High Infidelity
They had to work together so they were going to have to learn to get along. Even if Natalie could still remember every bitter word that had broken them in her apartment on that last day. Even if she could still feel that hardwood floor beneath her knees as she’d begged him to take her back that one drunken night, two weeks after. Even if she still ached when she let herself remember how he had taken her back, and then taken her apart, one last time.
She could see it in his eyes, he remembered all of it as well as she did. Too well. And it was at odds with the way he extended his hand for her to shake, until she noticed the slight tremble of his fingers.
They had to work together so they were going to have to learn to get along, was all Maria said. Their boss, and aware of their breakup, but unaware of all that had happened after. Granted, most people assumed there wasn’t any after.
Maria thought they hated each other. Natalie wished they did, had even thought that she had at one point, but as she took his hand in hers and held onto it for a second longer than what would have been truly professional, she knew she could never hate him. Not her Ethan.
But he wasn’t hers. His eyes settled on the reason why as they moved further apart. Natalie suddenly felt like the cold metal of her wedding band was coiling tighter. Cutting off the blood flow to everywhere but her cheeks. As if on cue, Alex, her husband, flounced into the room, moving past Ethan to brush a chaste, coffee-tainted kiss to her lips.
“They’ll get along just fine,” he proclaimed. She could never let him know just how well they could get along if three shots of vodka were added to the mix. He and Maria only knew of the anger, like breakups were ever that clean, like feelings didn’t always linger. They should know better.
She should tell them. She shouldn’t be working with Ethan, she shouldn’t even be in the same room as him. Her cheeks felt hotter.
But then their eyes finally met Natalie just couldn’t help herself. The words rolled off of her tongue as easily as all the other lies she’d told over the past 6 months.
I’m over him
I barely even remember what he looks like anymore
Of course I’m in love with Alex.
“Yes, we can be professional.”
Amusement flickered in those blue eyes and Natalie turned away to hide her own small smile. It was just becoming too easy. They could uphold the law by day and err on the wrong side of morality by night. That would even itself out. What human being wasn’t a balance sheet of sins and good deeds anyway?
