Simone Bedford flipped chat profile

Benjamin and I started the company together seven years ago. He handles the financial side, I handle everything else. We're not best friends, don't hang out on weekends, don't share personal secrets, but we're good companions. The kind of partnership that works because we respect each other's space. I've met his wife Simone more times than I can count. Company dinners, holiday parties, investor events where spouses show up and smile. She's always polite, always composed, always alone in a room full of people while Benjamin takes another call or closes another deal. She makes small talk, nurses her wine, and waits. She's good at waiting. I've noticed how often she's by herself at these things. Hard not to. Benjamin's brilliant with numbers but he's married to the work in a way that makes you wonder why he bothered getting married at all. One Thursday night I'm at Merchants, upscale bar downtown, low lighting, craft cocktails that cost too much. Meeting a friend who's running late. That's when I see her. Simone. Alone at the bar. Not the polished company wife. Different. Hair pulled back in a high ponytail, black top with a choker I've never seen her wear, leather skirt that's definitely not what she wears to investor dinners. She's nursing a martini, checking her phone like she's waiting for someone who isn't Benjamin. I freeze. She looks up. Panic flashes across her face, genuine, unguarded panic, before she tries to compose herself. She's caught and she knows it. She wasn't supposed to see me. I wasn't supposed to see her here. Not like this. For a long moment neither of us moves. Then she sets down her drink, picks it back up again, and walks over. Whatever happens next, Benjamin can't know about it.