Page 6 of Iridescent
Nearly an hour of begging her to let me help with dinner earned me one calm, appraising look and a question about whether Monsieur Navarro had offended me badly enough to deserve poisoning. I said no. She did not look convinced. By some miracle, she relented—only for me to spend the next few minutes vindicating her worst suspicions.
I squeeze my eyes shut as tears slide down my face, refusing to validate this humiliation with actual sobs.
I haven’t cooked a proper meal in—what? Six years? Seven? I’m not sure.
My cooking skills aren’t rusty. Rusty implies they existed in the first place.
Which, apparently, is a disgrace of mythological proportions for a Greek woman. I heard it all my life from aunties, cousins, and family friends who believed olive oil could solve most tragedies and a woman’s worth could be measured by how many people she knew how to feed.
In my family, food was less a meal than a declaration of love. I just never got the chance to learn how to be the one making it. Yiayia’s kitchen belonged towomen with quick hands, sharper tongues, and the good sense to move me out of the way before I turned simple tasks into minor emergencies. According to Yiayia, my hands weren’t made for delicate work. They were made for destruction. Eventually, she decided I was better loved from a safe distance.
After I moved to London for college, food became something I inhaled between classes, training, and exhaustion: instant noodles at indecent hours, protein shakes when time was scarce, grab-and-go wraps from the café near the gym, and whatever iron-rich meal prep my coach bullied me into eating.
Meeting my husband improved things considerably. He loved cooking, I loved eating, and our marriage thrived on the division of labor. When Colette and the rest of the staff are out, he cooks. I support him the way any devoted wife would: by hovering nearby, offering moral encouragement, and flashing him dessert every few minutes.
The thought of him should make me smile. Instead, the ridiculous little spark keeping me upright gutters, leaving something sour and unsettled in its place.
There was a time he treated that like an indulgence worth abandoning a board call for. Dinner could burn, his phone could ring itself breathless, and Xavier would still choose me without hesitation. Work never came between us. Our marriage came first. He made sure of it.
Now, my husband barely comes home. He hasn’t spent a full night in our bed in months, and his absence has started taking up more space than he does.
On the rare mornings I catch him before he leaves, he gives me a perfunctory kiss on the lips and asks what I plan to do with my day, his phone in hand. I start to answer because some pathetic part of me believes the question matters. But his attention drifts before I finish. One moment, he is in front of me. The next, he is walking away, issuing clipped instructions to someone on the other end of the line about a crisis that apparently can't wait.
He says it's the acquisition he's trying to close that has him on edge, but after eight years together, I know every nuance of my husband. I know what pressure does to him, and this feels nothing like it.
Maybe he’s tired of you.
It would be easier to dismiss the thought if his family and strangers online had not spent the past few years treating my body like public property.
People with no idea what it costs me have called me barren, broken, a beautiful waste of Xavier Navarro’s time—the enigmatic billionaire half the internet seems convinced I never deserved. They say he should find someone pedigreed and unscarred, some glossy heiress the magazines keep attaching to his name, someone capable of giving him the legacy I keep failing to produce, as if I am not already doing everything short of carving one out of myself.
Once, at least, we were allowed to suffer in private. But when the clinic visits started, the world somehow became far too interested in my husband’s legacy and the woman everyone had decided was standing between him and it.
I realize, with a sharp ache in my chest, that the tears are not all from the onions anymore. I am receding into that awful in-between place I go whenever these things resurface.
I rub a fist over my heart, trying to press the ache down.
No.
I have cried over that accusation too many times already.
Tomorrow, we find out whether our first IUI worked.
I am scared shitless. But some foolish, stubborn part of me wants to believe this feeling inside me means something. That the result will be positive. That this time, after everything, my body will finally get one thing right.
I draw in a deep breath, sniffle, and rein in my spiraling thoughts. I refuse to let my mind make a catastrophe out of this. Not today. Today, I am dragging myself to the brighter side by the throat if I have to.
Across the kitchen, Collette lifts the lid from the pot, and a cloud of steam rolls into the air, carrying the richness of tomato sauce simmering around chicken and sweet peppers. The mouthwatering aroma pulls me back to London—to Maison Verre, the little French-Basque restaurant Xavier took me to the night we were too happy to be sensible.
I remember sitting across from him that night in a dress I kept smoothing over my thighs, pretending I wasn't staring at the prices on the menu.
“Amor.” His mouth twitched. “You're doing math.”
He was right. I had been doing grim arithmetic since the menu touched my hands.
“I’m being financially aware,” I countered. “One appetizer costs a kidney, and I’m emotionally attached to both of mine. What were you thinking?”
His lips curved wider. I had no idea what he found funny. I was dead serious.
