Chapter 4: Everything He Didn't Say
Tia did not reach for the phone.
She looked at the name on the screen — *Elena* — and she looked at Sayan, and she waited.
The phone buzzed twice, three times, then went dark.
"Who is Elena?" she said.
Sayan's hand went to the back of his neck.
He looked toward the window.
The sunlight was still coming through, indifferent and bright, falling across the flowers and the table and the ruined orange fabric on the floor where it had finally slipped from Tia's hands.
"She's nobody," he said.
"That's not an answer."
"Tia—"
"Sayan." Her voice was quiet.
Completely quiet.
The kind of quiet that has made a decision without announcing it.
"Who is Elena?"
Marissa had not moved toward the door.
She stood by the table with her handbag over her arm and her eyes moving between the two of them, and she had the expression of someone watching a fire they had lit from a careful distance.
"She's an old contact," Sayan said.
"From work.
It's not—"
"The engagement announcement," Tia said.
"Tell me about that first."
A long pause.
"It was a mistake," he said.
"Something that went out early.
Before we had talked."
"Before we had talked," Tia repeated.
"An engagement announcement.
With my name on it.
Went out to people.
Before we had talked."
"I was going to tell you—"
"When?"
He didn't answer.
Tia bent down and picked up the torn orange fabric from the floor.
She held it in both hands, not trying to fix it, just holding it.
She looked at it for a moment the way a person looks at something they already know they are going to have to let go of.
"Marissa," she said without looking up.
"How did you find out about the announcement?"
"Elena told me," Marissa said.
Tia looked up then.
"You know Elena."
"I've known Elena for four years." Marissa set her handbag on the table again, slowly, as if she had decided she was no longer in a hurry to leave.
"She and Sayan were together for two of them.
They ended it last year.
Or—" she glanced at Sayan, "—that is what he told her."
Tia looked at Sayan.
"Is that true?" she said.
"We ended it," Sayan said.
"That part is true."
"Which part isn't?"
He was quiet for a long moment.
Outside, somewhere down the hall, a door opened and closed.
The sound of heels on a hard floor, fading.
"She didn't know it was over," he said finally.
"Not completely.
There were still—we were still in contact.
I should have handled it more clearly.
I didn't."
"You were engaged to me," Tia said.
"Or close enough that an announcement went out with my name on it.
And you were still in contact with a woman who thought you were together."
"It wasn't like that."
"Then tell me what it was like."
He looked at the floor.
Then at her.
His voice, when it came, was lower and less steady than it had been at any point that afternoon.
"I didn't want to hurt her," he said.
"Elena.
I kept thinking I'd find the right moment to make it final.
I kept—I kept delaying it.
And then the announcement went out, and she saw it, and she called me, and I—" He stopped.
"I told her it was a mistake.
An error.
That it had gone out too early."
The torn fabric in Tia's hands made a soft sound as her grip tightened.
"You told her the announcement was a mistake," Tia said slowly.
"To protect her feelings."
"Yes."
"And you told me the announcement went out early.
Before we talked."
"Yes."
"So you lied to both of us," Tia said.
"To protect yourself."
The room held that sentence for a moment.
Marissa picked up her handbag.
"I came here today," she said, looking at Tia, "because Elena asked me to.
She wanted to know if the announcement was real.
If you were real." She paused.
"I may have handled it badly.
The dress—I shouldn't have done that.
That was wrong."
"It was wrong," Tia agreed.
Her voice was still quiet.
"But I came because someone needed to ask the question he wouldn't answer." Marissa looked at Sayan.
"And now it's been asked."
She walked to the door.
She stopped with her hand on the frame and looked back at Tia — not with the smile this time.
With something that looked, briefly, almost like regret.
"The dress was beautiful," she said.
"For what it's worth."
Then she was gone.
Tia stood in the middle of the bright, quiet room, holding the torn orange fabric, looking at the man in the blue velvet jacket who had run out of things to say.
"Is Elena coming here today?" she asked.
May you like
Sayan's eyes moved to the door.
That was answer enough.
