“And he loves her.”
“Yeah.”
“Then why does it still look like that?”
I open the fridge because staring into cold air is easier than answering. “Love don’t make people honest. Sometimes it just gives them more to lose when they lie.”
She says nothing.
I pull out two beers and hand her one.
She takes it but doesn’t open it. “Do you have secrets?”
There it is.
The question I have felt coming since the Fire Pit.
I twist the cap off my beer. “Everybody does.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is if you lower your standards.”
“Derby.”
My name in her mouth ain’t soft this time.
It’s tired.
Serious.
Scared.
I set my bottle down. “Yes.”
Her face changes, though she tries to hide it. “Secrets that can explode like that?”
“Probably.”
She wraps her arms around herself. “I can’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Stand in another room while everyone knows pieces of a man I don’t. Watch the past come in and humiliate me because I was stupid enough to believe I was being told the truth.”
“You ain’t stupid.”
“I felt stupid tonight for Sophie. I know that look. I know what it feels like when a man’s silence makes you the last person in the room to understand your own life.”
The words scrape.
Not because of me.
Because of Jeremy.
Because of every quiet thing he kept, every truth he used when it suited him, every way he made her feel like she was late to the story of her own marriage.
“I’m not him,” I say.