One minute.
I could hear the muffled roar of his engine starting in the driveway. The sound of the tires crunching over the gravel.
Two minutes.
My pulse began to steady. The cold dread in my stomach was slowly being replaced by a strange, tingling anticipation.
Five minutes.
I traced the grain of the wood on the table. The silence of the house was absolute, heavy, and pregnant with impending reality. I was just about to stand up and rinse his mug, resigning myself to the depressing idea that his iron-clad, executive stomach had somehow neutralized my little gift. Perhaps the dosage had been too weak. Perhaps he was invincible.
Ten minutes.
And then… glory.
The peaceful Saturday morning was violently ruptured. Tires screeched against the asphalt of our driveway with the desperate intensity of a car crash. The engine choked and died abruptly. A car door flew open with a violent, metallic crack.
And then, a raw, desperate, thoroughly un-executive shout echoed through the walls of our suburban fortress.
“DAMN IT!”
### Chapter 3: The Restricted Area
I smiled. It wasn’t a wide, joyful smile, but a slow, satisfied curving of the lips. The kind of smile a cat gives right before it pounces.
I stood up, smoothed down the front of my robe, and walked out onto the front porch, arranging my features into the most innocent, deeply concerned expression in the world.
Julian was getting out of the car. Actually, “getting out” was a generous description. He was practically rolling out of the driver’s seat, doubled over in half. One hand was white-knuckling the roof of the car, and the other was clutching his stomach with a death grip, as if he were trying to contain a bomb that was just seconds away from detonating. His face, usually tanned and confident, was the color of old parchment. Beads of cold sweat glistened on his forehead.
He was shuffling, running, practically crawling toward the house, his polished Oxford shoes scuffing against the concrete.
“What did you give me, you crazy woman?!” he yelled, his voice cracking an octave higher than usual. “I can’t make it! I can’t make it to the bathroom!”
I put a hand to my chest, my eyes wide with feigned maternal concern. I leaned over the porch railing.
“Love…” I called out softly, my voice dripping with honey. “Aren’t you just falling in love?”
He stopped for a microscopic second, his eyes bulging, his face twisting in a cocktail of physical agony and utter confusion.
“What?!” he gasped, a spasm rocking his entire body.
“They say,” I continued gently, taking a step closer to the edge of the porch, “that when you’re nervous about a big date… your body shows it. Butterflies in the stomach, they call it.”
“I WON’T MAKE IT!” he roared, abandoning the conversation entirely. He abandoned all pretense, all dignity, and scrambled up the porch steps, shoving past me through the front door.
He made a desperate, agonizing pivot toward the grand staircase, clearly aiming for the sanctuary of our master bathroom upstairs—the one with the heated seats and the soundproof door.
“Ah,” I added, my voice cutting through the hallway like a silver blade. I didn’t yell, but the sheer authority in my tone made him freeze on the very first step.
He turned his head slowly, his face contorted in agony. “Because?” he squeezed out between gritted teeth.
“I’m cleaning it,” I lied seamlessly. “The floor is wet. Toxic chemicals. Better use the guest one down here.”
What followed was a scene of poetic justice that I will keep framed in the gallery of my mind forever. My husband, the great corporate executive, the master of projections and “synergy,” the man who thought he could seamlessly manage two women without missing a beat, was reduced to a primal state.
With his pride violently wounded and his stomach twisting in relentless knots, the “important meeting” was clearly, definitively cancelled. He turned, hobbling toward the small, cramped downstairs bathroom situated right off the living room.
The thin wooden door slammed shut.
Almost instantly, dramatic, catastrophic noises began to echo from inside. It sounded like a thunderstorm trapped inside a tin can.
I stood in the hallway, letting out a long, heavy sigh. The air already felt lighter. I grabbed my cell phone from the console table. I opened the group chat with my three closest friends—women who had watched me shrink over the last six months and had been waiting patiently for me to wake up.
I typed: Girls, is the beer deal still on for today?
Three seconds later, my phone vibrated in my palm. The answers flooded in like a lifeline.
Of course!
*We’ll be waiting for you at The Rusty Anchor!*
*Today we toast to being single!*
I walked to the hall mirror. I pulled out a tube of cherry-red lipstick I hadn’t worn in a year. I applied it carefully, pressing my lips together. I looked at the woman in the reflection. She looked tired, yes, but her eyes were bright.
I grabbed my keys.w
I grabbed my leather bag.
And, most importantly, I grabbed my dignity.
As I placed my hand on the doorknob, I heard his desperate, strained voice echoing from behind the thin bathroom door.
“Where are you going?!” he yelled over the sound of the exhaust fan.
I smiled at my reflection one last time.
“To a meeting,” I called back, my voice echoing down the hallway.
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