Then the warmth soured, just slightly, into disappointment. He was already gone. The surprise I’d planned – showing up at his door, seeing his face light up – had been preempted by his work ethic.
I sat on the bed’s edge, chewing my lower lip. The roses watched me with the patient attentiveness of flowers that knew something I didn’t.
And then – bright and sudden, like a match struck in a dark room – the idea arrived.
“I’ll surprise him at work.”
I said it out loud, which made it real. I was going to get dressed, look incredible, show up at his office unannounced, and watch the composure of a billionaire dissolve in real time. The image was so satisfying it was practically nutritional.
I flew to the closet. My hands moved through the dresses with purpose – past the black (too date-night), past the red (too much history), past the green (too garden party, as Sable had correctly diagnosed) – until my fingers found it. Blue. Soft, flowing, the color of a sky that’s decided to cooperate. The kind of dress that says: I’m here because I want to be, not because I have to be.
I put it on. Applied makeup with a light hand – enough to brighten, not enough to armor. A touch of perfume at the wrists and behind the ears, the way my mother used to do, the way she’d taught me before she ran out of time to teach me anything else.
I looked in the mirror. The girl looking back was not the puffy-eyed, sweat-damp wreck from an hour ago. She looked like a woman with a plan and the confidence to execute it. She looked like someone Sterling wouldn’t recognize, and Caelum wouldn’t forget.
“Let’s make today unforgettable,” I told her.
She agreed.
I grabbed my bag. Walked to the door. Pulled it open. And stepped into the hallway with the stride of a woman who’d woken up in a nightmare and decided to spend the rest of the day building something better.
Sterling could rot where he was. The past could stay past. I had a husband to surprise and a life to choose on purpose, and neither of those things required his permission.
I made it exactly four steps outside the front door before the plan collapsed.
Not dramatically – no sudden obstacle, no phone call, no act of God. Just me, standing on the polished front steps of a luxury apartment building in a blue dress and sensible heels, with a handbag over my shoulder and a smile on my face and the devastating realization that I had absolutely no idea where my husband worked.
The smile died a slow, public death.
“Oh no,” I said.
The doorman, who had been mid-nod in my direction, froze. “Ma’am? Everything alright?”
“Fine. Everything’s fine. I just-” I turned around, turned back, pressed my palm against my forehead. “I don’t know where he works. I don’t know where my own husband works.”
The doorman, to his credit, maintained a facial expression of immaculate neutrality. He’d probably been trained for exactly this kind of moment – the billionaire’s wife having a minor existential crisis on the front steps at eight in the morning.
I began to pace. Heels clicking on the pavement, brain cycling through options with the frantic energy of a hamster in a wheel. I could call Caelum – but that would kill the surprise. I could Google him – “Caelum + office + address” – but I didn’t even know what his company was called. I knew he was wealthy. I knew he owned things. Beyond that, my knowledge of his professional life was approximately as deep as a puddle in a drought.
What kind of wife doesn’t know where her husband works?
The kind, I reminded myself with a wince, who’d been married for less than a week under circumstances that didn’t exactly lend themselves to leisurely conversations about office locations.
And then: Sable.
The name landed in my brain like a life preserver thrown to a drowning woman. Sable, who’d been working for Caelum for years. Sable, who knew everything. Sable, who was probably somewhere inside this building, being competent and useful and not standing on the front steps having a crisis.
I reached into my bag for my phone. My hand found keys, wallet, lipstick, a receipt from the restaurant last night (which I was keeping, for reasons I chose not to examine), and – nothing else.
No phone.
“Oh, come on,” I muttered.
The bathroom counter. I’d left it face-down on the bathroom counter, deliberately, as a statement about not letting Sterling ruin my morning. Which had felt very empowered and mature at the time, and now felt like the decision of a woman who had prioritized emotional symbolism over basic logistics.
I spun and marched back inside, past the doorman (still neutral, still professional, probably composing a memoir), through the lobby, into the elevator, up to the apartment, through the door I’d left unlocked because I’d been too busy being confident to remember security, into the bathroom, and there it was – my phone, screen still glowing with Sterling’s unread messages like a small, persistent wound.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.