I start before work, before the donut. I tell Brody how I woke up that morning and started cleaning the apartment. How I put the roast in the slow cooker. And then Werner came downstairs and offered to make me breakfast, which turned out to be cold cereal with milk. Also, he was already looking at his phone while he was talking to me.

“That dick,” Brody growls.

I tell him about the part where my boss said I was perfect and let me go anyway, because—I know now—being perfect was never a guarantee of employment or, more to the point, happiness.

The skirt on the floor.

The strength of my denial, how I stared at that skirt and thought up a hundred excuses for it.

I tell Brody about seeing Werner from behind.

Okay, I don’t dwell on that, because I don’t want him to have nightmares or anything.

I get to the part about the Other Woman. Her ridiculous lace-up teddy and her totally unjustified tears. I don’t dwell on that, either, because she doesn’t deserve my time or energy.

(Also, it occurs to me as I’m telling the story that I don’t own any lingerie other than bras and panties, but I don’t mention this.)

Brody doesn’t say anything. He just listens and makes sympathetic noises. But his hands?

They’re clenched into fists on his thighs.

His perfect, tree-trunk, thighs.

I worry he might break a tooth, the way his jaw is locked tight.

His eyes never leave mine, which is a lot of Brody all at once. I can feel the intensity of his gaze like warm honey trickling down inside me. Licking around my inner thighs and into the melting place between my legs.

It’s hard to maintain my outrage at Werner in the face of all that Brody, but I manage.

I tell him that Werner said I was the perfect woman.

“If I’m so perfect,” I ask Brody, “why did he pick someone else to stick his dick into?”

Brody makes a sound like he’s been punched in the stomach.

“Which means I can’t be that perfect, doesn’t it? Not really.”

“Rachel.”

I’m shaking my head.

“I’m the girl he wanted to marry. The girl he wanted his parents to meet. But not the girl he wanted to spend a Friday morning messing around with. Not the girl he wanted to have fun with. Not the sexy girl. Not the girl he would choose, if he could choose. Not the girl he’d be with, his whole self. Not that girl.”

My voice cracks.

Brody reaches out and cups my face, brushing his thumb over my cheek.

I realize he’s wiping away a tear.

“That guy,” he says steadily. “Is a total fucking idiot.”

Brody drives me home after that.