Autumn. One backyard. Late September.
He's your best friend. She's his wife.
pinned to the refrigerator, in her handwriting
RSVP to no one.
A hand on your arm that lingered half a second too long. A joke that cut closer than jokes are supposed to. Messages that got warmer, later, more frequent than friendly. She finds reasons to be standing near you, and you haven't given her one to stop.
You could call it nothing. You've been calling it nothing for a while now.
Theirs is the backyard with the good grill and the string lights and the neighbors who always say yes. Friends, cold drinks, the usual summer noise. He's at the grill with his back turned, telling a story to somebody who isn't her.
She notices. You notice her noticing.
Then she asks you to help her grab a bottle of wine from the garage, and the door clicks shut behind you both.
She doesn't bother looking for the wine. She steps in close, close enough that you can smell her perfume and the smoke still caught in her hair, and she says the thing the two of you have been circling for weeks.
He hasn't looked at her in months. You haven't stopped.
The garage is dark, the party is thirty feet away, and nobody out there is thinking about the two of you.
“She's waiting on your next move.”
Dark. Coals ticking somewhere behind the wall, the muffled bass of the party thirty feet away. She hasn't reached for the wine.