My Wife Forced Me To Attend The Company Dinner: "Stand Behind Everyone. Don’t Make Me Look Bad…

My Wife Forced Me To Attend The Company Dinner: "Stand Behind Everyone. Don’t Make Me Look Bad…
The gala was held at the Meridian Hotel downtown, all crystal chandeliers and marble floors polished to a mirror shine. The valet barely glanced at me when I handed over the keys, but he greeted Isla by name. That stung more than it should have.

Inside, the room buzzed with money and ambition. Men in tailored suits clustered around high-top tables, women in dresses that probably had their own insurance policies laughed a little too loudly. Isla’s posture shifted the moment we stepped in—shoulders back, chin lifted, smile calibrated to maximum charm.

“There’s Marston,” she said, already scanning the room. “And the regional director. Don’t wander.”

I didn’t answer. She was gone before I could.

I took my assigned place near the bar, just like always, nursing a club soda while watching my wife work the room like a general moving pieces across a board. She touched arms when she laughed, leaned in when people spoke, nodded at exactly the right moments. And every now and then, she glanced over at me—not to check if I was okay, but to make sure I was still where she’d left me.

I was.

That’s when I noticed him.

Tall. Confident. Navy suit that fit like it had been tailored directly onto his body. He stood a little too close to Isla, close enough that she angled her shoulder toward him, closing herself off from the rest of the group. I watched her laugh at something he said, a real laugh—not the polite social one, but the kind that crinkled the corners of her eyes.

She hadn’t laughed like that with me in a long time.

I told myself I was imagining it. That I was being paranoid. Invisible people get paranoid; it comes with the territory. But then he handed her a drink—white wine, her favorite—and she took it without hesitation.

She hadn’t asked me to get her a drink all night.