PART 8:

And I realized I’d been doing it for a year without noticing. She set her shoe down on the table, looked at it. The day I noticed it, I went to the bathroom at a restaurant where we were having dinner and looked at myself in the mirror and said out loud, “What do you actually think about this restaurant?” Not, “What do you think he wants you to think?” And I couldn’t answer. She paused.

I’d erased that much of myself. Ethan said nothing for a moment. That’s terrifying. It was no performance around it, just the word accurate. It took me another 4 months to end it, even after I knew, because it’s hard to leave something you’ve organized your life around, and because he was so good at making me feel like the leaving was the irrational thing that I was unstable, too demanding, reading into things.

She said it with a precision that told him she’d worked through this in some clinical way. Therapy probably or just the grinding private work of re-examining every memory. The gaslighting wasn’t loud. It never is with people like that. It’s just a constant low-frequency static that makes you doubt your own hearing until you can’t trust your own ears, Ethan said. Exactly.

They sat with it for a moment. The slow song continued. Someone near them on the dance floor laughed at something their partner said. The private kind of laugh that didn’t travel far. “Do you trust yours now?” he asked. “You’re hearing.” She thought about it genuinely, which he appreciated. “More than I did, some days more than others.” She looked at him.

“Tonight, what you said to him, when he made that comment about me being a lot to handle, I heard that in real time. I heard it land wrong immediately. 8 months ago, I would have argued myself out of it before I got to the parking lot. That’s something, he said. It is, she agreed. It’s not everything, but it’s something.

He watched her for a moment. The loosened hair, the one shoe on and one shoe off, the way she held her champagne glass down by her side instead of up near her face. She looked like someone in the middle of the process of becoming themselves again. It was he noticed the word before he could stop it. Beautiful.

Not in the polished way, in the actual way. He looked away from her. Can I ask you something? He said, “You just let me talk for 20 minutes. You can ask anything.” “Did you mean it? That you want what Lily described? The person who makes the ordinary parts feel right?” He kept his eyes on the dance floor. Or was that just the moment? A pause? He didn’t look at her. I meant it, she said.

I’m just I don’t entirely trust my own judgment about people yet. I’m working on it. Yeah, he said. Why did you ask? He turned to look at her. She was watching him with that unguarded expression again, and this time she didn’t try to put the composure back over it. Curiosity, he said. She held his gaze. Ethan, it wasn’t entirely curiosity.

She said nothing. The song changed to something upbeat and the dance floor shifted around them and neither of them moved. I don’t know what this is, he said honestly. What’s been happening in that apartment for the last 3 months. I don’t have a clean name for it. Names are overrated, she said quietly. They help.

Sometimes they also ruin things before things are ready. He considered that. She was right. And he suspected she knew it more specifically than he did. that she’d seen what happened when feelings got named before they were understood. “Okay,” he said, “Then I won’t name it.” “Good, but it’s there.” A pause. She exhaled, small, quiet. “I know,” she said.

The acknowledgement sat between them, clean, and specific. Not a promise, not a problem, just a truth they’d both been carrying, set on the table where they could both see it. He wasn’t sure how long they sat that way. 5 minutes, maybe 10. While the party moved around them, and Marcus stayed across the room, and her mother made her careful rounds, and Lily danced with Jake, in the particular way of people who have decided to be happy.

Catherine found them before the night was over. She pulled a chair over uninvited, which was its own information, and sat down with the deliberate ease of someone who had thought about what they were going to say. She was still composed, but something in the composure was different at this hour, slightly worn at the edges.

“You’ve had a long night,” she said, which was addressed to both of them, but landed on Victoria. “It’s been fine,” Victoria said. “Lily is happy you came.” A pause. “I’m glad you came.” Victoria held her mother’s gaze for a moment. “Are you?” It wasn’t hostile, just genuinely uncertain, like she was asking whether it was true or whether it was something her mother had decided to feel.

Catherine looked at Ethan briefly, then back to her daughter. “I know tonight wasn’t easy with Marcus here.” “Marcus was fine,” Victoria said. “He was himself.” “He asked about you,” Catherine said. “And the way she said it, careful, almost tentative, told Ethan she hadn’t planned to. Victoria’s expression went very still. I’m sure he did. He said he’d handled things poorly.

Catherine’s hands were folded on the table. Those were his words. They would be, Victoria said quiet. He’s very good at the right words. Her mother said nothing for a moment. Then Victoria, I’m not I’m not defending him. I’m telling you what was said. I know the difference between those things, Mom.

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