I Slept With My Best Friend's Son

Ashley's goodbye was one of the finest performances I had witnessed in six years of knowing her up close. She stood outside my building with Evan's duffel at her feet and her sunglasses on, and she held him for what I counted as a full forty seconds. She whispered something against his hair. He patted her back with the slightly stiff patience of a young man who loves his mother and also needs her to release him. I watched from the lobby doorway with my coffee. I had come downstairs to help with bags. At least, that was the reason I had given myself. "Call me the minute you're settled," Ashley said, pulling back to look at his face, her hands still framing it. "I'll call you," he said. She nodded. Then looked up. Saw me in the doorway and something moved through her expression — there and gone in under a second. She lifted one hand in a small wave. I raised my coffee cup back at her. She got in her car. Evan watched until it turned the corner, then picked up his bag and crossed

The next morning Evan came downstairs and found me already at the kitchen table with my coffee and a legal file I had been staring at without reading for the better part of forty minutes. "I have a problem," he said. I looked up. He held up his phone. Dead screen. "I left my charger and my laptop bag at my mother's. And I'm at zero percent." "Different port for mine," I said, before he could ask. "And you need the laptop." "Could you call her for me? I don't want to walk in without—" He set the phone on the counter. "Without warning her." I noted the phrasing. Not without telling her. Without warning her. "Of course," I said. I picked up my phone and dialed. It rang twice. Three times. On the fourth ring it connected — and then immediately went muffled. The specific sound of a phone being covered with a hand, quickly, urgently. I stood still and listened to the shape of sounds I could not fully make out, and understood them anyway. Low voices. Movement. Then the call dropped

I had just closed the file when I heard his footsteps on the stairs. I closed it the way you close something you are done with, slid it to the edge of the table, and by the time Evan appeared in the kitchen doorway I had my coffee cup in my hand and what I hoped was a reasonable expression on my face. He stopped in the doorway and looked at me. "Are you okay?" "I'm fine." I smiled. Easy. Practiced. He did not move. He stood there with his hands in his pockets and looked at me the way he always looked at me — like he was reading past the first sentence and going straight for the paragraph underneath. The smile did not work on him. I had a feeling very few things I performed worked on him. "Dinner isn't for another forty-five minutes," I said, because somebody needed to say something. "I know." He pushed off the doorframe. "I came to help set the table." I looked at him. He looked back. I had exactly two options — tell him I didn't need help and spend the next forty-five minutes

I picked up my glass and stood up from the table. "You can handle the dishes tonight," I said, already moving. "I have something to take care of in my room." Evan looked up at me. "Sure." No argument. No questions. He was already stacking the plates before I had fully turned around, and I walked out of the kitchen with the particular pace of a woman who was not running away from anything and simply happened to be moving quickly. --- I ran the bath hotter than usual. That was the first sign that I was not as composed as I wanted to be. I always ran it warm. Tonight I turned the tap until the steam rose properly and the mirror fogged over and the small tiled bathroom became its own sealed world, separate from everything on the other side of the door. I sank into it slowly. The water was almost too hot. I stayed anyway. Six years of this marriage had taught me to find silence wherever it existed and hold onto it with both hands. A warm bath at the end of a difficult evening was o

"Ashley, it's not —" "Mom." Evan's voice came in flat and clean before I could finish the sentence. He looked at his mother without any particular expression on his face. "Not everyone is as wild as you are." The hallway went very quiet. Ashley blinked. The smile was still there but something underneath it shifted — a slight contraction, like a person who has just been reminded of something they would rather not be reminded of in a doorway. She recovered quickly. She always did. But I had seen it, and from the small tightening around her eyes I could tell she knew I had seen it. I did not let the silence sit long enough to become something. "The downstairs bathroom is out of commission," I said, stepping in with the light tone of a woman who had walked into absolutely nothing and was simply explaining her living arrangements. "Plumber is coming Friday. Until then everyone is sharing the one up here." I looked at Ashley with my most straightforward expression. "Terrible timing, but