Hazards.

Even though Ben thought the best thing I could have done after our Wednesday night drinks would have been to call Alex, I didn’t want to bring it to him before I’d had a chance to consider whether what I was seeing in that picture, reading in that caption, reflected reality. For all his claims that I’m the one who is adept at concealing the truth and constructing alternate versions of the past and present, Julian far outstrips me in that faculty. Something I perceived clearly, like his mother repeatedly calling me “Amanda,” was all in my head, something I wanted to hear because I was so insecure about his mother’s affection for me. (“You want her to hate you, because you don’t like her yourself. Rest assured, she knows your name and she always uses it.”) Or his continuing assertion — one that he does not hesitate to tell our mutual friends, some of whom believe it — that Alex and I had been physically cheating on him behind his back for years, instead of waiting until after Julian walked out on me. (“You think I don’t have proof? Of course I do.”)

Julian delivers these lies with such conviction at times it becomes difficult to believe they cannot be true. And as I move further away from him in time, my instinct is not to always trust the image he presents to the world. He works deftly in half-truths. I mean, “SB” is likely to be Santa Barbara; after all, Ben was demonstrably correct that was definitely the Ritz-Carlton where Jules had been sunning himself. But what if “AH” wasn’t Amanda — or even if it was, was she really there? Even if I was meant to think of Amanda, that didn’t mean she was the photographer. It could just be another dagger thrown through the air towards me, an attempt to lay me low in his long war with Alex. Or another message, like the drunken mention of Seattle, written in a language only I can understand: I see you, Melissa, and you can see me. Don’t you want to know what this all means? Don’t you want to know how to end it and spare Alex? Or perhaps Ben is right: it’s not all about me. It’s all noise, and no signal.

So I did something sensible for a change. I called Miranda. I mean, not immediately after I got home from Beta on Wednesday night, too early in the morning there to call. And Thursday morning I overslept and had to break my no-rideshare to work rule, leaving no time to call. I’d had a restless night of sleep, again featuring the confused and confusing Bluebeard dream, but this time I had a key to the room. It did not work, though dream logic told me it was supposed to. I tried and tried again until someone — some man, identity concealed to me — put his hand over the keyhole before I could try one last time.

Thursday night was impractical as well, as I was staying over at Alex’s that evening in advance of his flight the following afternoon. I was hardly going to call Miranda in front of Alex for her opinion when the whole point of calling was to figure out how — if at all — to discuss this with him. Instead, I did another sensible something: I focused on the present, and the evening time I had with a man who was very much in love with me, and has (as far as I can tell) abandoned mindfuckery when it comes to me. Alex really was quite talented at making me doubt myself back in the day, though he was never so subtle as Julian.

No, when Alexander wanted me to hate him back at Bristol, or sought to drive a wedge between me and Julian as my wedding approached, he was dogged and clear in his methods. He only obscured his continuing desire for me. When he treated me poorly in Bristol, it was to drive me towards Julian, as that was what Jules’ money was paying for. Arguably Al’s pre-wedding harassment was not to sweep me up after I’d abandoned Julian, but rather to prevent the marriage in the first place, even if that came with no plan to be with Alex.

“You deserved so much better than him, sweetheart,” Alex told me much later, on one of our long phone calls after Minty left him, and while I was beginning to imagine a life in which I was no longer in Julian’s control. “I can’t say I was the right person for you back then, but I felt — knew — that he was likely to destroy you if someone didn’t try to stop it. I only wish I’d kept fighting instead of taking his fucking bribes again. I was a right coward, thinking only of keeping myself comfortable instead of keeping up the fight.” But this wasn’t completely correct. While Alex was spending an unseemly amount on useless gadgets and tat (always the newest phone, the largest television, beautiful shoes from John Lobb) and an eye-watering amount on his flat in Chelsea and dinners out with Amanda (ugh), he was always funneling cash back north to make sure his mum and sister were able to live as the family thought was befitting their station. That is to say, in a state of slightly shabby gentility, but certainly with no expectation of employment for either of the women.

No, it was no night for retrospection, no evening for woolgathering. With Ben’s blessing, I left work at 4, so that I might beat Alex to his apartment and start a cottage pie with cheese-crusted leeks (Delia’s recipe, again). Once inside, I opened all the windows to let in a stiff afternoon breeze, air out the place. (Still not sure how he cannot smell his filthy soccer — sorry, football — kit laying there for days in the corner of his bedroom like he’s a fifteen-year-old boy.) I queued up and played my “Dark Beach” playlist on Spotify (Allah-Las, Mystic Braves, La Luz, Tomorrow’s Tulips, Tijuana Panthers). One extravagance of Alex’s I have never tsk’d at was his choice to have speakers in every room of the apartment, including the bathroom, so the songs followed me as I passed from room to room. As the pie cooked in the oven, I fished out the Oribe shampoo and conditioner I’d stashed in the linen cupboard and treated myself to a long, hot shower, trying to scrub off the lingering discomfort I had from looking at Julian’s picture.

I was singing along to “With Davey,” rinsing the last of the conditioner out of my hair when I heard a solid thump from the living room through the open bathroom door, stilling my voice. Don’t be silly, Melissa, I thought. It’s not like Julian has a key to this apartment, or that he could sail in through an open third floor window. The wind had been whipping up as I’d been cooking, and a gust of wind must have blown something over. With my back to the showerhead, I let the water strip away what was left on my skin, my eyes closed, chiming back in time with the song: “In the mountains, in the pines, in the city, one more –“

The shower curtain ripped open, each hook pingpingpinging along the rail. “I believe there may be a nude woman in my bathtub, stealing my water. Do you know what we do with water thieves around here?”

I shrieked and nearly slipped out of the shower, falling into Alex’s arms. “This is a fantastic way to start an evening, Mel, but I was thinking of you naked in my arms after dinner.”

“You asshole!” I yelled, rubbing the remaining water out of my eyes to see him looking down at me, laughing more than he should have in my opinion. “I could have hit my head, or broken something, and I’m completely wet.” I jutted out my bottom lip.

Al laughed even harder. “Please don’t make those kind of double entendres when you’re naked in my arms, Melissa, or dinner will burn.” He handed me gently out of the shower and pulled my favorite of his towels (peach and impossibly plush) around my shoulders. He started to rub the water off me in long swipes that weren’t doing much of anything to make me drier, but did feel delicious as he passed his hands over me.

“Alexander,” I warned, “we’re in danger of not having dinner at all at this rate. Oh!” (He had started with a kiss on my right shoulder, and was now dotting a trail of them up my neck and around to my lips.)

“Dinner will keep. I don’t know about me,” Alex growled, scooping me up, soaking hair and all, over his shoulder into the bedroom where he dumped me unceremoniously onto his unmade bed. “You wait here, girl, or I will beat you with my lips when I get back. Hell, I’ll beat you with my lips anyway.” I heard him turn off the shower (good) and the oven (excellent) and close every open window sash before stomping back in the room and slamming the door behind him.

“Now, lass,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt. “What’s for starters?”

***

We did eventually make it to the cottage pie as something of an afterthought to pre-flight carnal embrace. I hadn’t had the time to set the table as I’d wished — the gerbera daisies still sat in the sink, waiting for a vase, the wine was unaired, and I hadn’t even made the salad yet.

“Fuck it, Mel,” Alex told me as he methodically combed the knots out of my still-wet hair. “We eat in bed tonight. Take the daisies home with you.” He planted a kiss on the back of my head. “I love how bloody domestic you are at times but tonight, we run things my way.” Another kiss. “Paper towels and beer.” Another. “And you aren’t allowed to wear anything more than my dressing gown.” Another. “And I serve you.”

All of this sounded sinfully self-indulgent to me, and I wanted all of it. Even wearing Alex’s old paisley satiny-polyester robe, the same one he’d had since uni, was appealling. All I wanted to do was lie back on the queen bed, propped up by a few pillows, and eat cottage pie out of a bowl next to my boyfriend. I was so tired of the distractions Julian was projecting from Los Angeles or Santa Barbara or wherever. Whatever the game was Jules was trying to play with Alex, I wanted no more of it.

Later, Alex was sitting cross-legged in his boxers on the duvet, hunched over, shovelling lukewarm pie in his mouth and watching highlights of the England-Australia cricket match from that morning on his laptop. Miranda was right — he was looking pale, especially compared to that picture of Julian in Santa Barbara, I thought, then tried to strike the image from my mind. Placing my empty bowl on the nightstand, I then leaned forward and ran my hand down his spine, feeling the knob of each vertebra. I reached for his shoulders, kneading and pulling the muscles into relaxation.

“Hmmmm,” he exhaled, arching his back momentarily before returning to inhaling dinner. “Don’t stop that, sweetheart,” he mumbled through a mouth full of pie.

“I take it you like dinner then.” I had scooted towards him, kneeling behind his back so I could intensify the massage, push out the knots he’d built up over the course of the week at the office.

“Bloody marvellous.” His fork clattered in his now-empty bowl, which I took and stacked in my own. “Going to spend a week eating ready meals from the Marks & Spencer food hall, which is hardly a travesty, but none of it’s as good as your cooking, Mel.” He closed the laptop, reached back and curled a long arm around me, drawing me closer before reclining back on the pillows. (Despite my many attempts to get him to make his bed with the navy velvet bolster pillow I bought him — it really does make the room feel more pulled together — it now lives in a corner of the room. “What do I need another wretched pillow for? I have one for my head and two for yours, princess,” he’d scoffed.)

My cheek rested on his chest, skin to skin, pressing the light scuff of the black curls there. Alex entwined his fingers in my still-damp hair. Quilt’s “Arctic Shark” played softly over the speakers, lulling me into something like the most peace I’d felt for weeks, ever since Julian’s first text message. I am here, I thought, my eyes closed, the pattern of my breathing now matching Alex’s, inhaling and exhaling in perfect concert. I am here and I am safe and I am loved and this does not have to change.

“Melissa.” Alex’s voice was barely above a husky whisper. “I wish… that every night could be like this.” He trailed a finger across my lips. “For all the noise I make, all the stomping and shouting, I prefer the hush with you.”

Curving closer to him, I breathed in the clean and biscuity scent of him. He’d soon be gone, off to remind his daughter he was a real person and not just a picture on a screen, off to see Will and Miranda, off to show his face in the office of the company that had transferred him to California and allowed us these slow and quiet evenings. But that was still to come. This moment was ours, small, interior, subdued. I tried not to think of how we could have more of these nights if we were in one location, not two, forever shuttling our bodies from one side of the bay to the other, fearful of what might happen if we knit ourselves together too tightly again. We’d failed so spectacularly before.

“Me too, Alexander.” I had tonight, and for a change, that was enough.

***

The next morning sped by in a hustle of cleaning up and packing — he’d almost run out of clean boxers, and I tried to run out to buy him some more but was eventually dissuaded by his objections. (“It’s not like they don’t have pants in Britain, love. I was wearing a pair when you met me.”) Soon enough, we were downstairs, waiting for his car to arrive — work had been kind enough to send one for him — holding hands as I rested my head against his side.

“It will be good for Lucy to see her father,” I said, rather lamely. While this was true, I also resented that I wasn’t allowed to come with Alex. It wasn’t even a matter of whether I could get the time off — my presence at the bookshop is useful, but frankly not necessary — but rather that Minty thinks it’s too soon, that it might be “difficult” for Lucy to understand how I fit into her father’s life. That Lucy might think I’m a new mummy come to take her away to America to live with Daddy. I tend to think it’s more about Minty taking yet another opportunity to punish Alex for ripping their family apart.

Alex held me closer, pressed his lips to my head as he kept an eye on the street for the car. “It’s only a week, sweetest. I’ll be back before you know it. Ben promised me he’d take you out to the cinema again next week, and I’ll call you every night.”

“It’s nine days, not a week,” I grumbled. “And you’re not going to have Will dragging you out every night to get plastered. I’ve already warned him you have work every day next week.”

He turned me towards him by the shoulders, kissed a tear from my cheek, tucked my head under his chin. “Melissa, it won’t happen. Please trust me.” He tensed slightly. “That’s the car. I love you, sweetheart. I’ll ping you when I get to Heathrow, let you know I’ve landed. Now go home, please don’t watch the car.” (He’s right, I’ll just cry even more. “You’re like the line from that Belle & Sebastian song, Mel,” he always tells me. “‘I always cry at endings.'”)

I watched the car anyway, and cried. Goodbye goodbye.

***

I treated myself to one more Lyft ride, this one back home to the studio. Julian is right (as he can be) that he does provide me with enough money to make a car payment, so why shouldn’t I allow myself three rides in two days? My mother is not happy that I rely on public transit and cycling and walking to get around; she has a Google alert set up for Berkeley news and she’s forever sending me articles about muggings and assaults.

“Melissa, between Julian and Alex you have two wealthy men taking care of you,” she recently told me, “and yet you insist on putting yourself in danger to prove a point that you’re self-sufficient. Now, I know I raised you to take care of yourself, and not to depend on a man. God knows, I had no idea how dependent you’d become on Julian, since you hid it from me for years, or I would have pushed you to do something sooner to stand on your own feet, at least put some money away for yourself. But as your mother I am telling you: take their money and use it.”

Once in the little A-frame, I fixed a cup of tea (Prince of Wales, small amount of milk) and checked the time. 1pm, which made a Friday evening call a little dicey, since it was quite possible Miranda was out. I decided to chance it anyway, shooting her a message to ask if she were available for a quick call. (It was not likely to be a quick call, but I figured she might be more amenable to a short one rather than a lengthy deconstruction of a single Instagram photograph.) Within five minutes, I got back: “mostly — get me on hangouts video now if you can.”

The video chat window opened on Miranda’s flat in Marylebone (“dreadful place, but close to work”) where the first thing I saw was a glass of red wine with multiple pink lipstick marks on the rim sitting in the sight line of her laptop’s webcam. In the distance, I heard her yelling, “Sorrysorrysorry, San, almost there!” before I saw her running towards her laptop to grab the wine and settle herself in. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she had a green clay mask on her face. “I just needed to… tidy up some things. Apologies for the mask, I’m doing some pre-Lucy party self-care.” She grabbed the wine and took a large swig while glancing over her shoulder, before looking back towards me with a slightly tipsy smile. “So what’s this all about?”

This was all very perplexing. Miranda’s flat is always an unapologetic mess until her weekly maid service swoops in to temporarily restore order. It couldn’t be male company, since she almost certainly would not allow herself to be seen looking like she’d fled from a day spa. I decided to ignore it.

“Well, you know how I am off Instagram?” I took a long sip of tea. “Um, I’m not. I mean, I’m not posting, but I’m looking.”

“Is this about my eyeball?” she asked. “Because that was a complete accident. I thought I was taking a picture of my dinner out with Esteban — you know, the nice Spanish boy my mother has been trying desperately to get me to go out with. I finally did, and he’s awful, darling, not nice at all. Too macho for me, and didn’t appreciate when I started making fun of his excessive performative masculinity. Anyway, he took me to Arroz QD, which was delicious, don’t get me wrong, and the paella was gorgeous, so I wanted to take a picture of it but I was so drunk by that point trying to deal with his pathetic misogyny that I didn’t realize the camera was in selfie mode before I posted it. And when I realized what I’d done, I left it up because it was funny. Really, Melissa, paella? Just because we’re both Spanish? How naff.”

“Ah, no. Not about your eyeball.” Kicking my Keds off, I tucked my legs beneath me, settled in a little more on the loveseat. “Miranda, have you seen Julian’s account recently?”

“HA! That little beast? I muted him a while back. All those vulgar and florid businessmen chomping on cigars while raising money for that revolting Trump. I suppose the other mode he posts in is far more amusing — selfies of him looking like he might as well have arrows sticking out of his side like St. Sebastian, for he’s such a martyr and so terribly misunderstood.”

In the distance, I heard a muffled and muted “HA!”

“Rizz, is someone there with you?” I tried to peer behind her but she repositioned her laptop.

She waved her hand dismissively and raised her glass again for another sip. “I take that you want me to interpret what he’s up to, but darling, you know you really mustn’t take whatever he is showing you at face value.” She paused for a beat. “Is it a woman? Good god, is finally dating?”

So quietly I could barely hear it: “Not that I know.”

Miranda started coughing loudly, then thumped her chest overdramatically. “Went down the wrong hole, sorry sweetie. Okay, I’m opening it up now. Let me search for him.” She squinted as she looked at the poolside photo, then looked up at me with eyes wide open. “This is HILARIOUS! I mean, it’s well outside his usual compositions, has decidedly more flair, but FUCK.” She dissolved into laughter.

“You think it’s… funny?” I was confused. This wasn’t amusing, it was a statement of intent I wasn’t able to understand just yet.

“You don’t? What’s the American word for it… ‘beefcake’? This is a beefcake photo. My guess is that he’s getting ready to start dating again and he wanted a snap to show him at his best. I mean, I’ll be honest with you, probably the wine speaking, but San. Mel. He looks… good. If I didn’t know what a complete nightmare he is, I’d fuck him.”

“MIRANDA!” I laughed in spite of how uneasy the post still made me feel.

She shrugged, then started picking at her face mask. “Sorry darling, he does look marvellous. In a vacuum, I would understand why you and Amanda were both so besotted with him.”

“Can you, um, look at the caption to the picture? I know what SB is. It’s Santa Barbara, that’s where the picture was taken. I was looking at it with Ben and we figured out that much. But what or who is AH? Do you think” — I lowered my voice conspiratorially, since I now thought it was possible someone was in the room with her — “do you think AH could be Amanda? Was she in California this week?”

Miranda looked at the post again, then at me. “Are you stalking Julian? Bad form, after what he did to you the other week.”

Quite clearly this time, a woman’s plummy voice in the distance: “Invasion of privacy.”

Miranda looked back and shook her head in disagreement. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Rizz, who’s with you?” I demanded. “Don’t pretend I can’t hear her.”

Sighing and dipping her head on the table, she replied, “If you really must know where Amanda was this week, you should probably ask her. Get over here, you useless slag. You were supposed to be quiet.”

From one corner of my laptop monitor, Amanda’s face loomed into view. Her face was free of makeup, which was in keeping with her at-home spa night with Miranda, but wholly unlike the usual full face of cosmetics I was used to seeing on her. (Julian always hated a woman who wore too much “slap,” as he put it, and I prided myself in using a minimalist hand, not least to compare myself favorably to Amanda.) In her soft blue silk pajamas, her copper hair tied back loosely, she looked almost vulnerable for a change, instead of vulpine.

“Melissa. I’d say it’s lovely to see you but you see, well, I’m drunk enough to tell the truth but well-mannered enough not to tell it,” Amanda sneered at me.

“Mand,” Miranda warned. “Behave. You too, Melissa. Mand, why don’t you tell Melissa where you’ve been this week.”

Rolling her eyes and grimacing like a particularly churlish 14-year-old girl, she clicked her tongue at us both. “Ridiculous. Melissa, you’re just so insecure, even now. It’s not enough that you have Alexander, you still have to have Julian, too, practically raping him in his own home? You’re still the worst little slut.”

“Amanda, if you don’t stop now, I will fucking shove you out of here without your shoes. Now, let’s try again. Play nice. Or I’ll pinch you.” Miranda pinched her best friend’s arm.

“Ow! You pinched me anyway, you bitch!” Amanda rubbed her forearm. “Fine, if you must know, I was in London until Wednesday afternoon, and then down in Dorset with Minty preparing for Sunday until about 2 today.” She moved the laptop around so she could speak with me more directly. “I know the picture you’re talking about, by the way. I’m not AH, and frankly, I want to know, too. I don’t doubt that he used my initials for some purpose. He had me thinking the other day when we were speaking that he wanted to, how did he put it — ‘rekindle’ our relationship. But if Rand’s right, he might not be looking for that at all.”

Never in the nearly 14 years I’d known Amanda had I ever thought my interests would align with hers. “So,” I drew the syllable out, “could he be playing both of us? Like, trying to get us both jealous so we’d… I don’t know, fight over him?”

“To what end, Melissa? You say you don’t want him — which I don’t truly believe, you never could stand it when you weren’t the center of all male attention — ow! That’s my cheek, you bitch!”

(I saw Miranda flick her face.)

“As I was saying,” Amanda continued, trying to slap Miranda but completely missing her, “If it’s true you don’t want him, why would he try to make you jealous? And if I had told him I was interested in at the very least considering trying again with him, why would he pretend I was with him already?”

I did not doubt that Julian was playing us both for fools. This wasn’t chess, it was some type of hazard, and certainly hazardous. The nature and substance of the game were still obscure but nevertheless, les jeux sont faits, all bets are in.