Life After Perfect by Nancy Naigle

echo,” she said, pulling the phone from her ear.
    “Must be the hall.”
    Only it wasn’t. Because it wasn’t echo so much as stereo. She edged forward and looked across the way to the booths over and behind her.
    The waiter approached her with a “you ready” look.
    She held up a finger and he disappeared.
    The man in the blue button-down shirt with the sleeves turned up just-so who sat across the way . . . he didn’t need to turn around for her to know who he was.
    The way his hair waved in that one spot, and the way his watchband hung like it was a little too loose on his left arm, which always drove her a little crazy, was all it took.
    She pulled back into her seat, clutching the phone close to her ear, trying not to completely lose it right then and there.

Chapter Four
    Katherine slid further toward the wall in her booth. Not just to hide, but to catch her breath. The smells of the food in the bistro made her stomach roll like oil in a fryer.
    Breathing, that thing your body knows how to do without thought. Her body had suddenly forgotten how.
    She sucked in a deep breath and risked leaning out to look again. Katherine watched her husband hold his shiny red iPhone case to his ear. He reached his hand across the table to hold someone else’s, and his cheeks tugged in a smile.
    “An all-day meeting?” she repeated, watching intently to gauge his response. “They won’t even let you out for like a fifteen-minute lunch break? I don’t mind waiting. I could meet you somewhere. Just a quick bite in your office, even.”
    She watched the line of his jaw as he spoke. Though she couldn’t see him face on from her angle, the words coming across the phone line synchronized with his every movement.
    She lifted a finger to the corner of one eye, and swept at the tears that were making her vision blurry.
    So this is what it looks like to have no idea at all.
    Thoughts of Peggy flooded her mind, and that place in her gut that was so hungry just a few minutes ago tightened into a coil. The blood pulsing through her veins was so loud she’d missed half of what he’d just said.
    “And I’ll probably be late tonight. You know how these things are, babe.”
    Babe? “Of course. Yeah. Sure.”
    She watched him shove the phone in his pocket and slide his arms across the table toward that woman. There was no explaining it away.
    Late? How many times had he been late recently?
    She sat there staring.
    At him. Her husband.
    At that woman. Younger than she was. The woman had short, wispy dark hair. Her total opposite. Ron about came unglued every time Katherine had a hair appointment. He liked her hair long and simple. He loved blondes. That woman was not his type.
    At least that’s what she’d thought.
    But Ron’s attention was so focused on the woman that he didn’t seem to notice a thing around him, including her.
    Her body refused to budge to get out of his view. All it would take would be one glance across the aisle and he’d be looking right at her, slack-jawed and all. She gasped, sucking air, but seemingly unable to get her lungs to take it in. They . . . her husband and some other woman . . . sat there with nearly empty plates in front of them. The image of them bounced around in her head, burning into her brain. An image that didn’t belong.
    With her back to them in the booth, she lifted her phone above her head and snapped a picture. It made that loud, old-timey camera sound.
    She practically folded in on herself as she yanked it from the air. So much for being sneaky.
    She hit every button she knew of on her doggone iPhone to quiet it. Then she held the phone again like she was going to take a selfie . . . only the camera was reversed, facing across the way . . . toward Ron’s table. Silently, she captured the image.
    A moment later they slid out of the booth.
    She snapped another as they headed for the front door, as she pretended to make her way to the ladies’ room.
    He held the door for her,