Chapter 23: The Clean Slate

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Tuesday, November 19

I have laughed more in the last three weeks than I have in the previous three months combined. This is entirely Carmen’s fault.

I have not told Miranda.

When I get home, I talk about the weather, what groceries we need, whether we ever called the guy about the bathroom tiles. I leave work at the door like a coat I take off before I come inside and Miranda doesn’t ask. We have been in a delicate symbiosis since I left the guest room two weeks ago. Being careful with each other. Not pushing conversations much beyond surface level updates. We didn’t talk about my time in the guest room. I just stripped the bed linens and we left it at that. Everything unsaid is coursing beneath us, like dark waters rushing under a packed layer of ice. I know we need to get there eventually but, for now, I’m grateful for the reprieve.

Carmen shows up at my elbow at seven forty-five in wide-leg trousers and a cream shirt with the sleeves pushed up, carrying two coffees. I stopped ignoring Carmen while I was on my guest room vacation. I have not told Miranda. She hands me a cup and we stand against the wall, watching the crew set up the next shot. Carmen starts musing under her breath about the second AD’s jawline and whether being handsome was a detriment to genius because ‘no one gives you honest feedback when they want to fuck you.’ I inhale my coffee and spend thirty seconds trying not to choke on it. She pats me on the back with no sympathy whatsoever.

“Isn’t it a little early for that kind of chat?” I say.

“No need to act innocent for me, Alex,” she laughs, “I know you live for this kind of chat.”

By noon I’ve stopped feeling guilty about enjoying myself. Carmen fills whatever room she’s in with vibrant colour. Being around her again, just laughing, is the most human I’ve felt in months.

We sit down for lunch and she steals a fry off my plate.

“So,” she says.

“So what.”

“How are you?”

“Good. Really good actually. Everything is running to time and budget, if you can believe it.”

“Alex.”

I look at my food.

She waits for me to continue, comfortably holding the silence until I cave.

“Miranda decided to cut things off with Emily,” I say. “Three weeks ago.”

“I know. Emily called me,” Carmen says. “She didn’t know what had happened.”

“I know I should reach out.”

Carmen picks her fork back up. “What did you tell her?”

“Nothing yet. That’s the problem.”

“Alex, you don’t just ghost your polycule. It’s not good manners.”

“Please don’t use words like polycule.”

“What did you mean by ‘Miranda decided’?”

“She just announced it one night when we came back from dinner. That she was done.” I look at my food. “She kept saying she wanted her marriage back.”

“That she was done or it was done?”

“It was very clear she wanted us both to be done.”

“And what do you want?”

“We just bought the apartment.”

Carmen is quiet. She eats.

“That’s an interesting answer.” she says finally. “Is the sale finalised?”

“It’s a really great opportunity, Carmen. Probably a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“So you want the apartment. That’s a different answer.”

“You’re making me sound so –”

“I’m not making you anything. I am trying to remind you that you have agency. Your choices matter. Miranda does what she wants. She always has. Where are you in all this, Alex?”

I don’t say anything.

“What does your therapist think?”

“She’s been cut off too.”

Carmen looks me directly in the eye. “Go and talk to Emily,” she says. “Whatever you’re sorting out at home, she was part of this. She deserves someone to say something to her face.” A pause. “What you’re both doing to her. Just vanishing like she’s nothing. It’s cruel and I know you’re better than that.”

The words sit between us.

“I know,” I say.

She steals another fry, picks up her plate and goes.

That evening I tell Miranda I want to see Emily. Not to resume anything. Just to talk. We owe her that.

Miranda is at the kitchen counter with her laptop when I say it. She looks up.

“Why?” she says.

“What do you mean?

“Why do we “owe her that”? It’s not like we were in a relationship.”

“Not a relationship relationship - but we all have a relationship. We were her friends. We involved her in our life, we invited her into a sexual relationship and now we’ve just vanished without a word. It’s cruel.”

“I don’t see why that’s your problem to fix.”

“It’s basic decency.”

“It’s unnecessary. In fact, it’s probably confusing. It opens the door.” She goes back to her screen. “I’ve told you what I need. A clean break for us to get back on solid ground. To prioritise us rather than some bizarre social rules about how to decently break off your sexual relationship with your married friend.”

“I don’t know how else to explain. This is what I need.”

She looks up again. “Why are you always trying to protect her?”

“I’m not protecting her. I don’t feel good about this and I want to end it properly. Say something to her face - explain.”

Her voice is level and precise. “I’ve been very clear about how I feel. You’re telling me yet again this is more important to you. That you owe more to some woman than to our marriage.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Alex, Emily has a husband and kids and a life. I’m sure she’s not that concerned by whether her girlfriends are in touch.”

“No, she has no idea what happened and she’s upset.”

“What do you mean? How do you know that?”

“Carmen told me today on set…”

“Oh fabulous, so you’re hanging out with Carmen on set and talking about our marriage? And Emily? Do you literally care about my feelings at all?”

“No, she approached me and she asked me why Emily called her, upset, asking why we are ignoring her. Something that could be completely avoided if we just spoke to her directly.”

“Of course, it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

“I think your feelings matter. I’m simply asking for one afternoon so we can have a real clean slate.”

She stands. “We just bought a home together. I have done everything right. I have asked you not to spend time with people who have been undermining and threatening our marriage while we repair it. You’re telling me you’re going to see them anyway. And now you’re trying to manipulate me into telling you it’s okay when I have said repeatedly it’s not. I’m tired of begging you to do the bare minimum for us.”

“I’m only asking to have a conversation with someone we’ve both hurt.”

“Oh, come off it, Alex. You’re going to see someone you’re attached to in ways I’ve told you makes me uncomfortable.” She looks at me. “Do what you want. You’re clearly going to anyway. I don’t have to give you my blessing.”

She takes her laptop to the bedroom. I don’t bother following her.

The first time I wake up to it I think I’m dreaming.

It takes a moment to locate the sound. Low. Controlled. Coming from Miranda’s side of the bed.

I turn over. Her shoulders are moving.

“Miranda.”

Nothing.

“Hey.” I put my hand on her back. “What’s wrong?”

She turns over. Her face in the dark is wet. She’s been crying for a while.

“It’s nothing,” she says. “Go back to sleep.”

“It’s not nothing. Talk to me.”

She’s quiet. Then: “I don’t understand why you have to go to her. I’ve told you how I feel. I’ve been completely honest with you and you’re still going and I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do with that.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You already are.” She says it simply. “I asked you for something and you said no. And I’m lying here thinking about what that means.”

“It means I think we owe Emily a conversation. That’s all it means.”

“That’s what you say.”

I look at her in the dark.

“You know me,” I say.

“I thought I did.” She turns back over. “I’m fine. Go to sleep.”

Two nights later I’m almost asleep when I hear it again.

Not crying. Breathing that’s too careful.

I lie still for a moment.

“I can hear you,” I say.

She turns over immediately. Her face is the same as last time. Same wet eyes.

“I don’t want to fight,” she says. “I just keep going around and around on this and I can’t sleep.”

“What are you going around on?” I ask. Like I don’t know.

“Whether I’ve done something wrong. Whether you’d want to go to her if I’d done something differently.” She looks at me. “Whether this is about her or about me.”

“Darling.”

“I’m not being paranoid.”

“It’s about doing the right thing.”

“Meaning what I want is the wrong thing.”

She’s quiet for a long moment.

“I know I can be difficult,” she says. Her voice is softer now. “I know I don’t always make things easy. But I love you. I have always loved you. And I just need to know that’s enough. That I’m enough.”

I look at her face in the dark and think about whether I’m being uncharitable.

I pull her close. She falls into me. Her face against my neck and I hold her and she’s warm and real and she is either genuinely scared or she is extraordinarily good at this and I have reached the point where I can no longer tell.

“You’re enough,” I say.

The next morning I leave before Miranda is up. I text Emily to see if she’s free and she replies almost instantly. I text Miranda to let her know I’m going to quickly stop by Emily’s at some point. She doesn’t reply.

Emily’s door opens as I reach the landing. Jeans and a dark green jumper, hair loose, no shoes, a mug in both hands. She looks at me and smiles.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

“Come in.”

Inside it’s warm and alive in the way her home always is, the coat hooks crowded, one of the kids’ drawings on the console table, small boots tipped over by the door, the whole brownstone smelling of her and coffee.

We go to the kitchen. She pours me a coffee without asking what I want.

“I kept picking up my phone,” she says. She leans against the counter. “Then putting it down.”

“I know. I’m sorry it took this long.”

“Are you okay?”

“Not particularly.” I look at her. “You?”

“Better now.”

I tell her about it. Miranda’s decision, the fight, what was said. She listens without interrupting.

“I should have come sooner,” I say. “I kept finding reasons not to and none of them were good enough.”

“No,” she agrees. “They weren’t.” She looks at me steadily. “But you’re here.”

“I’m here.”

She sets her mug down and comes to stand in front of me and puts her hand flat on my chest.

“I know why you came,” she says.

“I came to talk.”

Half a smile. “Alex.”

“I know.”

I kiss her.

Or she kisses me. Both things happen at the same time. Her mouth finds mine and the three weeks of distance collapse immediately, her hands in my hair and her body pressing into mine. We don’t make it to the bedroom. We make it as far as the wall in the hallway, her back against it, my hands already under her jumper and her hands at my belt and neither of us caring about anything except this, right now, the specific unbearable relief of it.

“God,” she breathes against my mouth. “I’ve missed you. Don’t go quiet on me again.”

“I won’t.”

She pulls me closer by the collar and kisses me harder and I stop talking.

We make it to the bedroom eventually, shedding clothes in stages, laughing once when her jumper gets stuck and she makes a face at me over the neck of it. On the bed I put my mouth on her and take my time, slow and deliberate, my hands pressed flat on her hips holding her in place while she says my name over and over. She comes with her thighs tight around my head and her hand fisted in my hair and then she lies there breathing hard, flushed, grinning at the ceiling.

“Stay there,” she says.

She gets up. Goes to the wardrobe.

I watch her.

She comes back with something and holds it out and looks at me with an expression warm, direct and slightly daring.

It’s a harness. Good quality. Still in its packaging.

“I bought it after Montauk,” she says. “And then everything went wrong so I just.” She sets it on the bed between us. “I kept it.”

I look at it. Then at her.

“Weren’t you worried that David might…”

“Oh David doesn’t go through my things, he doesn’t care what I’m doing as long as I’m out of his way. Anyway, if he found it, I’d just say I wanted to spice things up.”

“Come here,” I say.

I put it on while she watches from the bed, propped up on her elbows, her hair a mess, completely unself-conscious. When I look up she’s biting her lip.

“You look incredible,” she starts.

“Don’t.” I move over her.

“Seriously.”

I kiss her to stop her talking and she laughs into my mouth and wraps her legs around me and pulls me in.

The sound she makes when I ease inside her goes straight through me. I give her a moment. She doesn’t want a moment.

“Move,” she says. “Please.”

I do.

It gets wild quickly. Emily doesn’t moderate herself, she just lets go, completely and openly, her nails in my back and her hips rising to meet me and these sounds she makes that I feel in my entire body. I go harder and she arches into it and says yes, like that, don’t stop and I don’t stop, I give her everything, and she takes it all and asks for more.

She comes a second time shaking, her whole body tightening and then releasing, and I stay inside her until she goes still.

“Jesus,” she breathes.

“He’s still not here,” I say.

She laughs. Actually laughs, head thrown back, and I pull out slowly and lie down beside her and she rolls into me and we stay like that for a while, both of us breathing hard, her face against my neck.

“Stay,” she says. It’s barely a word.

“I can’t.”

“I know.” Her hand on my chest. “Sometimes I just like to pretend it’s a possibility.”

When I finally get up she watches me from the bed, sheet pulled up to her waist, hair everywhere.

“Shower?” she says.

I shower. I don’t touch her products. I’d hate for Miranda to question how I smell.

I get dressed. She’s still in bed.

I sit on the edge of it and lean down and kiss her.

“Don’t disappear,” she says against my mouth.

“I won’t.”

I mean it when I say it.

I take the stairs down and step out into the cold. I walk to the subway and I think about the way she laughed and the harness still in its packaging and the three weeks she kept it in the wardrobe waiting. I think about the fact that I am going home and I don’t know what I’m going home to. I think about how Miranda wasn’t wrong about my intentions but that didn’t make her right either. I think about how there is something moving, smouldering in my chest and I can’t quite look at it.

The apartment stops me in the doorway.

Flowers on the table, white ranunculus, candles.The Burgundy we keep for occasions breathing on the counter and beside it a box from the place on Bleecker, the chocolate tart she knows I love.

Miranda comes out of the bedroom. Hair down. A new silk top I haven’t seen before.

“You’re home,” she says. “I wanted to do something nice.”

“Thank you,” I say. “This is lovely.”

“How did it go? With Emily.”

There’s something in how she asks it that sounds almost like concern. Like she’s been waiting to hear. Like a wife asking about a friend.

“Fine,” I say. “She’s disappointed but there’s not much more to be said.”

“Good.” She crosses to me and puts her hands on my shoulders. “I know I might have overreacted a little. You just wanted to set things right and that’s something I love about you. You’ve had so much on. Work, everything with us, all of it.” She looks at me. “I thought I’d run you a bath. You never take time for yourself.”

I look at her.

I hate baths. She knows this. She has suggested I take a bath exactly zero times before this moment. I wonder vaguely if she’s planning on dropping a hairdryer in it.

“That’s really thoughtful,” I say.

“I just want to take care of you.” She squeezes my shoulders. “Go and get changed. I’ll pour you a glass.”

I go to the bedroom and sit on the edge of the bed for a moment. Pictures from the morning keep flickering through my mind and won’t stop. I get changed and go back out.

Miranda hands me a glass. The candles are lit and she looks beautiful. I watch her and I give her the biggest smile I have. Inside, I feel nothing.

Keep Reading: Chapter 24

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Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. The characters, events, companies, places, names, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance, whether direct or indirect, to actual persons (living or dead), places, events, or businesses is entirely coincidental and unintended. Where reference is made to real locations or historical events, such references are included solely for the purpose of creating a sense of authenticity. They should not be interpreted as depicting real people, their actions, or their conduct. The author expressly disclaims any and all responsibility for any such interpretations or assumptions.