The cocktail napkin filled her with a sick kind of dread. It had happened at last.
She crumbled the thin tissue in her fist and gave the dresser drawer a shove closed. She didn't know what was worse: the fact that Roy was hiding things from her or the fact that she was acting like a jealous housewife.
She felt like she was watching someone else, a jealous woman with blonde hair and brown eyes (someone else because she wasn't a jealous woman. If she was jealous, she couldn't have tolerated Roy's flirting with everything that breathed all those years that she worked with him) storm into the den and shove the crumpled napkin under her lover's nose, demanding, "Who's Luisa?"
Roy showed no surprise, his single eye did not widen, his pale cheeks did not blush, he simply folded the paper he was reading and looked up at her. "She's a waitress at the pub around the corner," he said calmly.
"What's her number doing in your underwear drawer?" she asked hotly, hands on her hips.
Roy simply smirked. "And what were you doing in my underwear drawer?"
Riza felt her face redden, with frustration, not embarrassment. "I was putting away your wash," she said tightly.
Her lover shrugged, re-opening his paper and going back to reading. "Its not like I called her, Riza, what's the big deal?"
She stood there, fuming. "You shouldn't have taken it in the first place," she replied. "You should have given it back to her and told her you were not available."
Roy looked up again. "What, and ruin my reputation?" he asked, his tone still playful.
"Your reputation," she began, the darkness in her voice building with every word, "should be one of a married man, who is utterly devoted to his wife, not because he fears her impeccable skill with a pistol but because she is the love of his life," she said angrily, spinning on her heals and storming out of the room.
"Riza," came his concerned voice. She heard him put his paper down and follow her. "You aren't really angry, are you?"
She was standing at the hall window, looking out over the streets of Central. "You used to tell me stories about the silly women who still chased after you, even though they knew you were married, and how you turned them all down," she said quietly. "Those stories stopped ages ago. Now I find phone numbers in your underwear drawer and your shirts smell like perfume."
He slipped an arm around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder, letting his warm breath tickle the side of her neck. "But you're the only one I love," he murmured.
She twisted around, staring into the face of her husband. "Then you shouldn't still be chasing after every attractive young thing that crosses your path," she said coldly.
Roy sighed. "I'm not, Riza, believe me, I'm not," he assured her. "Most of it was only ever an act, anyway. An act or a game."
She shook her head. "Love isn't a game, Roy."
He was silent, tightening his grip around her, as if he suddenly realized how bothered she was and how possible it was that she could walk out of his life and never return.
"Every day I have to deal with the rumors," she said after several minutes passed. "Some well-meaning co worker always tries to fill me in on your latest escapades, you were seen with so and so at the wherever, as if I don't already know."
"People talk," he said, his voice urgent. "That doesn't mean there's any truth to it. I see a lot of people every day, I interact with all kinds of people, it's my job. Sometimes they are attractive young women. Don't believe what spiteful people tell you. There have always been rumors about me, don't start believing them now," he pleaded.
Her eyes narrowed. "What about the rumors about you and Edward?"
She watched the color drain from his face. She felt a cold surge of triumph that bothered her. This is what finally got to him?
"There was never anything between myself and Fullmetal," he said shortly. "He was my subordinate, that's all."
"Funny, that's what you told people about me too," she snapped, taking in the shocked look on his face. "Oh come on, Roy, I saw the two of you at that party. I saw the same thing everyone saw, and drew the same conclusions. How can you deny it?"
"I- nothing happened!" he stammered. "He was a child! I would never-" He drew himself up and took a deep breath. "What does it matter anyway?" he demanded. "That was years ago, years before we were married, years before we were even together. Why bring that up now?"
She was looking at him levelly, her rich brown eyes boring holes through his heart. "I need to be alone right now," she said firmly, opening the closet and taking out her coat. "Don't wait up for me."
After she left he collapsed back in his chair in the den, swatting the paper he had been reading to the floor. If he wanted to go after her, he knew, he could. She went to the shooting range at the military headquarters, that's where she always went when they fought. He used to go after her, and they would make up right there, giving a bit of a show to anyone else who happened to be using the facility, before someone inevitably shouted "Get a room!" and they would blush together and return home to finish what they started.
Roy stood up, and walked purposefully into the bedroom and jerked open the drawer that had caused so much trouble. In the back, behind the socks, he found his little black book. Regarding it for a few moments, he tossed it on the dresser. That book was legendary. He picked up the gloves that were folded neatly next to it, and drew them over his slender hands. With a snap! the pages were nothing but thin sheets of crumbling ash, and there would always be a faint scorch mark in the wood of the dresser.