Page 19 of The Other Side

I knead the skin of my arms when his eyes steer to my left hand.

“How long have you been living in Hampton Bays?” he asks.

The band of my ring digs into my flesh, and I silently will it to absorb into my body. “Several months,” I answer. “Before then, I was living by myself in an apartment of a mother-daughter home in Mount Sinai.”

“How long have you been with Jesse?”

“A year.” My head bobs, and that familiar guilt suffocates me. I drop my attention to my beer on the table, muttering anxiously. “We got engaged a couple months ago. Kind of a whirlwind, I suppose.”

I lift my drink to draw a sip of liquid courage. My eyes cautiously elevate to meet Brant’s. There’s a fat pit nestled in my stomach, and I can’t quite digest it. I’m unsure of how I’m expected to act.

If I act excited about my relationship, would it be rude? But if I act indifferent about it, wouldn’t that be strange?

“How did you two meet?” he asks.

My free thumb instantly hikes over my shoulder. “A colleague of mine introduced me to him. She used to live in the city.”

I drop my eyes to the table to place my drink down. I tuck some hair behind my ear after, waiting for Brant to say something. Anything.

But words never leave him.

My palms fall into my lap, my fingers fiddling with each other against my pencil skirt. The pit in my belly expands, inflating with discomfort across the dreadful silence.

I love Jesse.

I’m marrying him.

I should talk about him.

“Jesse lived in Manhattan up until we moved in together in Hampton Bays.” Indifference eventually wins when I speak. I offer Brant a tiny smile, but my chest screws tighter as distress washes over me in fiercer waves.

Change the topic.

“How about you? Are you seeing anyone?”

My stare finds his forearms tangled over the table. It’s overwhelming to look into his eyes, but I notice him shaking his head in my periphery. “I’m not in a committed relationship, if that’s what you mean.”

I quickly pop my brows, finding the courage to meet his gaze again. “But you are seeing someone?”

“Sure, you could say that,” he says, his coolness knocking mine to shame. “But it’s never anything worth watering.”

I hesitate a quick beat. “Why is that?”

“If I’m not getting what I want from her, I move on.”

My throat clogs as I roam my eyes over his frame. There’re burning tears that line the lids of my eyes, but it’s not out of jealously or judgment.

It’s out of mourning.

I’m mourning his absence the last ten years. It occurs to me that I don’t know this man sitting across from me.

As it turns out, there are women who know this man better.

Better than me?

Me?

“How’s your mom?” I sigh out the question, needing the conversation to take a rapid turn.