Chapter 4
This time, Ethan didn't try to smooth things over with a few sweet words.
The following evening, he canceled every scheduled meeting at the firm and made an early reservation at a quiet, tucked-away bistro on Newbury Street.
He'd chosen a table for two in a corner by the fireplace, away from the kind of noisy setting where our friends gathered to joke around.
There was no wedding schedule on the table, no guest list. Just two glasses of lemon water at exactly the right temperature and a small bunch of pale chamomile flowers.
They were the flowers he used to buy me with his first paycheck from each part-time job, back when we'd just graduated and shared an attic apartment with a leaking roof.
After the server left, Ethan didn't reach for his silverware.
He placed his phone facedown at the corner of the table and kept his eyes on me across the small space between us.
"Claire," he began, his voice painfully hoarse, dark circles beneath his eyes from a sleepless night. "I was wrong yesterday at the bridal boutique."
My grip tightened slightly around my glass. I let him speak.
"I spent all night thinking about it after we got home." Ethan drew a deep breath, his honesty almost awkward.
"When you came out of the fitting room and everyone was still looking at Vivian, I shouldn't have handed you my phone. The moment I did that without thinking, I treated you like an outsider… Like you were just there to applaud us."
He paused, his eyes reddening. "You'd mentioned that dress to me three times. You even saved the designer's sketches on your phone. And I treated it like something we were just messing around with. I know how hurtful that was."
In our seven years together, Ethan had rarely been so specific about what he'd done wrong.
Whenever we argued, he tended to blame my hurt on sensitivity, exhaustion, or what he considered a woman's natural suspicion of her fiancé's female friends.
But tonight, he put into words exactly how suffocated I'd felt behind that curtain.
Despite myself, a crack opened in the hard shell around my wounded heart.
I remembered him staying up all night with me in the library seven years ago, helping me revise my drawings, then taking off his coat to wrap around my feet at three in the morning during a Boston blizzard.
I remembered the year my mother was hospitalized, when he drove two hours after work every day to bring me clean clothes.
That love, the way he'd been there for me—it had been real.
No one could cut through seven years of attachment in twenty-four hours.
"Ethan." I met his eyes, fought down the tightness in my throat, and calmly laid out what I needed. "If you really want this chance, there's something you have to understand. Stop dismissing my boundaries and my dignity as irrational jealousy. My problem isn't Vivian herself. It's how easily you disregard the understanding and respect between us whenever she's around."
"I swear I'll never do it again." Ethan reached urgently for my hand, his palm warm and trembling slightly.
He took a note from his pocket with the address of the café where he'd arranged to meet Vivian the next day, along with the time.
"Ten tomorrow morning. I'm meeting her in person, and I want you there." He looked at me steadily, his expression serious.
"Claire, I'll make every boundary clear with you sitting right beside me. I'll have her give you a proper apology. From now on, whether it's in a group chat or at a get-together, I won't let anything that makes you uncomfortable slide again. Can you trust me one more time?"
Outside, a thin, chilly mist was settling over Boston in the late-autumn air. Inside, the firelight glowed in his eyes.
For a moment, seeing the sincerity and nervousness I hadn't seen in him for so long, I felt the persistent tightness in my chest begin to ease.
I thought our seven-year relationship had finally reached a turning point, that we were finally learning how to make it work. I thought he'd truly understood this time.