Orange, like the color of my treasured Le Creuset.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I’d be painting my living room orange. But when I saw the deep, dreamy color, with a hint of terracotta, I was drawn to it immediately. Maybe I wasn’t a blue-gray person after all.

The house was quiet when I got back. When I called Avi’s name and he didn’t answer, I decided he was out and went about my business of painting. And I quickly realized how nice it would have been to have his help. I taped around the edges of the floor, no problem. But when I got to the ceiling, even on my ladder, I had to stretch.

I’d made it about halfway around the room—stretching, taping, moving the ladder a foot over, and repeating—when Avi came through the front door. He was breathing heavily, and sweat beaded on his forehead despite the bitter temperature outside. I froze on top of the ladder, watching him take off his sneakers and yank off his hoodie and gloves.

He started toward the stairs to the basement, but stutter-stepped when he saw me on my perch.

I waved awkwardly. “Hi.”

He rubbed a hand over his sweaty forehead. “You’re going to break your neck.” He came toward me with something that looked a lot like anger behind his eyes. Holding the base of the ladder, he said, “Get down.”

Oh no he didn’t! I’d been doing perfectly fine on my own. Yes, I’d wanted his help, but I certainly didn’t need to be bossed around by a grumpy man.

“Don’t order me around,” I threw back.

“Damn it. I’m sorry. Please get down.” His voice softened a fraction. “I’ll help—just give me a minute to get changed.”

“I can do it on my own,” I said. He’d raised my hackles and they would not be calmed by his stupid apology.

He stared up at me, his eyes softening along with his voice. “I know you can, but I promised you I would help. Please let me?”

I huffed, but I climbed down while Avi spotted me. I had the urge to let go of the ladder and fall back into his arms, but knowing my luck, he’d miss me and I’d go splat on the ground. So I climbed down, and when my feet were firmly on dry land, I turned to him, my arms crossed over my chest.

“I’m down.”

He nodded once. “Thank you, Laurel. Now, please, stay there, okay?”

I scrunched up my nose, but said I would. He ran downstairs and was back in five minutes in a different pair of sweatpants and T-shirt, his face scrubbed clean and hair slicked back.

Avi took over taping while I laid out a tarp, poured the paint into a tray, and started rolling it on the wall. I started to panic at the sight of the bright orange paint that looked more like a traffic cone than the desert sunset it had been billed as, but I kept painting, wanting to stand by my choice. I was a strong, independent woman who could choose her own damn paint colors.

Except it was orange. Like the fruit.

“What have you done?”

I turned around to find Avi gazing open-mouthed at the painted wall, a horrified expression written all over his face.

“It’s a desert sunset?” I said weakly.

“Is it?”

I chewed on the corner of my lip. “I’m sure it’ll dry darker. Isn’t that what they say on design shows?” I painted another swipe, then stood back, contemplating. “This is entirely your fault, you know.”

“I’m sure it is. But how, exactly?”

I waved the paint roller at him. “You were supposed to stare at swatches with me! I got confused and chose the one with the prettiest name!”

Avi grabbed the roller from me, splatters of orange paint on his T-shirt from my wild flailing. Calmly, he said, “We’ll paint the room, then let it dry. If you still don’t like the color, we’ll go back and choose a different one. Okay?”

I puffed up my cheeks, then blew out a long, slow breath. “All right. I suppose I can agree to that.”

I got out a second roller, and Avi and I worked side by side. Well, I went low, and he went high. My eyes got used to the orange after a while, but I remained steadfastly skeptical.

“I’m sorry, by the way.” Avi broke the long silence, which hadn’t been quite comfortable. The tension radiating off him was almost palpable.

“About what?”

“That I didn’t go with you to pick the paint. And that…uh, Mara came here.”

I flopped back on my butt and looked up at him. When I didn’t respond after a long beat, he glanced down at me.

“You don’t have to apologize, Avi. You don’t owe me anything. And it seemed like you needed some privacy,” I said.

He sat down on the tarp across from me, dropping his roller in the tray. “Yes, but I promised you I would help. And I wanted to go. Seeing Mara was not part of my plans.”

“I have to be nosy. Who is she?”

He scrubbed his face with both hands. “Mara’s my ex-girlfriend. We broke up a month before I moved in here. It was pretty ugly.”

“Since I’m already being nosy, were you together for a long time?”

“Yes. We met as teenagers when I came to visit my aunt and uncle. Her mother is my uncle’s sister.”

I tried to do the math in my head. Had Avi...dated his cousin? My brows knitted together, and I felt my lip curl involuntarily.

Avi chuckled. “No, she isn’t my cousin. She is my aunt’s husband’s niece. Not related, but families intertwined.”

I calmed myself and jumped off the family tree I’d been climbing, searching for Mara’s name. Thank god he hadn’t dated a cousin. I didn’t know if I’d be able to look at him the same way if he had. I mean, you do you. I tried to be open-minded in everyday life, but dating a family member would be about ten miles outside my comfort zone.

“You were together since you were teenagers?” I asked, brows raised.

“No. We’ve known each other since then, but you know, distance. It wasn’t possible to be together. I loved her, though, as much as a seventeen-year-old can. I told her I would move here after my service, if she wanted me.”

My eyes widened. “You were together for, what? Five…six years?”

“Only two, actually.”

“And it just ended six weeks ago?”

Avi pushed the roller back and forth in the paint, not looking up. “It was ending for the last year, but yes, six weeks ago was when I officially ended our relationship.”

“She misses you.”

He nodded, his hair flopping down on his forehead. “Yes. Of course. I miss her too. I thought I would love her forever. But that’s not what happened.”

He sounded broken. In the short time I had known him, he’d been serious, pushy, and curious—but never once had the spark gone out behind his eyes. He always seemed good-natured, always on the verge of letting out a laugh or making someone else laugh.

But not now.

Now, he looked like his heart had very recently been ripped out, chewed up, and spit back in his face. I hadn’t seen the darkness in him. But then again, I hadn’t been looking for it.

“What changed over the last year?” I asked.

He never looked up as he swirled the paint in the tray. “We worked together, in my aunt’s salon. We were always together. And maybe that’s no good. Maybe that’s why…” he broke off, shaking his head.

I rested my hand on his knee. “We don’t have to talk about this, you know. We can just paint if you want.”

His eyes met mine, and I held in a gasp. There was so much there, on his face—not just pain, but everything he lost too. The plans he’d made for his life with Mara, the things that would never come to fruition, were painted there, now slashed and graffitied and ruined.

He went on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “She started pulling away. We had everyone around us asking when we were finally going to get married and she fucking pulled away. I thought maybe if I left the salon, worked somewhere else and gave her space, she’d come back. But it didn’t matter.”

I moved my palm back and forth on his knee, trying to soothe the man I barely knew but somehow really cared about any way I could.

“You said you broke up with her, though.”

He blinked slowly, letting his eyes stay shut for a long moment. Seconds passed before he breathed, and when he did, it was long and ragged, as if each molecule of oxygen he drew in was barbed and unbearably painful.

“The first time Mara cheated was with me.”

And then, suddenly, breathing became just as painful for me. Air crystallized in my lungs, constricting my chest.

“She had a boyfriend when I moved to the U.S. So, I waited. I took my time, worked my ass off, and waited. We kissed once, and I felt like shit for days until she finally left him. Our beginning started with dishonesty, but I thought we were different. True love and all that.” He shook his head as though the concept disgusted him.

“Avi…” I whispered. I couldn’t think of anything I could say to comfort him, though. I touched my fingertips to his, and he reached out, clasping my hand.

“The second time she cheated, I saw it with my own eyes, in my own home. I’m forgiving, but I’m not stupid. She begged and cried, but I left. I stayed with my aunt, and then my cousin, and then...you.”

My heart broke, for so many reasons, at the way his eyes softened when he said “you.”

“I managed not to see her until she showed up here today. If my aunt told her where I live...well, she knows what Mara did to me. I can’t believe she would tell her where I’m living.”

“I’m so sorry, Avi. I can’t even imagine what you’re going through right now.”

“What kind of person cheats? Just fucking leave me if you don’t want to be with me anymore. I feel like I never really knew her. Ten years and I never knew her.”

He slammed his fist on the ground. “Fuck! Let’s just paint, okay? I can’t do this anymore.”

He stood and started rolling the paint on the wall with renewed vigor. I was gutted, though, knocked down at the knees. So I stayed down, half-heartedly doing the edges while Avi made his way around the room, setting it awash with a vibrant tangerine glow.

I had more in common with Katharine Hepburn than my ability to look amazing in shoulder pads and power suits and the hardened expression I’d been known to pull out when I went toe-to-toe with other lawyers in the boardroom.

Kate carried on a twenty-six-year affair with Spencer Tracy, a married man, while I had a far less glamorous six-month affair with a partner at my old law firm.

I was a cheater.

No, I hadn’t been the married one, but I certainly had been well aware Tom was. It had all seemed so easy, so simple. I was a new associate, working my ass off, and he was...there. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t romance. It was habit. I hardly even considered the consequences. We talked about my cases, grabbed dinner together on late nights in the office, and sometimes we’d fuck. For a while, it had been a bit more sordid. There were hotel rooms and the occasional weekend away. But those tapered off quickly, both of us far too busy for the time commitment any kind of romance required.

I never told anyone about Tom, not even Frannie. I knew instinctively she wouldn’t approve, that she’d try to talk me out of it, even though she was never one to push. She was very black and white when it came to what she considered lying and how she responded to it.

I didn’t want her to convince me to stop. The sex was decent and although I liked Tom, I knew he’d never leave his wife for me—which I considered a good thing. I didn’t have time for a relationship. Back then, I didn’t have time for much besides work, and when I did have free time, I preferred spending it with my friends over trolling Tinder or a bar for a hookup.

Tom suited my needs until he didn’t.

And then the consequences came crashing in and almost ruined my career.

We finished painting the room in silence, each of us trapped in our own head. Me, consumed with the guilt over my selfish choices, and Avi, probably consumed with disdain for every cheater in existence.

And I was even more firm in my decision to keep my affair—I hated that word because it sounded more torrid and passionate than it ever was—to myself. As much as I longed to confide in a friend, or confess my sins to Avi, I didn’t want any of them to look at me differently. To see the real me.