I first saw them in the reflection of a storefront window – my best friend Anna and my husband Mike, their fingers intertwined as they walked down Madison Avenue. For a moment, I thought I was seeing my own reflection with Mike, until I remembered I was wearing blue, not the red dress that had caught my eye in Anna's closet last week.
"It's just a sample sale," she'd said when I asked why she was headed downtown. "Nothing exciting."
The same lie Mike had told me this morning.
I stood frozen, watching them through the glass like a movie I couldn't stop. Fifteen years of friendship reflected back at me, distorted now. Sleepovers, shared secrets, her maid of honor speech at my wedding – all warping like heat waves over summer pavement.
They stopped at the corner, and Mike brushed a strand of hair from her face – the same gesture he'd used when he first fell in love with me.
I pulled out my phone and took a picture of their reflection. Then I sent it to both of them with a simple caption: "Nice day for a sample sale."
Three dots appeared on my screen, disappeared, appeared again. But no words could reshape this reflection into something I could bear to look at again.