“Most people.”
“Ryan too?”
She looked at me.
The reaction came too fast.
“Why are you asking about Ryan?”
“Because I know he was on the project.”
“So?”
“So nothing.”
She stared.
“You’re being weird.”
“I asked one question.”
“Exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“Acting calm while actually interrogating me.”
I remember standing there wondering how asking whether a coworker had been at a work celebration had somehow become evidence against me.
I let it go.
Two weeks later, Ryan joined us at a friend’s barbecue.
Melissa spent most of the evening near him.
At one point I walked outside and heard her laughing.
Ryan said something I couldn’t hear.
Melissa responded:
“My husband would never.”
They saw me.
The conversation stopped.
“What wouldn’t I do?”
I asked.
Melissa smiled.
“Nothing.”
Ryan lifted his beer.
“Inside joke.”
I nodded.
Later, on the drive home, I asked Melissa what the joke had been.
She sighed.
“You seriously waited all evening to ask me that?”
“No.”
“It feels like you did.”
“I’m just curious.”
“Ryan said he once booked a flight to Mexico the same afternoon because someone dared him.”
“Okay.”
“And I said you’d never do something like that.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
She looked out the window.
“You hate spontaneity.”
I kept driving.
What bothered me wasn’t Mexico.
It was the tone.
The comparison.
Somewhere along the way, Ryan had become the man who represented every quality Melissa had decided I lacked.
He was spontaneous.
I was predictable.
He was fearless.
I was cautious.
He was social.
I was reserved.
He was exciting.
I was her husband.
Marriage cannot survive long when one person becomes the punch line in a comparison they never agreed to enter.
I said that to Melissa one evening.
She looked at me as though I had accused her of something absurd.
“I’m not comparing you.”
“You do it constantly.”
“Give me one example.”
So I did.
She dismissed each one individually.
That one had been a joke.
That one I misunderstood.
That one she didn’t remember.
That one wasn’t about Ryan.
By the end, we were arguing about whether reality had occurred the way I remembered it.
I stopped trying.
Then, six weeks before her birthday, something happened that I could not explain away.
A friend named Ben called me.
Ben and I had known each other since college. He was not part of Melissa’s main social group, which mattered because he had no reason to involve himself in our marriage.
He sounded uncomfortable.
“Mike, where’s Melissa tonight?”
The question immediately made me uneasy.
“Client dinner.”
“Downtown?”
“I think so.”
Silence.
“Why?”
Ben exhaled.
“I’m at the Linden Hotel.”
The Linden was a boutique hotel near South Congress with a restaurant on the first floor.
“My sister’s in town,” Ben continued. “We’re having dinner.”
“Okay.”
“I just saw Melissa.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“With coworkers?”
Another pause.
“With Ryan.”
I said nothing.
Ben continued quickly.
“Maybe it’s work.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because…”
He stopped.
“What?”
“Because I didn’t think it would help.”