“Closer, but still not precise.”
“Uncomfortable.”
“You’re getting warmer. Torturous, perhaps?” he asked.
I scoffed. “At this rate, not as torturous as this conversation!”
“Sorry. You know I like words,” he said, flashing his most irresistible puppy-dog stare.
“And you get especially obsessed with them when you’re nervous,” I told him. “Now that we’ve had to go over some of the specifics of our sex life in front of the police—and, let’s not forget, my father—can I tell you something?” I’d been holding on to this for way too many years. “I always hated Gloria Fucking Kingsley.”
David shifted to face me better. “What? What brought this on?”
“I guess the fact that she was supposed to be your former colleague and friend but decided to throw you under the bus the moment city hall called and spun a fabricated tale about you...” My gaze was still lost in the gray semi-empty space in front of me.
“She got a scoop,” David said.
“Are you serious right now?” I was too enraged to keep avoiding his gaze and turned to face him. “That wasn’t a scoop, that was a bunch of lies. And she had no issue writing them. Also, she said I’m unemployed three times in the article!”
“Well, you’re not actively working on any production right now,” David reasoned.
“I’m writing my spec script! I have an overall deal! I have plenty of employment. Perhaps nothing is being made at the moment, but that’s not the point!” I yelled. My frustration ran deep, and I realized I had been yearning to have that argument for a while. Fred Appleton barging in at the worst moment instead of waiting for my agent to give him an answer hadn’t exactly appeased my mood.
“You always get upset because I’m a stickler for precision when it gets to finding the right way of wording things. And then someone describes your situation inaccurately, and look what happens,” David said, and that was the last straw.
“That’s not what I’m saying!” I said, my voice rising in volume.
“Then tell me what it is!” he said, yelling too. We were both screaming at each other by then, having our first full-blown argument since we’d broken up. And we—I guess, technically me—had chosen the vicinity of a police station for it.
I finally let it out. “Were you having an affair with her?” If only I’d found the courage to do it two years before.
“What? With whom?” he asked, and for a moment there I thought he looked genuinely clueless. I didn’t reply though. I just stared at him pointedly. “With Gloria?” he finally said. “Of course not!”
They’d been working together at theGazettewhen David and I were still a couple, and even though I pride myself on not being jealous, I was green with envy about her. She was witty and hot, she always knew what to say, what to read, and what new places to go. And, above all, she was so self-assured and confident in her own skin. I feared the day David realized she was perfect for him in a way I had never been.
“Are you sure?” I asked, but I was sounding a bit more deflated and insecure than when I’d first posed the question.
“I couldn’t be more certain,” he said. He wasn’t being theatrical about it, and his jawline looked his usual sexy, so I assumed he was telling the truth. “Why would I have an affair with her when I was withyou?” He managed to make the wordyousound like the most special thing.
“I don’t know! You tell me!” Believe me, I know. Not my best line. “You could also have started seeing her after we broke up.” I was starting to sound deranged and foolish.
“Elena, why would I want to startseeingher? All I wanted to do whenyoubroke up with me was find a way to be together again,” he said. “Also, for the sake of at least trying to appear feminist, what makes you think she’d want anything to do with me?”
“Oh please! Forget about your feminist argument.” We didn’t have time for that then, not when he’d said what he’d said. “You wanted to be together again?”
“Elena, isn’t it obvious?” He needed to stop using my first name in that melodious, tender way only he knew how to do. “We live in the same building!”
“They were having a sale!” I realized how ridiculous it sounded only after I’d said it out loud.
“You have keys to my apartment,” David continued, and the calmness in his tone agitated me even more.
“It’s just more convenient this way.” I was trying to justify the whole situation and hearing the absurdity in every one of my words.
“Whenever you’ve decided to surprise me with a visit in the middle of the night, have you ever caught me with anyone?”
I looked at him for a few seconds, not knowing what to say next. I was processing everything that had been said between the two of us, and not quite grasping the actual implications.
“What have we been doing all this time?” I asked him finally.
