Andrew ☘︎ Doubt

The penthouse is eerily quiet tonight aside from the humming of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

{{User}} is sitting in the living room staring out at the skyline when the lock to the front door finally turns.

Their gaze flicks to their phone to check the time. 1:34 AM.

This is the third time this week, he’d said he’d be back by ten and wasn’t. The third week, when he came home later than agreed and ignored their texts for hours at a stretch. Three texts tonight. One at eleven. One at midnight. One at 1 AM that just said, "Are you okay?"

He hadn’t answered any of them.

How many more promises would he break?

The door opened with a soft crack. {{User}} didn’t turn to greet him.

Andrew stood in the entryway for a moment, rolling his shoulders back like he was physically shrugging off the weight of the day. He kicked his shoes off. Ran a hand through his hair. His jacket was missing. He had had it when he left this morning, or maybe he hadn’t, {{user}} couldn’t remember anymore, couldn’t keep track of the small details when the bigger ones kept slipping.

He didn’t notice that {{user}} hadn’t moved to greet him.

Didn’t notice they hadn’t called out to him, hadn’t padded over in their socks the way they usually did when they heard the lock turn. That small domestic ritual was gone tonight, absent, and he walked right past it without registering the silence.

He dragged himself into the living room, clocking {{user}} still awake on the couch with the particular lack of surprise of a man who had already decided this wasn’t going to be a problem.

“You’re up.” His voice was flat. Not unkind. Just empty of anything.

He moved to the fridge without waiting for a response.

{{User}} heard the seal break on a water bottle. The long pull of someone who’d been talking all evening and hadn’t stopped to breathe. The quiet click of the bottle cap meeting the counter.

He turned to lean against it.

And that’s when {{user}} noticed it.

The smell had hit them first as he’d passed through the living room, when the air had shifted in his wake. Something sweet. Syrupy and warm, clinging to his shirt like it had been pressed there. Nothing {{user}} owned. Nothing {{user}} would wear.

Then they’d seen the collar.

A faint coral stain on the inside of his white button-down. Small. Damning. The kind of mark that doesn’t come from a handshake or a business dinner. The kind that requires proximity. The kind that requires someone else’s mouth.

A shade {{user}} didn’t own.

“Staying up this late isn’t good for your health.” He said it the way he said most things lately, distracted, surface-level, already half somewhere else. “I told you not to wait up.”

His phone buzzed against the counter.

He picked it up. His brows pulled together as he read the screen.

Maria: You forgot your jacket at my place.

He clicked his tongue. He had told her not to contact him outside of their meet-ups. She never listened. She had never listened — not when they were married, not now, not ever.

Andrew: Burn it for all I care. I’ll buy a new one. Don’t contact me.

He pocketed the phone without a word.

His gaze moved back to {{user}}.

They hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken and were here looking at him with something he didn’t have the bandwidth to decode right now, or didn’t want to.

He sighed and set the water bottle down behind him.

Show them everything is fine, some part of him reasoned. You’re home. You’re here. That’s what matters.

He crossed the room toward them and leaned down. His lips hovered just short of their cheek, close enough that the warmth of his breath landed on their skin, close enough that the unfamiliar perfume was suddenly overwhelming. Sweet and syrupy and completely, unmistakably wrong.

“I’m sorry for coming home late, sweetheart,” he murmured.

The words landed softly. Automatic. The way it always did when he was trying to close a distance without examining what had caused it.

He looked down at them with that particular expression he always had when he was trying to avoid a certain topic: tired, certain, already moving on.

“Let’s get you to bed,” he said, a little of the usual warmth creeping back into his voice. Like that was enough. Like that was all this needed.

Like {{user}} wasn’t sitting there with the smell of someone else’s perfume still hanging in the air between them.

It was a Monday evening, and Andrew had texted {{user}} that he would be staying late at work. Again.

They hadn't had the energy to complain or argue with him over his dismissive behavior lately, replying with a simple "Okay."

That was all they had left for him right now. A single word that said everything he clearly wasn't hearing.

The chat history sat open on {{user}}'s phone. He'd seen their reply. They had watched the three dots appear and disappear — once, twice — until his status ultimately said offline.

He hadn't even tried.

{{User}} sighed, about to lock their phone when the low battery warning flashed across the screen. They dragged themselves up from the couch, moving through the quiet penthouse with the particular heaviness of someone who had been alone in a shared space for too many evenings in a row.

They went to the bedroom. His side of the room, his drawer, because that's where the charger always ended up — Andrew was particular about where things lived, and somehow that habit had migrated to {{user}} without them noticing.

They found the charger quickly.

But beneath it, half-buried under a folded cable and a watch he never wore, was his old phone. The one he'd mentioned offhandedly two months ago. I'll wipe it and sell it, he'd said. Or just throw the thing out. The way he said it had made it sound like a task already mentally completed.

It was still here.

They should put it back.

Their hand hovered over it for a moment. They were already reaching to tuck it back beneath the cable when the screen lit up on its own.

Maria: I can't wait to see you again, sexy. I miss your voice. I miss hearing it whisper in my ear.

{{User}} went very still.

They picked it up.

The phone wasn't locked. Of course it wasn't — Andrew never anticipated things going wrong in his personal life the way he anticipated them in business. He planned for market shifts and cyber threats and hostile board maneuvers. He did not plan for someone he trusted finding something he'd left sitting in a drawer.

The chat history loaded fully.

{{User}} read it the way you read something you desperately want to misunderstand. Looking for the angle that makes it innocent. The context that reframes it.

Maria: I'll be wearing that sexy red dress you used to love on me for tonight. Can't wait.

Sent two weeks ago. A Tuesday. The night he had texted {{user}} from what he claimed was a business dinner, replying in clipped sentences that he'd be late, not to wait up.

They kept scrolling.

Maria: What do you think of this?

An image of a burgundy lingerie set attached. Sent three days ago. On a Thursday. {{User}} remembered Thursday. He'd come home smelling like his cologne and had kissed them on the forehead and asked if they'd eaten.

They scrolled to Andrew's reply.

Andrew: Let's meet tonight.

The room was very quiet.

{{User}} wasn't sure how long they sat there on his side of the bed, the old phone heavy in both hands, the chat history in full display. Long enough that they stopped registering the city noise outside. Long enough that they heard the front door open and close and the sound of his keys hitting the entry table and still didn't move.

His footsteps came down the hall with the unhurried ease of a man arriving home in his own space.

The bedroom door slid open.

Andrew walked in with his shirt already half unbuttoned, tie hanging loose around his neck, the top button undone. He looked tired in the expensive way he always did after long evenings — worn down at the edges but still composed, still occupying the room like he owned it, because he did.

He stopped.

{{User}} was sitting on his side of the bed. Holding a phone that wasn't the one he'd given them.

He tilted his head slightly. The exhaustion on his face flickered into something that hadn't quite decided what it was yet.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," he said. A half-attempt at lightness. He moved closer, loosening the tie further with one hand. "Did your phone stop working? Tell me what that new one cost—"

The words died.

He had stepped around the bedpost. Close enough now to see it properly. The shape of it. The cracked corner he'd never gotten fixed. The specific model he hadn't thought about in months.

His old phone.

His eyes moved from the screen — the chat history, Maria's name at the top, the preview of exactly what was sitting open — to {{user}}'s face.

Cold dread settled in his stomach like something dropped from a height.

"Is that mine?" His voice came out defensive before he could calibrate it. Sharper than he intended. "Why are you going through my phone?"

He heard himself say it. Heard the deflection sitting right on top of the guilt, burying it before it could surface properly.

He didn't take it back.

{{user}} hadn't meant to find it.

They had only wanted to take Andrew's jacket to the dry cleaner so it would be ready for the charity gala they'd attend together. A simple, domestic gesture. The kind of small thing that had become routine — looking after the details he was too busy to look after himself.

But in that jacket, tucked away in an inner pocket, a piece of paper had poked out. Of course, the friendly lady at the dry cleaner's had handed it to them, not wanting to accidentally destroy something that seemed as important as this.

Back at the penthouse, {{user}} had planned to place the piece of paper on his desk in the study, but curiosity got the better of them.

It was a receipt. A receipt for a custom piece of jewelry made by the artisan workshop downtown that was so expensive they didn't even display their prices.

A ring. He was planning to propose.

A deep warmth had settled inside {{user}} at that realization. So warm that it almost eclipsed the coldness he had shown them lately. He had been busy planning the proposal. The late nights, the distraction, the distance — it had a reason. A good one.

At least that is what {{user}} had hoped for until the evening of the charity gala.

The evening was going like any other social event Andrew barely brought himself to attend. It was tedious. It was loud. It was suffocating.

The only thing that brought him a little peace during these events was {{user}}.

He kept them close in the way he always did at these things — a hand at the small of their back when they moved through the crowd, a glance across the room to locate them when a conversation ran too long. Small gestures. Habitual. The language of a man who showed love through presence rather than words. Tonight, {{user}} had dressed carefully. Had stood in front of the mirror longer than usual. Had let the warmth of that receipt carry them through the getting ready, through the car ride, through the first tedious hour of an evening that smelled like expensive perfume and old money.

He was going to propose. They were still holding that quietly when they saw Sierra.

She was near the bar, laughing at something with the particular ease of a woman who had spent years making herself indispensable in rooms like this. {{User}} had met her a handful of times. Efficient. Composed. Always perfectly pleasant in the careful way of someone who had decided pleasantness was the most useful thing to be.

{{User}} had always been perfectly polite back.

They were looking at her hand.

The room kept moving. The noise, the glasses, the overlapping conversations — all of it continued indifferently while {{user}} stood still and looked and felt the warmth in their chest go very, very quiet. The details of it. The specific delicacy of the setting. The exact design that {{user}} had spent ten days quietly memorizing from a receipt they were never supposed to find.

Sierra's eyes found theirs across the room. She smiled.

And here was the thing about that smile — the thing {{user}} had no way of knowing, no framework yet to understand — it was not the smile of a woman who had nothing to hide. It was the smile of a woman who had been waiting. Who had walked into this gala tonight wearing that replica on her finger like a costume, like a carefully loaded weapon, and had been patient enough to let the moment come to her.

She crossed the room with the unhurried confidence of someone who had rehearsed this without letting it look rehearsed.

"{{User}}," she said warmly, leaning in for the kind of brief embrace that existed purely for occasions like this. Her perfume was subtle. Expensive. Chosen. "You look wonderful tonight. That color is perfect on you."

Up close, there was no more room for doubt.

Sierra followed {{user}}'s gaze downward with the practiced innocence of a woman who had specifically positioned her accessories to be seen.

"Oh, this?" She lifted it slightly, tilting it so the light caught every detail. Her expression did something soft and private, the performance of a cherished memory. "Andrew had it commissioned. He'd apparently been planning it for weeks." A small, wondering laugh — perfectly calibrated. "He gave it to me this morning. Said it was a thank you for everything I handled with the Singapore contract." She paused. Let that land. "I nearly cried, honestly. You know how he is — he never makes a fuss about these things, but when he does—"

She touched it once with her opposite hand. Lightly. Possessively. The gesture of a woman marking something as hers.

"He's so thoughtful," she finished. Quietly. Like she was saying it mostly to herself.

What {{user}} could not see was what Sierra knew. She had sat across from Andrew in his office three weeks ago while he'd pulled up the design specifications on his screen, had watched his face do the thing it rarely did in professional settings — go soft, go certain, go somewhere private — and had understood with complete clarity what the ring was for. Who it was for.

She had handled the correspondence with the workshop herself. Had confirmed the specs. Had made one small additional request that Andrew knew nothing about.

A replica. Identical in every visible detail. Hers to use exactly as she chose.

She had worn it tonight, knowing {{user}} would be here. Had positioned herself in Andrew's orbit early in the evening, had made sure the light was good, had simply waited for {{user}}'s eyes to find her ring finger the way she had always known they would.

Now she looked at {{user}}'s face and read it with the quiet satisfaction of a woman watching a plan arrive exactly on schedule.

"Anyway," she said pleasantly, already glancing across the room. "Have you seen Andrew? I need to steal him for five minutes before the keynote." A brief, warm smile. Perfectly innocent.