More silence fell, and I realized it wasn’t the condos that she wanted to talk to me about. That had been a distraction to build up her own courage.

“Maddie, what’s going on?”

Her cheery look disintegrated into something much more glum. It was startling. I was so used to her always being in a good mood that the thought of something upsetting her was on par with the laws of physics breaking down.

She met my eyes and immediately looked away. “Oh God. I can’t believe I’m about to bring this up.”

I was seriously worried now. “You can tell me. It’s okay. What’s up?”

She sighed. “It’s Seth.”

Oh, fuck.

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

“What about Seth?” I asked stiffly. I waited then for the shouts, for the accusations. Any of them would have been understandable. What I didn’t expect were tears building up in her eyes.

“I think . . . I think something’s wrong. I think he’s trying to let me down easy or something.”

“Why would you think that?” I channeled Grace and Mei, keeping my face as still and expressionless as theirs.

“He’s just . . . I don’t know. He’s been so distracted lately.”

“Seth’s always distracted. You know how he is with his books.”

“Yeah, I know. And it drives me crazy sometimes.” I remembered her disappointment at Casey’s party. “But this is something different, I can feel it. Only, I don’t know what it is. He’s not around much, and when he is, it’s like he’s with me but not with me. He always says nothing’s wrong, but it doesn’t feel right. And we haven’t . . .”

“Haven’t what?” I asked, guessing the answer.

A deep pink blush blossomed on her cheeks. “We haven’t been having sex. Each time I even kind of suggest it, he’s just not . . . well, he doesn’t really seem into it.”

Talking about their sex life was one of the most painful conversation topics I could imagine, short of her realizing I was to blame for its problems. So, I kept up with my poker-faced therapist mode.

“How long has it been going on?”

“About a week.”

Yup, that made sense. That was right around the time my stasis had begun. Here I’d been expecting Maddie to come after me, to pick up on one of the covert looks Seth and I had shared. But she hadn’t. It had never even crossed her mind to suspect me of anything duplicitous. In fact, she’d come to me for help because I was one of the few people she trusted with something like this.