The Night Before Everything

I heard her before I saw them.

That sound. Low and slow and satisfied. Coming through the gap in the bedroom door like it owned the whole house.

I already knew what it meant. My body knew before my brain caught up. My hand went cold on the door handle and my stomach dropped straight through the floor but I pushed it open anyway because some part of me needed to see it with my own eyes before I let myself believe it.

I saw it with my own eyes.

Derek was on his back on the white duvet I had ordered online. The one I spent twenty minutes reading reviews for. The woman straddling him had dark hair hanging loose around her face and her hands flat on his chest and she was moving on top of him slow and deliberate, rolling her hips, her head dropped back, her lips parted. His hands were gripping her waist so hard his knuckles had gone pale. His eyes were closed and he was breathing hard and making a sound I recognised and I hated that I recognised it.

She leaned down and kissed him. Slow and deep, her fingers curling into his hair, and he kissed her back with both hands cupping her face like she was something he could not get enough of.

I must have made a sound.

Because she opened her eyes.

She saw me over his shoulder and she went completely still. She pulled back from his mouth. She said his name, flat and quiet.

"Derek."

He opened his eyes. He turned his head.

He saw me.

"Sloane."

He scrambled out from under her so fast the whole bed moved. She grabbed the sheet and sat back against the headboard looking at me like I was a mild inconvenience she had already prepared for. He was pulling his shirt on, tripping over it, saying my name over and over.

"Sloane. Sloane, wait. Just wait okay, just—"

"How long," I said.

"Please just let me explain—"

"How long, Derek."

He couldn't look at me. He looked at the floor. He said: "Eight months."

Eight months ago was Walter's birthday dinner. Derek had held my hand across the table and my grandfather had made a toast about love and Derek had squeezed my fingers and smiled at me with that smile I had trusted completely. Eight months of that smile. Eight months of that hand holding mine. Eight months of her.

The woman on the bed, Vivienne, that was the name Derek had said once or twice, a work contact, totally boring, don't worry about it, reached over and picked up her phone from the nightstand. She scrolled through it like we were not even in the room. Like I was not standing six feet away from the bed she had just been in with my fiance the night before my wedding.

"She means nothing to me," Derek said.

He had crossed the room and he grabbed my hand and his eyes were wet and desperate and I had never wanted to hit someone so badly in my entire life.

"I swear to God she means nothing, it was so fucking stupid, I don't even know how it—"

"Nothing," I said.

"Yes. Nothing. I love you. I want to marry you tomorrow, I still want that, we can get past this, people get past this—"

"Get your hand off me."

He let go.

I looked at Vivienne.

She looked up from her phone. She looked at me the way beautiful women sometimes look at me. Like she was doing a fast quiet calculation and I was already losing. She said, very calm, talking to Derek not to me:

"You should handle this."

"Vivienne, shut up."

She shrugged. She went back to her phone.

I looked at the bed. At the duvet. At the two pillows with two dents in them. At Derek's jeans on the floor next to her dress. At the eight months of this sitting in this room like a physical thing I could choke on.

I had picked out that duvet. I had picked out the paint color for these walls. I had a key on a little silver ring in my coat pocket that Derek had given me over dinner with that smile.

"I'm going to go now," I said.

"Sloane, please—"

He followed me to the door. Down the stairs. Through the kitchen I had been standing twenty minutes ago being happy.

"Please don't do this, please just talk to me, we can fix this, tomorrow doesn't have to—"

I got to the front door.

I grabbed the handle and pulled.

The door swung open from the outside.

A man was standing there with his hand raised like he was about to knock.

Tall. Very tall. Dark eyes and a jaw that was so tight it looked painful. He was maybe thirty, dark coat, and he was not expecting me. That much was obvious. He looked at me and then he looked past me at Derek who was right behind me still saying my name and I watched something move across this stranger's face.

Not shock. Something that looked like a man who had just stepped into a version of a room he had already been in before.

From upstairs, Vivienne's voice. Lazy and unbothered:

"Who's at the door?"

The man's eyes went to the staircase.

His jaw got tighter.

He knew her voice.

He looked back at me. His eyes went to my coat, my hands, the fact that I was clearly leaving. He looked at Derek behind me. He looked back at me.

He said, quiet and direct:

"Step outside."

"Who the hell are you?" Derek said.

The man ignored him like he didn't exist. He kept his eyes on me. I didn't know this person. I had never seen him before in my life. But I stepped outside anyway because anything was better than standing in that hallway one more second.

Derek grabbed my arm.

"Sloane, we're supposed to get married tomorrow."

I looked at his hand on my arm. I looked at his face. That face I had memorized. That face I had made plans around.

"Don't touch me."I pulled my hand back.

The man held the door and I walked out and he went in and the door closed behind us both and I sat down on the garden wall at the end of the path and I stared at the quiet street and I thought about eight months and I thought about Walter's birthday and I thought about the fact that I had no idea what I was going to do about tomorrow.

After a while the front door opened.

The man came out. He closed it behind him. He looked at me on the wall. He walked down the path and stopped a few feet away. He said nothing. He just stood there like someone who understood that there was nothing useful to say.

"She's yours," I said.

"Was," he said.

"He's mine."

"Was."

We stood there.

"Come on. Get in the car."

I looked up at him.

"I don't know you."

He looked at me for a moment. Then he said:

"You know enough."

He walked to the black car at the curb. He opened the passenger door and waited. I looked at the house. I looked at the door. I thought about going back inside and I thought about what was inside and I stood up and I got in the car.