Chapter 10
I found it hanging where she'd left it.
Lauren's blue dress was on the back of our bedroom door, zipped into a clear garment bag but not put away. Not hidden. Just there. The apartment was quiet that Sunday afternoon, the kind of quiet that comes after you've both stopped trying to fill it. Light coming through the blinds cut the carpet into stripes. Her silver bracelet was on the dresser beside it, coiled next to her keys like she'd set it down and forgotten to pick it up again.
I didn't mean to be holding it. I'd gone to get a sweatshirt from the closet and my hand caught the plastic. I unzipped it without thinking. The satin was cool when I pulled it out. It still smelled faintly like that ballroom, perfume and string lights and too many people.
Lauren came in from the kitchen while I had it in my hands. She stopped in the doorway.
"You're holding it," she said.
I nodded. I didn't put it down.
She stepped closer, but not too close. She'd been doing that since we got home, giving me space without being asked. "Do you want me to throw it away?" she asked. Her voice was even. "I can. Right now. I just didn't know if you'd want me to do it without asking you first."
I looked at the dress. The thin straps, the slit she'd kept pulling closed that night at the Whitaker Foundation gala. I'd watched her do it. I'd thought she was nervous about the crowd.
"No," I said. "Don't throw it away."
She frowned a little. "Why not?"
"Because throwing it away doesn't fix anything," I said. "It just makes it look like we fixed something."
She sat on the edge of the bed. She was in jeans and an old t-shirt, hair pulled back. No makeup. She looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. The dress hung between us.
I had to ask. I'd been holding the question for two days, since the lab said we had two more days until the NIPT came back.
"Why'd you wear it that night?" I said.
Lauren looked down at her hands. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that dress," I said. "You knew Ethan was going to be at the gala. You'd been seeing him. And you still wore that dress. That one. So I need to know why."
Her breath caught. She didn't answer right away. She rubbed her thumb over her knuckle the way she does when she's trying to be precise.
"I wanted to feel chosen," she said finally. It came out small. "Not looked at. Chosen. At home I felt like we were just... managing. Bills and laundry and who was going to pick up what. And when I was with him, he made it feel like I was the only person in the room. When I put that dress on that night, I knew you'd look at me. And I knew he would too. And for a second I liked being the person both of you were looking at."
I felt my jaw tighten, but I didn't look away from her.
"That's honest," I said.
"It doesn't make it okay," she said quickly. "I know that. I wanted to feel alive and I used both of you to do it. I used you the most."
We were both quiet. The AC kicked on. I folded the dress carefully over my arm instead of letting it hang. The fabric slipped.
"The Whitaker Foundation has that donor dinner Thursday," she said. "My boss already asked if we're coming. I told her I didn't know."
"We're not," I said.
She nodded. "We shouldn't be anywhere together until the results are back."
"Not as a couple," I said. "Not in a room where people are watching to see how we act."
"So no events," she said. "No dinners. No family thing. Just us here until we know."
"Just us here," I said.
She reached over to the dresser and picked up her phone. She unlocked it and held it out to me, screen up. Her messages were open. Her passcode was still the same, our anniversary.
"You can have this," she said. "All of it. The code hasn't changed. You can look whenever you want. I don't want you wondering what's on it anymore."
I looked at the phone in her hand, then at her face. Her eyes were red but she wasn't crying. She was offering it like it was a solution.
I shook my head. I pushed her hand gently back.
"I don't want to check your phone," I said. "If I start doing that, we won't stop. I'll be checking it every time you go to the bathroom. That's not transparency. That's just surveillance."
She lowered the phone slowly. "Then how do you want to do this?"
"I want you to tell me," I said. "When something's hard. When you want to hide something. You tell me instead. And I have to believe you until you give me a reason not to. That's harder than looking at a phone."
Lauren put the phone down on the bedspread and let out a breath. "Okay."
I hung the dress back on the door and zipped the garment bag closed again. I didn't hide it in the closet. I left it where it was.
Lauren looked at it, then at me. "Leave it there?"
May you like
"Yeah," I said. "Leave it there."
We didn't touch. We didn't need to pretend we were past it. The boundary was there now, not as punishment, just as a line we'd both agreed to hold until Thursday gave us something real to stand on.
