Beautiful Secret

  It was about Niall Stella.

  The object of my attention was pacing in his office when I returned and made my way down the hall toward my cubicle. He jumped when he saw me, reaching out to pull me inside.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, closing the door behind us.

  I must have looked even worse than I thought, because his eyes moved in a circuit from my wet hair and pale face, to my damp clothes and broken expression.

  “That depends on what you mean,” I said. “First, I walked to work in the rain because I wigged out in your flat thinking I’d inadvertently manipulated you into having sex with me.”

  He started to speak, eyes wide and incredulous.

  But I held up a hand to bid him wait. “Then, I was in Anthony’s office being berated. And most recently, I was out for a walk.”

  “We’ll talk about the manipulation thing later. Honestly, Ruby.” He inhaled, taking a step closer to me. “What’s this about Anthony berating you?”

  “Nothing I want to talk about here. What I want is to go home, get a little day-drunk, nap, and then have dinner with my boyfriend.”

  He winced. “About that . . .” Niall wiped a hand down his face and then met my eyes. “I’ll need a rain check, I’m afraid.”

  I slumped down into one of his plush chairs near the window. I didn’t want to talk to him here about quitting, and why. And I most certainly didn’t want to be alone in my own head after all this. “Really? There’s no way you can cancel? I need to freak out, with your rational brain on hand.”

  He sat opposite me, looking . . . okay, if I was being honest? He looked petrified.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He swallowed, and looked up at me. “You left this morning when Portia called.”

  “Yeah,” I said, wincing. “That was part of the freak-out.”

  “Completely understandable, darling,” he began, leaning toward me a little. “It’s just that . . . it may have been a good thing that you left. The conversation went on for some time.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  He didn’t answer immediately and I felt my heart squeeze painfully. I’d initially been upset that he didn’t say he would call her back. He must have heard the front door close and he didn’t even bother to come after me. But it occurred to me only when sitting in his office that something awful might have happened while we were away in New York. Was Portia sick?

  Licking his lips, he said very quietly, “She called because she wants to reunite.” He pulled a face—like maybe I should commiserate over the awkward unexpectedness of this . . .

  But instead my world stopped, split in half, and then splintered into a million pieces.

  I blinked, several times. “She what?”

  “She wants to reunite,” he repeated, sighing heavily. “I’m just as surprised as you are, believe me. She said she’s had a lot of revelations and wants to talk to me.”

  “And . . . ?” I started, feeling like my stomach was climbing into my chest, pushing my heart into my throat. “You agreed?”

  “Not to reconcile,” he hedged. “But eleven years married is a long time. We were together when we were teenagers. After my conversation with you last night, and hearing you ask whether we’d ever actually discussed any of this, I feel obligated to at least hear what she wants to say.”

  He paused to give me time to reply but I honestly had no words in my head. None.

  “Given how things are between you and me, I felt I needed to tell you that I would be having dinner with her tonight,” he continued carefully, “and make you aware that Portia wanted to talk to me about why she thinks she deserves another chance.”

  “What chance does she have? An even fifty-fifty?”

  He laughed uncomfortably because what I’d said was awkward and sharp. But I couldn’t regret the edge to my tone. “God, no, Ruby.”

  “But you’re going,” I reminded him, aghast. “I mean, we’re talking zero chance of reconciliation with your ex-wife, right?”

  His expression straightened as if he hadn’t really thought about it this way. Clearly, he’d only considered it a courtesy. But if it was just a courtesy, and there was no chance he would take her back, then why wasn’t the answer too-little-too-late? Why not just tell her that his girlfriend had just left his flat in a bit of a hysterical state and could she fill him in later—over the phone?

  “Well, I can’t imagine being with her again—”

  “So you’re going only as a gesture?”

  He closed his eyes, exhaling a gust of breath. “It sounds terrible when you say it like that.”

  “So you’re not just going as a gesture?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Just tell me!” I cried. “Because right now it sounds like you’re telling me that you slept with me last night and tonight you’re going back to your ex-wife?” I felt tears burn across the surface of my eyes and by now I was too fucking tired to bother wiping them away.

  “Ruby, I’m not having dinner with her tonight to go back to her.”

  “But you might.”

  He closed his eyes. “I can’t imagine that I would, no. But Ruby, I know you’re young and that you’ve n—”

  “Don’t,” I said, my voice frightening, even to me. Unconsciously I had balled my hands into fists; I was at the dead end of my patience with his wishy-washy game. “Don’t do that. This isn’t about my age. I’ve never acted naïve with you. I’ve only been understanding while you work through your enormous pile of . . . baggage.”

  He cleared his throat and nodded, looking appropriately contrite. “You’re right, I’m sorry. What I mean is that it feels cruel to not at least have the conversation I’ve felt we needed to have for so many years. You of all people, who are so good at expressing things, must understand this. It might relieve something in both of us to simply discuss things for once.”

  My heart hurt so horribly that I could barely pull in a full breath.

  He leaned forward and took my hand but I pulled it out of his grasp. The pain in his eyes was nearly unbearable. What was he doing? We had such a good thing. Had I scared him off this much?

  “Darling,” he said calmly, and something in my brain crawled over the word, trying to excavate any condescension there. “I want to ease your anxiety somehow, but I don’t want to be flippant about what it means to meet with my ex-wife to hear her out. I realize now it would feel dishonest if I told you it was nothing and then I still went and listened to her with an open mind.”

  “Do you have an open mind?”

  His answer broke my heart. “I suppose I’m trying to. I owe her that, at least.”

  I nodded, remaining silent. I could see his torment in this moment and my heart hurt for him, too, but it hurt more for me. He wanted to talk to her to ease something in him, to achieve closure. But I knew there was a tiny part of him, the part that couldn’t hear her out over the phone, which also wondered if maybe she had changed enough. If they might be able to find something comfortable together, and better than what they’d had before.

  “I’ll see you here tomorrow, then?” he asked. “Perhaps we could do lunch?”

  I nearly laughed at the absurdity of it, of “doing lunch” almost like one would with a client. I’d essentially forfeited my job so I could stay with him, and he was going to have dinner with his ex-wife to discuss reconciliation.

  Was this really happening?

  I nodded, jaw tight, unable to even look at him. “Sure.”

  Tilting his head, he asked, “Could you tell me what happened with Tony? We exchanged words earlier. He urged Richard to put a rather strongly worded letter in my file. Hopefully I’ve borne the brunt of what happened between us in New York.”

  Between us. In New York.

  Not last night. Not the night I pushed you so far you’re considering going back to a woman who made you miserable, but left you alone in your shell.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said absently, sinking into an odd numbness.
I stood, walking toward the door. “He basically just gave me a letter, too.”

  SIXTEEN

  Niall

  Despite my suggestion that we meet somewhere neutral, Portia insisted I come to her flat—our old flat—for dinner. I’d had an odd weight in my gut since talking to Ruby, some residue of regret about the conversation. I’d texted her as I left the office, saying I would call later, or come ’round if she liked, but she hadn’t answered. I knew she was a bit offended that I wanted to talk to Portia at all, and I couldn’t exactly blame her. But I hoped, too, that she understood the intent behind it. After all, I wasn’t here hoping to reconcile with Portia; I was with Ruby now. We were an us.

  But Ruby made a good point: then why was I meeting my ex-wife for dinner? Could I honestly say the only reason I agreed was to let Portia speak her piece so we could both truly move on? Was there a part of me—no matter how small—that wondered if we could find a better place together, with more communication? We knew each other’s rhythms, after all. It would be easy to slip back to it.

  But the thought turned sour in my mind and guilt clawed its way up my throat. I had truly moved on. I didn’t look back on my marriage with longing or any type of ache. It had been lonely and passionless. It hadn’t even felt like being married to a best friend; it had nearly felt like cohabitation with a colleague.

  What could I expect her to say that would change how I viewed any of that? Was I going just because, in my new happiness, I simply felt bad for my ex-wife?

  I wanted to call Ruby before I went to dinner, to tell her that, no, Portia honestly had no chance, and maybe that was wrong of me to let her think she did by my coming, but a dark and furtive part of me was simply curious: Portia had never in our relationship sounded as open and pleading as she had on the phone that morning.

  It had thrown me enough to forget, for a few minutes, that Ruby had been waiting in my flat for me to drive her home before work. By the time I’d emerged from the bathroom, hand clutched over the receiver to beg her to wait just a minute more, she’d already left.

  Even on the steps I could smell the pasta Portia had cooked—my favorite, with sausages and peppers and thyme. I could hear the music playing—my favorite Vienna Philharmonic recording of Brahms. The front door was unlocked and still required the familiar shoulder shove—low kick combination to open.

  I bent to pet Davey as he ran across the floor to me, hopping on his hind legs and resting his paws on my knees. “That’s a good boy,” I said, scratching behind his ears.

  Hearing the clang of plates on the counter, I looked up. Portia stood barefoot in our kitchen in casual cotton pants, a T-shirt, and an apron. I blinked, mouth agape. I’d rarely seen the woman without her pearls.

  When she turned to me, she wore her wide, dazzling smile. I was immediately on edge.

  “Hello,” she said, picking up a second glass of red wine from the counter and walking to hand it to me. She placed it in my grasp and then stretched to kiss my cheek. “Welcome home.”

  I nearly wanted to turn and leave right then. It was disloyal, being here. I felt like my skin had been replaced with damp wool and I itched all over. It was wrong, and I knew it. Ruby had known it.

  “Your home,” I reminded her, putting the glass down carefully on the sideboard. “I live several Tube stops away.”

  She waved me off, returning to the counter where she was dishing up pasta into two bowls. “I’ve still not seen your flat.”

  “There isn’t much to see,” I said with a shrug.

  Portia nodded to the dining room and I startled slightly. I’d barely been here two minutes and she was leading me to the table as if I’d simply come home from work. No reacquaintance, no small talk. Certainly no playful banter.

  I followed her in. It was surreal seeing the table set with candles and flowers, the placemats we’d received from the Wynn family for our wedding. The candelabra her parents had given us for our fifth anniversary. When we lived here together, Portia would cook on occasion, but it was always clearly communicated to be a production and used as a form of currency in the look-how-much-I-do-each-day ledger of our marriage.

  I felt for my phone in my pocket, now desperately wishing I’d called Ruby before coming here.

  We sat. Portia passed me the pepper and then set her napkin in her lap. Davey curled up on the floor, resting his head on my feet. Outside, cars drove by, their tires wet on the pavement. Inside, as always, silence reigned supreme at the dining room table.

  “How was your day?” she asked finally, looking down with interest at her bowl of pasta.

  My day? How about my month, or, better yet, the last eleven years of my life?

  “It was . . .” I began and then stopped. The revelation struck me with a nearly physical blow: There was no mystery to be unearthed here. There was no secret to the silent isolation of our marriage. It was, and would forever be, like this between us.

  Portia was lonely and having a hard time finding her footing in her new life. It had been true for me, too, in a way. I’d focused on routine, buried my free time in sport. I’d barely looked up long enough to see Ruby watching me, enamored, for months.

  And now Portia was watching, waiting for me to finish my thought.

  “It was an odd day.”

  It was a strange thing to say; the perfect opening for her to ask more. But the quiet returned and I attempted to tuck into my meal. The sound of her chewing was as familiar to me as the smell of the wood from the dining room hutch or the cold stone scent of our kitchen floor.

  “How was your day?” I asked in return, attempting some stab at a normal conversation. But it wouldn’t work. The bite of food I’d eaten sat like a lead weight in my stomach, and my head was full of nothing but Ruby. “Portia, I can’t—” I started, but she was already speaking.

  She didn’t say at all what I expected: “We were terrible together, weren’t we?”

  Finally, a laugh broke through the unease in my thoughts. “The worst.”

  “I thought we could . . .” She paused, and for the first time since I arrived I saw a weariness, a vulnerability there. She rubbed a hand over her face. “Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking, Niall, wanting to have dinner to talk. I wanted to see you. I’ve missed you, you know. Not sure I ever really appreciated you enough to miss you before.”

  I lifted my glass of wine to my lips and said nothing. I tried with my eyes to tell her that I understood, that a part of me was glad to see her, as well.

  Clearly I’d never been good at false sentiment. I closed my eyes, remembering last night. And in this dining room, that used to be mine, with a wife who also used to be mine, I knew the reason I felt so sick to be here was that I loved Ruby.

  I loved her.

  “It’s just that,” Portia continued, poking at her dinner, “now you’re here, I’m not sure what to say. Where to start. There’s too much, isn’t there?” She looked up at me. “Too much habit, really, where we don’t say very much at all.”

  It was another needle in my thoughts. Ruby spoke of her feelings, her fears, her dreams and adventures. She wanted to hear mine. She took time to make it a habit of ours that we spoke, and I praised her for it. Told her I appreciated her honesty.

  I appreciated it, even when it terrified me. Earlier, she’d told me she needed to talk something out with me—that she’d needed me. I’d been unable to get out of my own head long enough to be there for her.

  “I don’t even have to ask you what you’re thinking to know your thoughts are elsewhere,” Portia said quietly, pulling me from my revelation. “You’re here out of courtesy.”

  I didn’t reply, but my silence was as good an answer as any.

  “I appreciate that, I do. I wasn’t always a good wife to you, Niall, I know that now. And I was wrong to think we could go back. I wanted to think we could find something we didn’t have before, but having you here now, looking so wary . . . I see it, too. It’s well and truly done between us.”

&n
bsp; “I’m sorry, Portia,” I said, putting down my fork. “I wanted to hear what you had to say because I felt I owed you that. And I owed it to myself, too, to understand what you’d been thinking the whole time we were married. But it’s true: I’ve other things on my mind tonight.”

  “I can tell,” she said. “It’s quite a shock to see you looking so . . . upset.”

  I apologized again. “It wasn’t fair of me to—”

  “Do you know,” she began, cutting me off, “when you moved out, you never once seemed anything but completely sorted? The last thing you said to me when you left was ‘Cheers.’ I’d handed you the folder with your passport and vital documents and you’d smiled kindly and said, ‘Cheers.’ Isn’t that amazing?”

  I bent, putting my head in my hand. “It wasn’t sadness I felt at leaving our marriage, Portia, but I did feel something. I simply don’t know what to call it, or how to express it. Failure, maybe. Or regret.” I looked up at her, admitting, “Also relief.”

  “Oh,” she said on an exhale. “I felt that, too. And then guilt, over being so relieved. And I’ve gone back and forth in the months since. How could I spend so much of my life with someone I was so relieved to leave when he did? How could I have made it better?”

  I smiled sadly, nodding in agreement.

  “Well,” she said, folding her napkin and putting it on the table. “I for one wish—”

  “Portia, I’m in love.” The words came out so suddenly and raw, I instantly wanted to pull them back in. I bent my head, wincing.

  It was several long seconds before she spoke. “Darling?” Without looking up, I could hear her swallowing, hear her finding breath. “Tell me she hasn’t hurt you.”

  “Quite the contrary. I believe I’ve hurt her.”

  “Oh, Niall.”

  I leaned my head back, staring at the ceiling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to come out so baldly.”

  “It loosens something in me to know you’ve moved on, even if it’s emotional to hear it.” She paused to take a deep breath. “I can hear it in your voice, see it in your eyes. This tightness and urgency. I could never have drawn this sort of reaction out of you. I was terrible to you at times, I know that. But you weathered it all with such calm stoicism. Do you imagine how that feels to know, truly, that it would be impossible to evoke a passionate response from you?”