he had probably worn to the bar.
His eyes were red, and his hair stuck up at the back like he’d been running his hands through it for hours.
The second he saw me, he marched over.
“Thank God,” he said.
Then his expression hardened.
“He spiraled because of what you said to him.”
I took off my damp coat slowly.
“Interesting.
Because all I said was for him to go find something better.”
Nick flinched.
“You don’t get it.
He was messed up.
He kept saying you didn’t care.
He kept saying you’d gone cold.”
“I did go cold,” I said.
“After he told me his friends thought I wasn’t special enough for him.”
Nick opened his mouth.
Closed it.
That was when another voice came from the far side of the waiting area.
“We never said that.”
I turned.
One of Evan’s other friends was sitting in a plastic chair near the vending machines, elbows on his knees, face ashen.
His name was Marcus.
I had met him at birthdays and football Sundays and once at a barbecue where he had spent twenty minutes telling me about smoker temperatures while Evan ignored me to join a cornhole game.
Now he looked sick.
Nick snapped, “Marcus.”
But Marcus kept looking at me.
“We never said you weren’t special enough,” he said.
“Not like that.”
The room seemed to narrow around me.
“What do you mean, not like that?”
Marcus rubbed both hands over his face.
“He was complaining about you a few weeks ago.
Said you were distant, that you didn’t admire him anymore, that everything felt routine.
We told him marriage gets hard sometimes.
Nick said maybe he needed to talk to you, not us.
Somebody joked he was punching above his weight when you two first got together, but nobody said you weren’t special enough.
Evan said that.
He put it on us.”
For one second I thought I might actually sway.
Not because I was shocked he had been cruel.
Because of how deliberate it was.
He had borrowed a crowd so he wouldn’t have to own the insult.
He had needed witnesses, even imaginary ones, to make his contempt feel legitimate.
Nick swore under his breath.
“Marcus, shut up.”
“No,” Marcus said, suddenly furious.
“I’m not doing this anymore.
He spent all night saying he only said it because he wanted a reaction.
He wanted her to fight for him.
He wanted her to prove she was scared to lose him.”
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
I heard every word with perfect, awful clarity.
Nick looked at me, and for the first time since I’d arrived, there was something in his face besides panic.
Shame.
“He was drunk,” he muttered.
“Drunk doesn’t invent a sentence like that,” I said.
A nurse came through the swinging doors and called Evan’s name.
Nick stepped forward automatically, but the nurse looked at me.
“Family?”
I hesitated, then said, “Wife.”
The word felt strange in my mouth.
She gave me a tired, practiced smile.
“He’s being moved upstairs for observation.
Mild concussion.
Broken wrist.
Cuts.
No internal injuries that we can see right now.
He can have one visitor for a few minutes.”
Nick started to speak.
I didn’t even look at him.
“I’ll go.”
Evan looked smaller in
