Love in Slow Motion

51. Quinn

51 QUINN

4 months ago

I’m gasping for air, crying so hard that I’ve already made myself sick once. Chase has been gone all night, and at this point, he could be anywhere. How long has he been lying to me? How long has he been cheating?

I pull the covers up over my head and wish I was dead. The way you want to find out your husband is cheating on you is definitely not by testing positive for chlamydia. I can just imagine all the ways he’ll try to wiggle his way out of this. That’s what he does. Always trying to find a way to absolve himself. Never the guilty party.

I sure as hell didn’t get chlamydia from anyone else.

On the mattress beside me, my phone rings, and I gag. I don’t want to speak to him. He doesn’t know I know, and if I answer now, I’ll call him names. I’ll start to scream. I’ll cry so hard he won’t be able to understand me.

But when I look at the screen, it’s not to see Chase’s face looking back at me. I stare at the picture of the three Lynch siblings that I got off Facebook. Reed’s name hovers over their faces.

I snatch it up quick. “Reed?”

“Hey!” He sounds exceedingly cheerful, like it’s his birthday or something. But no. That’s in October. “Sorry to bug you, but I’m trying to get Chase on the phone, and I haven’t been able to get through to him. Is he with you?”

I thought I would be able to have a conversation with Reed. Like he would be able to distract me from the situation I currently find myself in. But instead, when I open my mouth, a sob comes out. “No,” I say around it. “No, he’s not home.”

“Quinn? Hey, what’s going on? Are you okay?” There was background noise before, but now it’s quiet, like he’s stepped outside to hear me better. I wonder where he is. Probably at his restaurant. But maybe at a club or something. It’s a Saturday night, after all.

“I’m okay. I’m just…” I don’t know what to say. It’s not right of me to bring him into this. He’s Chase’s brother. And it’s not like we’ve ever been close. We speak to each other a handful of times a year and see each other even less. But it’s Reed. And there’s always been something about Reed that made me feel comfortable, like walking into your old family home and recognizing the smell of it. “I’m just having a rough day.”

I hear some shuffling, imagine him taking a seat on a curb somewhere in the city. How far is he from where I am right now? Close enough to walk to our house? “Do you want to talk about it?”

I can’t. I can’t tell him about Chase before I’ve even spoken to Chase about it first. It’s bad enough that Brooke already knows. A week ago, I convinced myself his suspicious behavior was pointing to an affair and then immediately talked myself right back out of it…just for this to happen.

“Not really,” I tell Reed.

He doesn’t rush me to speak. He doesn’t tell me he’s busy and has to go. He sighs. “I’m having a rough day, too.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” There’s a little smile in his voice.

I burrow further under the covers, settling in like I’m about to watch a good movie. “Tell me what’s been going on with you.”

He makes a humming noise. “Got my wisdom teeth pulled a couple weeks ago.”

That makes me smile. “Shouldn’t you have done that when you were in high school?”

“Not everybody does. Hang on. I have pictures.”

My phone vibrates against my face, and I put it on speaker so I can look at the pictures he sent me. And then I scream with laughter. His cheeks are all puffed up like a chipmunk, and his eyes are half-lidded and purple.

“You look high as fuck.”

“Oh, believe me, I was.”

I set my phone beside me on the bed.

“What about you? Any interesting updates?”

My stomach clenches. Yeah, your brother is fucking someone else, and I’m going to have to start looking for a divorce lawyer. “Not really. This company I’ve been volunteering for got this big endowment from the state, so that’s about to blow up for them, which is pretty cool.”

“Yeah, that’s very cool.” I hear footsteps on his end, and I realize he’s walking. Probably heading home after a long night. “I didn’t know you were volunteering with anyone. Chase didn’t mention it.”

Because Chase would prefer I didn’t do it at all. He doesn’t want me to have a job so that I can be home waiting for him every day, but about a year ago, I started to feel like a caged animal. I started volunteering, just in the hours when he isn’t home. He really thinks I sit at home all day or go to Brooke’s place.

“He’s probably not all that interested.”

“What does the charity do?”

“They assist women who have escaped abusive marriages with putting their lives back together. They hook them up with jobs and financial support for therapy, clothes for their kids. Stuff like that.”

“Quinn, that’s…” He pauses. “That’s really amazing. I had no idea you were doing that.”

I put a hand over my mouth, try to decide whether or not to say what I want to. “I don’t really talk about it, but I feel guilty, having this money that we don’t need.” I would donate a bunch of it, but Chase keeps telling me he wants to find a charity together to donate to, only we never do. He’s more than content to amass wealth until we die, none of it ever going to any use better than his retirement fund.

“I know what you mean,” Reed says, and I find myself smiling. Because of course he does. Reed has always been a lot like me. I always forget it in those stretches of time between meetings.

I close my eyes and try to picture his face. The last time I saw him, his hair was far too long, curling around his ears, and he had a little scruff on his jaw that was never there before. I liked it. It made him look less like someone who would co-own a restaurant and more like that guy I met in a hallway at Suffolk.

“Quinn?”

I suck in a breath. I must have fallen asleep.

“You okay over there?”

I know I should be embarrassed, but I’m not. I feel…calm for the first time since Chase took that phone call outside a week ago that made me suspicious. “I’m okay. Just tired. I think I dozed off.”

“Well, hey. I’ll let you go. You should get some rest.”

“Reed?”

“Yeah?”

I shouldn’t ask. I shouldn’t do this. He’s Chase’s brother. But he’s also my friend, and I feel better right now than I have in days. And I want to chase that. Just feel it for a little while. Hold onto it. Even if Chase would kill us both if he knew what I was about to ask.

“Could you maybe stay on the phone with me?” I don’t say, while I sleep , but I know he knows it. I expect him to graciously decline, but a part of me knows that he won’t. Because he’s Reed.

“Of course I will.”

I have to fight back the tears then. These are exhausted tears. Tears for the unknown future. Tears for this man on the other side of the phone who has been kinder to me in the last five years without really knowing me than Chase has been in the three years of our marriage.

“Tell me about your life,” I say, and fall asleep to the sound of his voice.