After My Man Matched Answers with His Mistress

Ellis picked the restaurant. He called it a sibling dinner, which meant he showed up with Soren.

I didn't say anything about that. The place was on the waterfront, all exposed wood and low lighting, the kind of spot that fills up fast on a Friday. Valentine's Day, which I had genuinely forgotten about until I walked in and saw the red paper hearts strung above the bar.

Of course.

We got a table near the window. The water was dark outside, the city lights doing their thing on the surface. Ellis ordered a beer. Soren ordered water. I ordered wine and looked at the menu and told myself the evening was fine.

It was fine for about forty minutes.

I heard the host before I saw anything — a man with a cordless mic moving between tables, the kind of practiced, cheerful energy that means a planned event. "And now for our Valentine's highlight," he said, "the Love Knot — where our most connected couples prove just how well they know each other."

I looked up.

They were at a table near the center of the room. Kolson in a dark button-down I didn't recognize. Azalea in something red, her hair down, her hand resting on the table close to his. They were laughing at something the host had just said, easy and unguarded, the way people laugh when they've forgotten to be careful.

My wine glass was in my hand. I didn't put it down.

The game worked like this: the host asked a question, both people wrote their answers on small cards, then held them up at the same time. Favorite thing about your partner. The place they feel most at home. The moment they knew.

Kolson and Azalea matched on four out of five.

The room applauded each one. By the fourth, people at nearby tables were watching them, smiling, charmed. The host made a joke about them being ringers. Azalea laughed and covered her face with both hands in that way that's designed to be watched.

The fifth answer went up. Both cards said the same thing.

The host raised his mic. "Ladies and gentlemen, our most connected couple of the evening."

More applause. Louder this time.

Ellis's jaw went tight. I could see it from the corner of my eye — the small muscle working, the way he looked down at his beer and then back up, deciding something.

My face didn't move. I was aware of that. I was aware of my own stillness the way you're aware of your breathing when you're trying to keep it even.

Then Soren spoke.

He didn't raise his voice. He didn't turn toward their table. He just said it, level and unhurried, pitched to carry maybe two tables in each direction: "Impressive. Most people wait until the relationship is public before they start performing for an audience."

It landed the way a stone lands in still water. A beat of silence, and then quiet laughter from the table to our left, and then the one behind us. Not loud. Just enough.

I picked up my wine glass and took a slow sip.

Kolson had spotted me. I knew because the laughter on his face stopped. I watched it happen from across the room — the exact moment he registered where he was and who was watching. He went still in a way that had nothing to do with the game. Azalea noticed the shift and followed his eyeline and found me, and her composure did something complicated. Not quite cracking. More like a screen with a hairline fracture — still holding, but you could see where it had given.

I looked at them for one more second. Then I looked back at my menu.

"The salmon looks good," I said.

Ellis exhaled. Soren picked up his water glass. The evening continued.

We didn't talk about it. Not at the table, not on the walk to the car, not in the text Ellis sent me later that night that just said: *you good?* I replied: *yeah. thanks for dinner.* He sent back a thumbs up.

I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and waited to feel something dramatic. I didn't. What I felt was tired, and underneath the tired, something quieter — a kind of finality, like a door that had been standing open for weeks had finally swung shut on its own.

Kolson called me the next morning. I didn't pick up.

He called again that afternoon. And the one after that.

Ellis told me he was calling him too. Every day, sometimes twice. His voice, Ellis said, had lost that careful, rehearsed quality. He wasn't pitching anymore. He was just talking, the way people talk when they've run out of strategy and what's left is just the noise of not knowing what else to do.

Then came Marcus.

He texted on a Thursday, the careful kind of text that takes three drafts. *Hey. I know this is awkward. Kolson asked me to pass something along. I told him I'd ask if you were open to it. No pressure either way.*

I read it twice. Then I called him.

"You don't have to do this," I said.

"I know," Marcus said. He sounded tired. "He's not doing great, Nori."

"I know."

"He just wants five minutes. That's what he said."

I looked out my window. The sky was the usual gray. A bus went by on the street below.

"Tell him I got the message," I said. "And Marcus — you're a good friend. To both of us. But you don't have to be in the middle of this."

A pause. "Yeah," he said quietly. "Okay."

I hung up and sat at my desk and opened my planner to the week ahead. The Portland timeline. The distribution gap. The meeting with Claire on Monday that I needed to prep for.

I wrote it all down. Clean columns. The week laid out in front of me, full and specific and mine.

Outside, the bus was gone. The street was quiet.

I picked up my pen and got to work.