After He Loved Her, I Learned I Was Second Choice

The restaurant had one Michelin star and no sign on the door. That was the kind of place Damian liked. You had to know it existed before you could find it.

I wore a black dress, simple, fitted at the waist. The sapphire pendant sat against my collarbone the way it always did. Damian had given it to me for our third anniversary. He called it a one-of-a-kind piece. I touched it in the elevator on the way up, a habit I had developed over two years of wearing it every single day.

Damian was already at the table when I arrived. He stood when he saw me, but his eyes moved past me almost immediately to the entrance. He was waiting for someone else.

"We're having a guest tonight," he said. He pulled out my chair, but his attention was still on the door. "An old friend. She just got back from London."

Before I could ask, she walked in.

Chandler Romero was tall, with dark hair that fell past her shoulders in a way that looked effortless and probably was. She wore a cream silk blouse and gold earrings. She smelled like jasmine and bergamot.

I knew that scent. I wore it every day. I had worn it since college, long before I met Damian. It was a niche fragrance from a small perfumer in Brooklyn. I always thought it was a coincidence that Damian once told me he loved it. That he said it reminded him of someone.

He never said who.

Chandler smiled at me, polite and easy. "You must be Esme. Damian's told me almost nothing about you." She laughed like it was a joke. Maybe it was.

Damian pulled out her chair first. I noticed that. He poured her wine before mine. I noticed that too.

The dinner was three courses. I remember every one of them, not because of the food, but because of what happened between the plates.

Damian leaned toward Chandler when she spoke. Not a little. His whole body shifted, like she was a magnet and he was something that had no choice. He asked about London, about her work, about people I had never heard of. He laughed at things that were not particularly funny.

I sat across from them and ate my salad.

"Esme writes novels," Damian said at one point, almost as an afterthought. He turned to Chandler. "Romance novels. You'd like them. She has this habit of reading her drafts out loud to herself. You used to do that with your scripts, remember?"

Chandler tilted her head. "Did I?"

"You did. Sophomore year. In the library. You'd whisper the lines under your breath." He smiled at the memory. Then he looked at me. "You do the same thing. Isn't that funny?"

I set my fork down. "Funny," I said.

He didn't hear the flatness in my voice. Or he did, and it didn't register.

The main course arrived. Chandler folded her napkin into a neat triangle