You love me, I told him with every kiss, every touch, every gasp.

Remember that you love me, that what we have is good and right and worth something.

Remember you’re mine.

But in trying to make him remember all that, I’m remembering, too.

How good he feels. How much I loved him.

Reader, I fucked him.

And when it was over and we lay in the bed, sweat still sticking his skin to mine, something about the quiet made me reach out, tracing my finger over his heart. “You know that I still love you,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “You know I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

I wanted him to hear what I was trying to say. If you let me out, I’ll never tell what happened. We’ll figure it out.

But it was the wrong thing to say.

Eddie sighed heavily, pulling away from me and reaching for his clothes, still in a pile beside the bed.

I could see in the stiffness of his movements that I’d pushed too far. He’d heard what I was saying, and he didn’t like it.

And when he walked out without another word, I wondered if I was going to have to start all over again.

Bea had put that moment with Eddie and Blanche out of her mind when she sees them at lunch in the village.

She was supposed to be at the Southern Manors offices in nearby Homewood, but she’d wanted to drop by one of the Mountain Brook boutiques and see what was in the front windows.

Instead, she sees her husband and her best friend sitting at one of the café tables, laughing over salads like they’re in a fucking Cialis commercial, and the anger nearly chokes her, shocking in its force.

It isn’t just the two of them together—it’s that it’s so public, that anyone can see them, that people will see them, and they’ll talk.

People might even feel sorry for her.

She stands there on the sidewalk underneath an awning, shielded by her sunglasses, and in her mind, Bea can see other faces turned to her, other expressions of pity with just a touch of schadenfreude, and suddenly her hands are shaking, and her feet are moving and she’s crossing the street to stand in front of their table, taking a small, savage delight in the way they both flinch at her bright greeting.

There are blueprints on the table between them. Eddie’s contracting business (the business she paid for, the one she gave him) is doing an addition on Blanche’s house. It’s all innocent really. Just a friendly working lunch to go over some details.

But it’s not just this lunch. It’s that ever since Blanche came up with this idea for Eddie to renovate her house, Eddie has been there all the time.

Or Blanche has been at Bea’s house, sitting on the back deck with Eddie, drinking Bea’s wine and showing Eddie some Pinterest board of her “dream kitchen.”

And Eddie just smiles at her, indulges her.

Takes her out to lunch, apparently.

“You embarrassed me,” Eddie tells her later, the two of them making dinner in the kitchen together, Bea on her third glass of wine, the stereo up just a little too loud. “Actually,” he goes on, “you embarrassed yourself.”

Bea doesn’t answer because she knows that will infuriate him, and it does.

With a huff, Eddie tosses the kitchen towel he’d had on his shoulder to the counter and heads out to the back deck, taking her glass of wine with him.

They don’t talk about it again, but the next time Blanche and Bea have coffee, Blanche is all apologies and brittle smiles and then—

“You always overreact, Bea.”

Bea thinks about that for a long time, that tossed-off statement as Blanche scraped the whipped cream off her coffee with a wooden stirrer, the slight bite in the words, the implied judgement.

But two days later, Bea picks up Eddie’s phone—he doesn’t password lock it, wouldn’t even think to, which is classic Eddie—and sees the text.

It’s a selfie of Blanche. Nothing sultry or sexy, nothing tacky, but a shot of her face pulling an exaggerated frown.

Missed you today!

Bea stares at that text, then scrolls up.

Again, it’s maddening how little actual evidence there is, how there’s not one definitive thing that tells her they’re having an affair, one thing she could point to and ruin them both, but collectively …

A series of moments, of conversations. Of a closeness they’ve both denied is there. Blanche’s bad day, Eddie’s frustration with how often Bea is gone. Funny little phrases that make no sense, but read like in-jokes, snapshots of something they share that has nothing to do with her.

It has honestly never occurred to her that Eddie would cheat on her, but it’s the betrayal from Blanche that stings the most.

That actually hurts.

So really, it’s only fair what happens between Bea and Tripp.

They’re all over at Caroline’s for a neighborhood barbecue, and Tripp is, as usual, drunk as a fucking skunk before the sun has fully set.

“They sure are getting cozy, aren’t they?” he says to Bea as they watch Eddie and Blanche chat by the grill, Eddie holding a beer, Blanche a margarita. They’re laughing, and it’s the most relaxed and happy Bea has seen Eddie look in a while.

Blanche glances over then, seeing Bea and Tripp, and she just grins, raising her glass in greeting. Bea and Tripp raise their glasses, too, and everything is fine, everything is like it should be, all of them just the best of friends.

Only Bea notices the way Blanche’s smile turns up at the corners, curdling into a smirk.

Only Bea notices how Eddie reaches out to touch Blanche’s elbow to make a point.

“So, if they’re fucking, do you think Eddie should give her a ten percent discount?” Bea asks Tripp now, and that startles a laugh out of him.

Tripp is better looking when he laughs. More like the Tripp that Blanche married.

The Tripp that Blanche had been in love with.

“Blanche should actually probably give him a twenty percent bonus,” he replies, and Bea looks over her shoulder at him, grinning slowly, letting him see her gaze drift over him.

“I think maybe you’re selling yourself a little short there, Tripp.”

He’s not, it turns out.

The sex he and Bea have in Caroline’s upstairs bathroom is decidedly mediocre, and Bea doesn’t even bother pretending to come, focusing instead on the heinous print Caroline has hanging on the wall, a banal picnic scene.