of a sad theatre mask.

“Okay,” he says again. “This isn’t ideal, but we can make it work.”

“Make it work,” I echo.

Gabe nods, but he’s not actually listening. He’s thinking. Problem-solving. And I can tell that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.

Of course not.

“We’ll call my management. We’ll put out a statement.”

The mug is hot against my hands, burning the delicate whorls of my fingertips.

“A statement,” I say.

I’m fully parroting him, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

The tightness doesn’t feel like happiness anymore.

It’s that quicksand feeling again. Like I’m being pulled under and I know that no matter how hard I struggle, I’m still going to drown, reality pressing in around me.

I put the tea on the side table with a thunk.

“I need more time,” I say.