The Life I Chose After Him

Two years of long distance, and when I showed up at my boyfriend's apartment early, there was a pair of his coworker's heels sitting just inside the door.

Every other time I'd come to see Grant, his coworker Camille was the one who picked me up.

She knew which shelf his shirts were on, and which carton of milk he'd want the next morning.

Even a jacket he handed over without looking, she could put back in exactly the spot it always went.

But they never said anything suggestive to each other, never once did anything that clearly crossed a line, so I pushed the suspicion down, over and over.

Until the day I came without telling him first, and stood outside his door, and heard the two of them laughing in there.

All that time, the headsup I gave him before every visit wasn't time to get ready for me. It was time for him and Camille to clean up. Chapter 1 I didn't knock.

I stood in the dim hallway outside his apartment and called Grant. The laughter behind the door stopped dead, and a ringtone I knew started up in its place.

I stared at the door and listened to it ring, over and over, on the other side.

On the fifth try, he finally picked up. "Jo, what's with the sudden call?" His voice was as warm as ever, as if the laughing I'd heard through that door a second ago had been something I'd invented.

I dug my nails into my palm. "Where are you right now?" Two seconds of silence on his end. "Where else would I be?

At the office, racing to finish a proposal." He let out a small sigh, with exactly the right amount of tiredness in it. "They're pushing hard on this project.

I'll probably be up late again tonight." All at once, it was almost funny. "Are you the only one there?" "Pretty much.

Everyone else just left." Grant paused, then asked, like it was nothing, "What's up?

You miss me?" Before I could answer, a smothered cry of pain came through the line. "What was that noise?" "Nothing." He was clearly rattled for a second, then added quickly, with a laugh, "The cleaning cart hit the conference room door.

Gave me a scare." "So that's what it was." I looked down at the pair of Camille's heels on the mat just inside his door.

His end went quiet for a few seconds, and all that was left was his breathing, a little too fast. "Jo, they're really on me over here." "And my phone's almost dead.

I'll call you later." Before I could get a word out, he hung up in a hurry. I looked at the dark screen and found I didn't even have the strength left to confront him.

Soon there were voices behind the door again, low and broken up, much quieter than before. I didn't stay to listen. I turned and got in the elevator.

It wasn't until the doors closed that I realized my hands had been shaking the whole time. When I came out of the building, it was pouring, though I hadn't noticed it start.

The rain came down so hard it soaked the bottoms of my pants in seconds.

I didn't have an umbrella, so I hugged my backpack against my chest and ran through it to the hotel across the street.

It couldn't have been more than a hundred feet, and my hair and my jacket were already mostly soaked.

The clerk at the front desk glanced at me a few extra times while she checked me in, but she didn't ask anything.

I took the key card upstairs, and the second I was inside I stripped off the wet clothes. It was only when the hot water came down over my head that I registered how cold I'd been.

But no matter how high I turned the heat, the cold in my chest wouldn't break up. Afterward I lay down on the bed in the robe and scrolled my phone on autopilot.

Not long after, a new post came up on Instagram. It was Grant's.

Chapter 2 The post was a photo of an empty office, the light in it washed out and white, a coffee cup and a stack of files on the desk.

The caption was one line. [Eighth version of the proposal. Probably not making it home tonight.] Posted three minutes ago.

I stared at that photo for a long time, and then a low laugh came out of me.

If I hadn't been standing outside his door myself, I might really have believed he was still at the office. He'd probably had the picture ready for a while.

Even the timing and the wording were calculated just right. All that care and effort, and all of it just to make me believe he was working late.

I put the phone down, pulled the curtain back, and looked across the street at his building. Through the blur of the rain I could still pick out the lit window that was his.

The curtains were pulled tight, and only a thin line of yellow light leaked out along one edge. I sat by the window like someone waiting on a verdict she already knew.

The night went on, and the windows in that building went dark one after another. Only his stayed lit in the rain. I didn't know what I was waiting for.

Maybe only to see when Camille would leave. But it wasn't until two in the morning that the window finally went dark. Camille never came out of that building.

I leaned back in the chair. My hands and feet had gone cold past feeling a long time ago. I don't know when I fell asleep. When I woke up, the rain outside had stopped.

It was just getting light. Without thinking about it I went to the window and looked across at his building again. Before long, the door downstairs was pushed open from the inside.

Camille came out in the same white dress she'd had on the night before. Grant came out behind her.

They stood there and said a few things, and then Camille turned and put her arms around him. He didn't push her away. He bent his head and pulled her in and held her there.

The two of them leaning into each other like that, in the early morning, hurt to look at.

It was a long time before Camille stepped back out of his arms, and even then she did it slowly.

Grant reached up and fixed her hair, gentle about it, the way you are when you've done something more times than you can count.

I stood behind the glass and watched them say goodbye like no one else in the world existed. It was like a dull, rusted blade sawing back and forth across my chest.

I sat at the window until it was full daylight before I went down. My phone buzzed. A message from Grant. [Jo what time do you head out today?

Want me to come get you at the station?] I didn't answer. I called a car and went straight to his office. The receptionist knew me.

She signed me in, gave me a visitor badge, and let me through. I passed one of his coworkers in the hallway, and he tipped his chin toward the back. "Looking for Grant?

He's in the break room." I thanked him and kept going. I heard the laughing before I got to the door. I stopped for a second, then pushed it open.

Camille was sitting up on the counter with a coffee cup in both hands. Grant was standing across from her.

Whatever they were talking about, they were both loose and easy with it, laughing. Camille saw me first. "Josephine." Grant turned around and froze for a second. "Jo?

What are you doing here? I thought you were on the afternoon train." "I changed my ticket." He came over to take my bag.

Camille hopped down off the counter and slid an iced coffee across to me. "Take it, I just got it." I looked down at the cup. It was from the place I always went.

Oat milk, half sweet, light ice. "You know my order?" Camille smiled.

Chapter 3 "Grant told me," Camille said. "He gets one ahead of time every time you're coming." "He said if you ever moved your ticket up, you'd have something waiting." "That explains it." "Long distance.

It's just how it goes." There was a faint pity in the way she said it.

Like she was letting me off the hook, and also like she was stating something she'd seen through a long time ago.

Grant finally spoke. "Why didn't you tell me you changed your ticket?

I would have picked you up." "I wanted to surprise you." "You got me." I smiled. "What were you two talking about? You both looked pretty happy." Camille jumped in. "Work.

He was up late last night revising that proposal, turned it in this morning, so I said I'd run downstairs and get him a coffee to celebrate." "How late last night?" "A little after midnight, I think." She answered for him, and she answered faster than he could. "A little after midnight." I nodded and set the iced coffee back down on the counter, slowly. "That's rough.

Good thing he had company." After I said it, the break room went dead silent for a second. Grant glanced at me, started to say something, and didn't.

Camille picked up her cup and took a sip. "It's nothing.

I don't like him working late by himself." "Is it always like that?" "Pretty much." She said it without a flicker, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I looked down and turned the iced coffee slowly on the counter. Footsteps came down the hall then, and two coworkers passed the break room.

One of them glanced in and slowed. "Hey, Camille.

Who's this?" Camille turned partway around. "Grant's girlfriend." The guy blinked, then put it together and looked over at Grant, grinning. "Oh!

The longdistance one?" Grant grunted. The coworker looked me over, easy about it. "No wonder Grant says it's a whole production for you to get out here.

I thought he was exaggerating." I smiled at that. "He's mentioned me to you guys?" "Sure.

Said you're in grad school, that you're slammed, that you have to move your experiments around weeks in advance and clear it with your advisor." He paused, then added one more thing. "He said he doesn't have to worry about himself, though, not with Camille around.

Somebody makes sure he eats. Beats being on his own." The break room was quiet for a second. I turned and looked at Grant.

He was holding his coffee cup, and he wasn't looking at me. Camille gave a light laugh, offhand about it. "Don't listen to him. Coworkers help each other out.

It's not a big deal." "I bring him lunch sometimes, grab him a coffee, remind him to eat when he's working late." She paused. "You're not here.

Somebody has to keep him from sitting alone with takeout." "You're not here." Three words, said lightly, and they went in like a needle, dead center.

As if my not being here were the reason all of this had happened. As if my not being here were the thing that needed explaining.

Grant finally spoke up. "Camille just does it on her way.

Don't read anything into it." I watched how automatic it was for him to defend her, and the last piece of me that was still hoping I had it wrong started to go cold. "I'm not reading anything into it." Grant looked relieved, and reached over for my suitcase. "I took a half day just for this.

I'm not going anywhere today. It's all yours." He said it gently, as though the man who had held on to Camille last night and wouldn't let go had been someone else entirely.

Chapter 4 Camille read the room, set her cup down, said with a smile that she had work to get back to, and walked out of the break room.

On her way out she reminded Grant not to forget his three o'clock call, easy and familiar about it. Grant said okay.

He pulled my suitcase out of the building for me and talked the entire way. He said a new restaurant had opened up near him and he could take me tonight.

He said the forecast was clear for the next few days, so we could go somewhere over the weekend. He said a lot. I nodded once in a while and had no interest in answering any of it.

He must have picked up on how cold I was, because he turned to look at me a few times, but in the end he didn't push.

Downstairs at his building he punched in the door code without looking and took my bag into the elevator.

When the apartment door opened, the entryway was so tidy there was nothing in it to find.

The heels that had been on the mat inside the door last night were gone, and the rack against the wall held nothing but his own shoes.

The living room table had been wiped down, and the pillows on the couch were set in a perfect line.

There were no extra dishes in the kitchen, and nothing in the bathroom that a second person had used.

Even the air held nothing but a faint smell of cleaner, as if no one had stayed here the night before at all.

Grant pushed my suitcase into the bedroom and asked, smiling, whether it was as clean as it always was. "I knew you were coming, so I did the whole place this morning." I looked at how easy his face was.

It wasn't that he couldn't leave a trace. It was that he was very good at clearing one.

A call came in from work and he took it out on the balcony, keeping his voice down while he gave someone instructions.

I sat on the edge of the bed by myself and ran my fingers over the smooth sheets without meaning to. The comforter had clearly just been changed.

There wasn't a wrinkle in it that didn't belong. But when I leaned back toward the headboard, a sweet smell I didn't know came up off the side of the pillow.

The detergent Grant always used carried a faint cedar note, and I knew it better than I knew almost anything. Threaded through that cedar was the rich scent of white camellia.

I don't use scented shampoo or lotion. I never have. Camille's hair. That was exactly what it smelled like. I looked down and saw a long, thin curl along the edge of the pillowcase.

It wasn't mine. It was the same chestnut brown as Camille's. I sat there holding that hair between my fingers, and the bedroom, scrubbed that clean, turned my stomach.

I set the hair on the nightstand. My phone buzzed. My advisor was in the lab group chat asking where my data was, telling me to fix one of the analysis results as soon as I could.

My laptop was still locked in my suitcase, and of course the battery had been dead for hours. I looked at the desk in the corner.

Grant's laptop was open, still sitting on a work page. His lowered voice carried in from the balcony. That call did not sound like it was ending any time soon.

I'd borrowed his laptop for my research plenty of times when I came to visit before. Nothing between us had ever been his or mine.

He'd even given me his password without being asked. I sat down at the desk and opened the data file my advisor had sent.

Once I'd fixed the result and went to save the file to the desktop, I happened to see a folder named CR. Two letters, and my hand went still on the mouse. Camille Ross.

I told myself it was probably work. They were at the same company. Her initials on his laptop weren't strange.

But the folder had no project number on it, and nothing else that marked it as work