Richard read the text again. It had surprised him. But then again it had not surprised him, either. With people it was hard to know what was really going on and with other peoples’ relationships there was no telling. Ever.

“Hmm,” he said, as he read, “I’ve never slapped or screamed at a man before, but today is the day.”

Richard knew who the man was as he’d met him once and sensed something off that he couldn’t put his finger on. “So I was right,” Richard muttered, staring at his phone. It pinged. There was another message. It read, “He is married. “Happily”, so says his wife on Instagram.”

Social media, Richard thought, can be such an undoer.

“I’ve met someone,” she had said, months before, just after she had slept with a man she liked but was losing faith in as he kept breaking up with his girlfriend then going back to her, after telling her he wouldn’t.

“Oh,” Richard had said, “I thought …”

“I know,” she had said, “but he can’t make his mind up, so …”

“Bob’s your uncle,” Richard said.

“What?”

“An expression. English. Something to do with nepotism. It means, ‘There you have it.’”

“Well then,” she said, “Bob’s your uncle.”

Richard ran into them one evening in the middle of summer. Or rather he had seen her, sitting with friends on the deck of the Marsh Island Brewery.

“May I?” Richard had said.

“Sure,” she said, “I’m waiting for …”

“Ah ha! Then I will get to meet him.”

“Indeed.”

That night, in bed, lying in the mid-summer twilight, Richard reviewed the evening. Something, he thought again, was amiss, though he couldn’t define what it was.

Though, now, in late summer, things had begun to fall into place.

Her next text said, “I’m writing. Angrily.”

Richard replied, “You do that. Keep writing. And whatever it is, don’t send it to him yet. Sleep on it …”

Later, after he’d opened a bottle of wine, and picked up his guitar, his phone pinged again.

“I screamed and hollered. And got it all out there,” the message said.

That must have been something, Richard thought. She was a presence and didn’t suffer fools lightly.

He read on, “But I listened too and I think he’s telling the truth but regardless he has work to do. And he knows it.”

“Not good,” Richard thought, putting his phone down before playing ‘You’re Going To Make Me Lonesome.”

“Not good at all,” he said, after he’d finished the song.

He stopped himself picking up his phone.

“He’s not telling the truth,” Richard thought, “he’s telling you something that is a truth you’d like to believe, that she’s ‘happily’ married, but he’s not.”

A young deer was standing in the road, looking up at Richard’s house. He watched as it pricked its ears, turned and loped into the woods on the other side of the road.

It was the phrase, ‘he has work to do,’ that troubled Richard. He looked at his phone. The fact is, he thought, he didn’t tell you he was married. And work to do? For what? For himself? Or before you take him back?

Richard wanted to pick up his phone and message her. He knew the words would trip from his finger. But it’s not my business, he thought, pouring himself some more wine, before deciding it was his business because they were honest friends and shared much more than most heterosexual friends of different genders share about their lives and thoughts.

And there she is, Richard thought, in Philly, waiting for her flight.

“But I listened too,” she had written. Which, Richard thought, must have been after the screaming and hollering. “I wonder what you heard when you listened?” Richard mused, looking at the level of wine in the bottle and frowning slightly.

“There’s a one in a billion chance that I’d ever date you,” a woman had once said to Richard. “So there is a chance,” Richard had responded.

We hear what we want to hear, Richard thought, pouring the rest of the bottle into his glass before retuning his guitar and playing Simple Twist of Fate.

“He woke up,” Richard sang, “the room was bare, didn’t see her anywhere, told himself he didn’t care, pushed the window open wide, felt an emptiness inside.”

So he did care, Richard thought.

It was getting late. She’d be flying back from Philly now, Richard thought. He imagined her on the plane, her face leaning on the cool window, looking down at the lights below as she headed north east, reliving her visit.

What a mess, Richard thought.

Or not.