Vanessa’s face went pale the instant I raised my hand toward Derek.
He was still beside the cooler, smiling about something one of the neighbors had said.
For half a second, he didn’t realize I was signaling him.
Then he pointed at himself.
I nodded.
Vanessa whispered, “Travis.”
There was a warning in the way she said my name.
Maybe a plea.
I picked up my glass from the table beside the grill and took a drink, mostly because I needed something ordinary to do with my hands.
Derek started walking toward us.
“What’s up?” he called.
Vanessa stepped back from me so quickly that the movement itself felt like evidence.
I watched Derek approach—the man who had picked me up from a roadside ditch when my car died outside Macon at two in the morning, who had slept on my couch for three nights after his father’s funeral, who had stood beside me when Monica moved out and never once told me I should have tried harder to become the husband she wanted.
My best friend.
And I understood with painful clarity that feelings were not the betrayal.
What we chose to do with them could be.
Derek stopped between us.
He glanced from my face to Vanessa’s.
“Why do you both look like somebody died?”
Vanessa forced a laugh.
“Nobody died.”
“No,” I said.
“But we need to talk.”
Her eyes snapped toward me.
Derek’s smile disappeared.
The neighbors were close enough to notice the change in the air, so I nodded toward the house.
“Inside.”
Derek followed immediately.
Vanessa didn’t move.
I held the back door open.
She stared at me as though I had broken some agreement neither of us had ever actually made.
Then she walked inside.
The restored walnut table stood in my dining room because I had finished the final coat that afternoon and planned to surprise them with it after dinner.
Under the warm ceiling light, it looked almost new, except that I had deliberately preserved the small dents and age marks that belonged to its history.
Derek ran his palm over the surface.
“Wow.
You finished it.”
Nobody answered.
His hand stopped moving.
“Okay,” he said.
“What is this?”
I looked at Vanessa.
She folded her arms.
“You wanted me to come over here, Travis.
So say whatever you’re going to say.”
That edge in her voice surprised me.
Not anger exactly.
Fear wearing anger’s clothes.
I put both hands flat against the back of a chair.
“Vanessa just told me she knows what I’ve been thinking.”
Derek frowned.
“About what?”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
I could have protected myself by making her explain everything.
I could have made it sound as if all of this had been one-sided, as if she had pursued me while I remained untouched.
That would have been another false finish.
