Page 52 of Watch Me

She’s mine.

“Please sit,” he says again, and I know without a doubt from the resignation in his tone that he has.

I will fucking kill him.

But I sit down despite myself, needing to find out more, while I clench my fists and bite down so hard I could crack my own teeth. How could there be fucking more?

She’s pregnant.

They’re getting married.

My God, he fucked her and he never told me.

But David doesn’t say anything. He reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a piece of fake leather material and drops it on top of the financial statements stacked in front of me. Uncomprehendingly, I flick my eyes between him and the lump of fabric, but all he does is raise his eyebrows meaningfully. So I pick it up, straighten it out, and realize that it’s a mask.

A full hood, with mesh for eyes and a hole only for the mouth. Just like the one worn by the girl last night.

When I look back up at him, his blue eyes, normally dancing with mischief and mirth, are clouded and heavy.

“I didn’t know,” is all he says.

Something crystallizes and shatters inside of me.

Those full lips, the way she knew exactly how to suck me… the feel of her hips in my hands, how amazing it felt to be inside her. It was all familiar, wasn’t it? That’s why it felt right for once.

It didn’t feel like cheating on Zoë because it was Zoë…

But how could I have known? Her blonde hair would’ve been hidden up inside the mask, and her body…

She’d gained a little weight, felt a little softer and more feminine, but it was unmistakably her proportions.

There are so many questions crowding into my head, but I can’t form any of them. I stand up again, but this time I’m staggering and unfocused.

“Nick,” David says. His voice echoes and sounds distant.

I have to make sense of all of this, and I can’t do it here, not like this.

“Nick,” David says again, but I’m walking away, out the door and across the hallway into the club. It’s early evening, but already, a few couples are here. As I open the door into the foyer, I see a poster I never noticed last night or today:

“FLASHDANCE!” reads the poster in large print, over a silhouette of a stripper on a pole. Underneath, in smaller print, it reads: “Tickets available at the box office and online. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, 8:30 p.m. ONLY at The Ball & Chain.”

I spent hours poring over the club’s financials, researching its liabilities, examining the market, and yet I missed all the nitty-gritty at ground level. I never noticed the club was running a show three times a week. I had no idea that of all the damn people in the world, somehow Zoë Mars worked here. And the very first time our paths crossed again, we ended up having sex. It’s like the entire universe is conspiring against me, putting Zoë in front of me again and again. And every time, it rocks my fucking world.

* * *

Two hours later, I’m in a grim mood at Tate’s favorite restaurant. He’s late—no surprise there—and I get edgier with every second that ticks by.

Tate’s move was a factor in why I quit the Dubai job. He seems happy, and in the end, that’s all that matters, but it does feel like the nail in the coffin on my parenting experience. I guess I thought I could spend a year or two away while the dust settled and then come back and make a better go of it. But Tate fell in love with a girl from Oregon. Life moves on. Tate is twenty-three, and life is going to move fast for him.

But the dark irony that I was just with Zoë—again—before we say goodbye is making the experience extra loaded.

When he finally arrives and comes loping down the aisle towards my table in the back, I’m struck by how much my son has changed. He has that same insouciant frown, that deliberate swagger as he walks, but the line of his jaw is sharp and there’s a bulk of muscle in his shoulders. Gone is the omnipresent tank top. I’m not used to seeing my son in jeans.

He’s lost the last of his boyishness in the past six months. I know that his new girlfriend is a fitness influencer and that Tate has been overhauling his lifestyle to match, but it’s more than just his physical shape. His eyes have a hardness as he pulls out the chair across from me and sits down; a confidence that wasn’t there before.

“Hey, Dad.”

He gives me a lift of the chin, and there’s no detectable animosity in his greeting.

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