Speaker 1: Hullo. I'm welcome to cheating all the time. Glad you
Speaker 1: are here. Let's get into this next crazy sheet. I
Speaker 1: was lighting the candles on the dinner table when my
Speaker 1: phone buzzed again, and there it was Sash's thiry text
Speaker 1: in an iron running a little late. Don't wait up
Speaker 1: with the food, she wrote. I'd known her long enough
Speaker 1: to read the undertone. No explanation, just a flat update,
Speaker 1: This sort of thing you sent to a coworker, maybe,
Speaker 1: But this was our anniversary, the one year marks since
Speaker 1: we got engaged. Not exactly the kind of night I
Speaker 1: expected her to treat so casually, I tried not to
Speaker 1: make much of it. She'd been promoted late last year,
Speaker 1: and there were always deadlines, networking drinks, late night status
Speaker 1: calls with her ambitious project manager. As straightened the forks,
Speaker 1: made sure her favorite wine was breathing, and forced myself
Speaker 1: to ignore how the cities thus pressed against our apartment window.
Speaker 1: In the kitchen, the lasagna already smelled a little overdone.
Speaker 1: I planned for dinner at it now. It was nine thirty.
Speaker 1: The front door finally creaked open, and Sash's voice floated
Speaker 1: in strained but light. Sorry, Abe got totally buried under
Speaker 1: that finance review. She shuffled him with a distracted peck
Speaker 1: on my cheek, her arms full of grocery bags. I
Speaker 1: stood there, waiting for whatever warmth might come next, but
Speaker 1: she fumbled through the kitchen instead, dumping bikes onto the counter,
Speaker 1: as if we'd called for bread delivery. I grabbed some
Speaker 1: things for tomorrow. Thought you mentioned wanting breakfast stuff? Hey,
Speaker 1: is dinner ruined already? Her words tumbled up, quickly colliding
Speaker 1: as she flipped her phone onto the counter that, in
Speaker 1: itself was ought. She never left it more than an
Speaker 1: arm's lent away, not once since we'd moved in. I
Speaker 1: tried to match her brightness. No, not ruined, just a
Speaker 1: bit crosper than usual. I managed to smile, but it
Speaker 1: didn't reach my eyes. She hummed an affirmation, then all
Speaker 1: but darted down the hallway toward the bathroom, stammering, just
Speaker 1: need a quick shower of traffic was a nightmare to day.
Speaker 1: The water started immediately, as if should practice this arrival
Speaker 1: a dozen times. As they set out the plates, Sasha's
Speaker 1: phone shined softly from a counted op. The screen led
Speaker 1: up for a second. It was just her lock screened
Speaker 1: some blurry photo of us at the lake glass fall,
Speaker 1: then overlaid near the top, previously bothered into view a
Speaker 1: heart emoji and a message from him, just that the
Speaker 1: initial hanging there. My stomach nodded. Sasha didn't know many
Speaker 1: people with an em I waited until the lops green
Speaker 1: faded and the kitchen sank into a hush again, except
Speaker 1: for the hiss of shower water. She had never set
Speaker 1: her phone to silent during dinner before that heart glistening
Speaker 1: in the blue left a sire await behind my roops.
Speaker 1: By the time she emerged, tell wrapped in flushed, she
Speaker 1: had already adopted her game face. Oh my group chat
Speaker 1: is going wild, she grinned, swiping her fun clothed and
Speaker 1: stashing it in her pocket before I could read her eyes.
Speaker 1: These finance notes can't make a plan to save their lives,
Speaker 1: she laughed, almost genuine, but her smile flickered at the edges.
Speaker 1: I poured her wine. She toasted me for a full
Speaker 1: half ire. We pretended normal. She asked about my day
Speaker 1: and feigned interest in my stores. But a candle between
Speaker 1: us felt suddenly ornamental, as if we performed an old
Speaker 1: script for an empty audience. It was impossible not to
Speaker 1: think back to the hundreds of nights before suspicion existed,
Speaker 1: before quiet tens sired the air. Last summer, after fifteen
Speaker 1: months of dating, Sasha and I moved into this apartment together.
Speaker 1: It was a shoe books near the river, but to
Speaker 1: us it felt like proof proof that city rents and
Speaker 1: ted kitchens and all those jokes about couples who never
Speaker 1: get space would never hurt us. We started things with
Speaker 1: a rast sort of clarity. In the first few weeks,
Speaker 1: everything slotted into place. Sasha brought the levity and wit.
Speaker 1: I brought structure and sometimes too much earnestness. According to her,
Speaker 1: at least week ends became rituals. On Saturdays, wh'd lays
Speaker 1: our boots and drive up past the city line, hiking
Speaker 1: until the trees overhead dappled our faces. If we had
Speaker 1: friends along, we'd always be the couple trailing behind, hands
Speaker 1: knoted at the hills. Rest On Sundays it was branch
Speaker 1: always something new, sometimes a pop up cafe, sometimes greasy diner,
Speaker 1: eggs and watery coffee. Sasha insisted on rotating joint playlists,
Speaker 1: rolling her eyes at my fondness for eightyscinth. On weeknights,
Speaker 1: it was gay nights, sometimes just the two of us
Speaker 1: with a battered deck of cards, sometimes five or six
Speaker 1: friends around our little table, the laughter echoing off the
Speaker 1: kitchen tile. Sasha would host for filling drinks, riffing on balls,
Speaker 1: leaning in with her competitive edge. On those nights, she
Speaker 1: tossed her phone into the miss of keys and wallets,
Speaker 1: grabbing it only to scroll for means. Between rounds, she
Speaker 1: liked to cook with me. My chop she sought it.
Speaker 1: She always teased me about the mess I made flyer
Speaker 1: on my cheeks, or a trail of spinach bits on
Speaker 1: the stove. Occasionally she let her arms round my waist
Speaker 1: while I grated cheese, murmuring, some day I want to
Speaker 1: do this in a proper kitchen. Think he could handle
Speaker 1: a double oven. The proposal had happened almost by accident,
Speaker 1: one unusually warm spring night, after a movie in the park.
Speaker 1: She looked at me over the stolid grass and said,
Speaker 1: what if we just settled this hut, got married before
Speaker 1: some one else steals you off the market? I laughed,
Speaker 1: but she was already kneeling, scowling at the damp ground.
Speaker 1: She didn't have a ring, just a twist of string
Speaker 1: from her jacket pocket, But it was the only answer
Speaker 1: that made sense. For weeks afterward, everything felt lighter. We're
Speaker 1: going to be an obnoxiously happy couple, she whispered. One morning,
Speaker 1: Jim pressed my shoulder. Get ready. A year later, we
Speaker 1: had writing venues bookmarked on my laptop, pinter's boards of cakes,
Speaker 1: tentsive guest lists. Sash's parents were distant, but delighted. My
Speaker 1: parents called every Sunday, eager to offer more opinions than
Speaker 1: we wanted. Even work dress couldn'tdent have safe. It all felt.
Speaker 1: But the anniversary night's candles gutted lower, and that sense
Speaker 1: of comfort felt suddenly brittle. As I watched Sasha toy
Speaker 1: with her paster, flicking at her phone with her thumb
Speaker 1: under the table, I realized I didn't know what jerk
Speaker 1: was in her head. The next morning, she left before dawn,
Speaker 1: shuffling through laundry with her heads had already draped around
Speaker 1: her neck. The old routines began to fracture. It started small.
Speaker 1: A few weeks after the anniversary, Sasha began slipping in
Speaker 1: through the door later than usual. Sometimes she text at
Speaker 1: six forty five oll eight meeting hold dinner, butter ive
Speaker 1: close to nine, apologizing and dumping her shoulder bag by
Speaker 1: the door. I made efforts not to fass. Everyone's job
Speaker 1: gets intense occasionally, but there were new patterns, subtle and
Speaker 1: hard to ignore, that built up in space between us
Speaker 1: our mornings. Once rambling and silly trunk to utility she
Speaker 1: eats standing up. I was darting between her phone and cabinet,
Speaker 1: muttering half baked plans about catching up poor teen check ins.
Speaker 1: The dinner, as we used to cook together, became more
Speaker 1: about leftovers or take out. She'd retreat to the couch
Speaker 1: after a few bites, scrowling, replying to some invisible thread
Speaker 1: I was not part of. One Thursday night, while we
Speaker 1: watched a movie, Sasha rested her phone face down on
Speaker 1: the coffee table. Partway through. A quiet buzz vibrated the
Speaker 1: junk mail pile, and her head snapped up. She blinked
Speaker 1: at the screen for a second, thimmumble, sorry work, got
Speaker 1: to take this, and slipped out to the hallway, phone
Speaker 1: press tight to her ear, face and readable. I didn't follow.
Speaker 1: When she came back, she settled him beside me, but
Speaker 1: she didn't say anything about who had cold? I tested
Speaker 1: the water. Everything okay, she nodded, already unlocking her iPad.
Speaker 1: Just a deadline crunch. They don't know how to leave
Speaker 1: me alone. I waited for the usual office drama, those
Speaker 1: funny stores about Stephen accounting or that weird a mel
Speaker 1: a mimel chain harbossa joined, But she said nothing, just
Speaker 1: let the silence spread. It was the first time she
Speaker 1: hadn't offered details. Planning the wedding became a shadow game.
Speaker 1: I'd leave any suggestions open on my laptop. Pos sticky
Speaker 1: is in the fridge of possible dates, suggest tastings on
Speaker 1: meet ups with potential photographers. Sasha waved me off. Let's
Speaker 1: talk next week. I'm buried at work or we've got
Speaker 1: tons of time. No need to stress. She said it
Speaker 1: too often, like a magic phrase to banish confrontation. She
Speaker 1: started excusing herself more frequently during our game nights, sometimes
Speaker 1: to the hallway or the stoop. There was always a
Speaker 1: reason a friend from work needed a pep talk, her
Speaker 1: mom had called, or she had to answer her Slack message. Oddly,
Speaker 1: her phone's alerts changed. The cheerful things of group texts
Speaker 1: were replaced by silent, persistent vibrations. After a while, she
Speaker 1: even started leaving her phone behind, as if to prove
Speaker 1: she wasn't hiding anything. But when she returned, her shoulders
Speaker 1: were tight and she barely contributed ies glazed over he
Speaker 1: as she watched dice roll across the table. I told
Speaker 1: myself it was just work, just a rough patried weather together.
Speaker 1: But still I started to count each absence, each excuse,
Speaker 1: each carefully added an anecdote about her day. I noticed
Speaker 1: she rarely laughed any more, and when she did, it
Speaker 1: was a quick, shallow sound. One night, as I left
Speaker 1: the glass of water on her bedside table, I noticed
Speaker 1: the lock screen again an now the message let the
Speaker 1: display just to em the same initial as that hot
Speaker 1: Moojia preview. Sasha snashed up the phone before I could
Speaker 1: see the rest, fluffing her pills with the other hand. Sorry,
Speaker 1: needed to set the alarm, she said, but her tone
Speaker 1: was clipped. I tried to let it pass, but the
Speaker 1: tension pulled on my shoulders and refused to fade. Weeks
Speaker 1: slept by, and Sasha's patterns of late commute, missing dinners
Speaker 1: entirely furnished anecdotes grew more defined. Our few shared evenings,
Speaker 1: stalled with small talk as she thumbed her phone under
Speaker 1: the table, crafting rapid responses I couldn't occurred for the
Speaker 1: next game night. I texted every one the time and
Speaker 1: game plan, then got to work prippin snacks. Sasha arrived late,
Speaker 1: dropped her bag, and after a ten minute weroll w
Speaker 1: into four small talk, slipped outside onto the step with
Speaker 1: her phone. Our friends looked at me eyebrows cocked. When
Speaker 1: Sasha returned, face carefully bank, I asked if everything was
Speaker 1: all right, It's just freezing out. I needed a breath.
Speaker 1: She joined him for the rest of the game, but
Speaker 1: her voice was subdued distracted. Even Jess, her oldest friend,
Speaker 1: tilted her head and whispered, everything cool between you too.
Speaker 1: When Sasha left the room, I started noticing that she
Speaker 1: was up late, sometimes almost a midnight, her laptop eliminating
Speaker 1: her face while she hunted in bed. Whenever I rolled over,
Speaker 1: she flicked the screen closed and murmur just finishing something.
Speaker 1: One weekend, after a sleepily contentious brunch with our friends,
Speaker 1: I ducked into the spare bathroom to get more coffee
Speaker 1: and heard sashes foistered a wall soften intimate. At first,
Speaker 1: I thought she was leaving a voicemail for her ma'am.
Speaker 1: But the way she laughed gentle on guard it made
Speaker 1: me hesitate. When I came back into the kitchen, she
Speaker 1: was back to her careful restraint. Our friend grew began
Speaker 1: joking about her new marriage to her job. You two
Speaker 1: still exist together, Mark, one of Sasha's old friends, teased
Speaker 1: at dinner one night. Sasha only smiled thinly. She made
Speaker 1: excuses to skip drinks, saying something's got to give if
Speaker 1: I'm going to get sleep before Monday. When I tried
Speaker 1: to draw her into a conversation about honeymoon destinations, she
Speaker 1: swept my laptop clothes, promising she'd have energy after this crunch.
Speaker 1: Days blurred. I marked little things, her phone switching hands,
Speaker 1: the second I knee, the way she locked the bathroom
Speaker 1: door now, or how she'd erase certain notifications before setting
Speaker 1: her phone down. All of it could be explained just
Speaker 1: barely by stress, but it never quite added up. One
Speaker 1: Friday afternoon, the doubt pulled into something heavier. I was
Speaker 1: walking past her computer as she closed out browser tabs.
Speaker 1: She jerked upright, smiling too wide. Don't go snooping, I'm
Speaker 1: just getting venue info, but there was a window open
Speaker 1: behind her, a message with a hot moji the now
Speaker 1: familiar m half hidden by nod for hotel deals. Miya
Speaker 1: knees grew something in me started to check for evidence.
Speaker 1: I scold her shared caund at, looking for gaps that
Speaker 1: coincided with night. She'd been unreachable or vague about her whereabouts.
Speaker 1: Her wet group chaps became a murky patchwork of inside
Speaker 1: jokes and private references. I couldn't keep up with That
Speaker 1: hot moji message kept replaying in my mind at night,
Speaker 1: as did the shadows undisashus eyes and how impossible it
Speaker 1: felt to reach her lately. One Wednesday, after work, Sasha
Speaker 1: nonce she needed a mental health night. She pour a
Speaker 1: glass of solf blanc, order something from that new Mediterranean place,
Speaker 1: and crash on the couch with Netflix. I offered to
Speaker 1: join her, but she said, honestly, I need some alone time.
Speaker 1: I nodded, stepping aside. I spent the night hold up
Speaker 1: in our bedroom, listening for her laughter from the living room,
Speaker 1: but all I heard was the lodron of Tea VI
Speaker 1: and the click of notifications. She never explained The next morning,
Speaker 1: she claimed she slept poorly. The lamb was too rich,
Speaker 1: she said, sipping her coffee automatically. Sash's routine changed too.
Speaker 1: She started running errand she never mentioned before, like buying
Speaker 1: a certain coffee blend, of stopping for last minute groceries
Speaker 1: on her way home. Though our cuvets were full. When
Speaker 1: I asked about her trips, her stores felt flat and
Speaker 1: heavy on details that didn't matter. Day from Accounting needed
Speaker 1: advice on his lisap, but she'd never talked about Day before.
Speaker 1: The incident that truly cracked the Veneer came about because,
Speaker 1: despite myself, I decided to surprise her. It was a
Speaker 1: rainy Tuesday, and I'd woken up with a plan. Pick
Speaker 1: up her favorite order from the tiny Talion place near
Speaker 1: her office, swing by the bakery Kinlay's, and show up
Speaker 1: at her desk. She'd always wanted me to meet her coworkers,
Speaker 1: and for months I'd been promising to stop by. I figured,
Speaker 1: if nothing else, her team would cheer her up. Outside
Speaker 1: her building, the wind howled as I wrestled the teacup
Speaker 1: bag into the lobby. By noon, the receptionist to Lucy
Speaker 1: was some one I'd met a few times at events. Oh, Alex,
Speaker 1: I think Sasha just stepped out. Are you meeting her
Speaker 1: the Hartley Bestro? Her tone light. I shook my head, confused.
Speaker 1: She said she had to rush for an off site
Speaker 1: meeting and wouldn't be back until later. Do you want
Speaker 1: to leave anything for her? My hands fumbled. Sasha had
Speaker 1: texted me this morning she'd be in the office all day.
Speaker 1: Back lad the pieces didn't fit. I left the food
Speaker 1: with Lucy and wandered through the rain, mostly numb. That night,
Speaker 1: Sasha arrived home around eight thirty, damp and smelling faintly
Speaker 1: of perfume. Her eyes tired become She hugged me by
Speaker 1: the sink, murmured that work had obliterated horror, and dug
Speaker 1: through the fridge for leftovers. She made no mention of
Speaker 1: Hartley Bestro or the off site meeting. I stood behind her,
Speaker 1: waiting to hear even a shred of guilt or something
Speaker 1: out of place in her story, But there was only
Speaker 1: her careful measure voice. I didn't mention my afternoon, but
Speaker 1: at some level it stopped believing her. It was less
Speaker 1: suspicion now and more bitter, swilling knowledge. Still, I wanted
Speaker 1: to know how far things had gone that night. The
Speaker 1: thunder kept me up. When Sasha finally slipped into the
Speaker 1: bathroom for her pre bedchour, I glanced at her phone.
Speaker 1: I hesitated. She'd always been crivesly obsessed, but once she
Speaker 1: called it the ultimate trust test, I justified myself. I
Speaker 1: tapped her notifications open. Most of her text threads had
Speaker 1: been recently deleted, but one message remained in the preview field,
Speaker 1: wish I could see you tonight. It was from them,
Speaker 1: no last name. The message thread was short, but several
Speaker 1: recent replies had vanished, just the system's grade eleted indicator
Speaker 1: hanging awkwardly in place. I exhaled, hanslick. This was more
Speaker 1: than work, more than an old friend's joke orha miss
Speaker 1: group chat. In the photo album, a new folder blinked,
Speaker 1: labeled only with a smiley face amology. Inside photo after
Speaker 1: photo sashered, a low lit restaurant surfaced. The ambient lighting
Speaker 1: was golden, the background blurred with wine glasses and plates
Speaker 1: of fruit. I'd never set for it in that restaurant,
Speaker 1: had never seen the auburn dress she wore in half
Speaker 1: the pictures, the angle some time to hand visible, not
Speaker 1: her suggested the photographer was close intimate. I heard the
Speaker 1: shower water stop hard in my throat. I closed her apps,
Speaker 1: placed the fall exactly where I'd found it, and returned
Speaker 1: to bed. The next morning, Sasha was already gone before
Speaker 1: I work Her side of the bet was called her
Speaker 1: schedule a mystery. Knowing what I did wasn't enough. I
Speaker 1: needed more. I needed to see it to know with certainty.
Speaker 1: But paranoia and shame in hand in hand. For days,
Speaker 1: I replayed each conversation, hunting for inconsistencies, replain each missing ire.
Speaker 1: Her birthday was coming up and we'd plan a small
Speaker 1: dinner with friends. Sasha was distracted throughout, dancing between laughter
Speaker 1: and blankness, sipping her wine and texting under the table.
Speaker 1: When she thought I wouldn't notice. I tried to joke
Speaker 1: about her phone addiction, but she shot me all a
Speaker 1: calf annoyance, half warning, it's just work, bulghit let it
Speaker 1: go to night yea. After dinner, she slipped outside under
Speaker 1: the pretense of calling her ma'am. Twenty minute passed. When
Speaker 1: I went to look for her, I found her leaning
Speaker 1: against the brick of the building, breath fogging in the cold,
Speaker 1: voice soft as she cradled her phone. I paused, not
Speaker 1: wanting a confrontation in public, and watched her, feeling a
Speaker 1: heavy chelseing through me. She finished, pocketed her phone, and
Speaker 1: when she saw me, she smiled as if nothing was wrong.
Speaker 1: Just man checking in about next month's plans. Sorry, babe,
Speaker 1: I nodded, tracing the gaps in her story and how
Speaker 1: quickly she rebuffed my questions. Everything all right with her?
Speaker 1: I asked, Sasha only shrugged, brushing past me. We walked
Speaker 1: home in silence. I started taking note of where she
Speaker 1: claimed to be, marking texts and timestamps, searching for overlap.
Speaker 1: One night, she delayed game night at the last minute,
Speaker 1: saying she'd be at work late to finish a quarterly review.
Speaker 1: I texted Jess, who worked three fours down. Hey, is
Speaker 1: Sasha at the office. She hasn't answered my texts, Jess wrote.
Speaker 1: She said she left at five, had dinner planned, haven't
Speaker 1: seen her sent. I stared at the message until the
Speaker 1: screen went black. Another night, as she left, claiming a
Speaker 1: work emergency, the urge to follow overwhelm me. I tailed
Speaker 1: her through the city, trying not to feel foolish. She
Speaker 1: hailed a calf from our block. I couldn't see her face.
Speaker 1: She was angled away, phone to her ear, hair pulled
Speaker 1: into a tight ponytail. I used her ride up to
Speaker 1: track her route. She was headed across town, far from
Speaker 1: her office or our usual haunts. She exited me quiet
Speaker 1: corner on Cypross Street, outside a dim beastro I had
Speaker 1: passed once on or run, but never entered. I kept back,
Speaker 1: standing in the shelter of a tree. Minutes later, a
Speaker 1: man approached, tall, broad shoulder with familiar sandy hair, Mark
Speaker 1: Mark from her old job, who had always joked with
Speaker 1: her or parties, Mark who had faded from our core
Speaker 1: group over the past few months. She greeted him with
Speaker 1: the tight, too familiar hug more than a friend would give.
Speaker 1: Then the two of them disappeared into the low liit
Speaker 1: restaurant arm in ARM. I watched them through the haze
Speaker 1: of rain and street lights as they spoke, head's close,
Speaker 1: hands brushing as they shared a plate. They laughed, faces alight.
Speaker 1: I snapped a photo. My hands were shaking. They left
Speaker 1: two hours later, splitting down the block, careful not to
Speaker 1: touch more than a polite squeeze of the arm. I
Speaker 1: followed Sasha's retreating figure as far as the taxi stand,
Speaker 1: watching as she disappeared into another cap, this time on
Speaker 1: her way home. When she arrived that night, how slightly damp,
Speaker 1: sent of an familiar clown, clinging to her scarf. I
Speaker 1: met her at the door, good night at the office.
Speaker 1: She blinked, no hesitation, Y had just needed to decompress.
Speaker 1: She slipped her arms round me, pressing her head to
Speaker 1: my shoulder. She was so careful, almost too careful. I nodded,
Speaker 1: heart full of broken glass. I realized then it wasn't
Speaker 1: a question any more, Not really, I knew. I nodded,
Speaker 1: heart full of broken glass. I realized then it wasn't
Speaker 1: a question any more. Not really I knew. But living
Speaker 1: with the knowledge was a different sort of torment, the
Speaker 1: kind that creeped into the minutes after midnight and reshapes
Speaker 1: every memory you thought was safe. It was almost a relief,
Speaker 1: at least at first, to have something tangible, efface and name,
Speaker 1: even a photograph to anchor the ache. Yet some part
Speaker 1: of me aged for absolute certainty, as if the pain
Speaker 1: wouldn't be real until I'd collected every fragment, lined up
Speaker 1: each lie, and proved beyond doubt that the thing we'd
Speaker 1: built together had finally cracked beyond repair. The days after
Speaker 1: I followed her to that beastrip pasted in a waking blur.
Speaker 1: Sasha moved through the apartment with the confident nonchalance of
Speaker 1: some one who believed her secrets was still secure. She
Speaker 1: was almost affectionate in little measure doses, a quick squeeze
Speaker 1: of the shoulder, a question tossed over her shoulder about dinner,
Speaker 1: a cup tea left on the table for me as
Speaker 1: she left for work. She had started buying fancy granola,
Speaker 1: the kind she used to say was a waste of money,
Speaker 1: and left out balls like an offering. I tried at
Speaker 1: first to welcome some fragment of normalcy, but every gesture
Speaker 1: felt like a rehearsal, something performed for my benefit, rather
Speaker 1: than sherried between equals. There were nights when she would
Speaker 1: slide onto the couch beside me while I watched TV
Speaker 1: and cul her toes against my leg. Her phone would
Speaker 1: appear in her hand and she would scrawl, thumb flickering rapidly.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I heard the faint ping of a message, sometimes
Speaker 1: only the quite bows she no longer pretended to ignore.
Speaker 1: If I turned to look. She shifted the screen out
Speaker 1: of you, I staying fixed on whatever episode flickered past
Speaker 1: one evening. Her phone rang a sharp, cheerful jingle that
Speaker 1: wasn't the default, and when she saw the screen, she
Speaker 1: stood abruptly, muttering back in a second and ducked into
Speaker 1: the bedroom, door, closing with a muffle click. I left
Speaker 1: the te vy on and let images wash over me
Speaker 1: while the clock ticked. She re emerged twenty minutes later,
Speaker 1: voice bright and untouched, and asked if I wanted popcorn.
Speaker 1: I said no. I think she heard something in my tone.
Speaker 1: Her smile slid away. Later, when she drifted up to
Speaker 1: meet some coworkers at the new cocktail place, closed change,
Speaker 1: lips glossed, scuffed, tied loosely around her neck, I watched
Speaker 1: her from the window. She walked toward a waiting car.
Speaker 1: Her stride was light, almost eager. She hadn't bothered to
Speaker 1: ask if I wanted to come. I stood there, hand
Speaker 1: pressed against the cold glass until a solouette vanished into
Speaker 1: the night, and tried to recall a time when she
Speaker 1: would have insisted we walked together, arm in arm, on
Speaker 1: the edge of sleep. I reabayed old scenes sifting for clues.
Speaker 1: In the early days, Sasher and I would bring each
Speaker 1: other into our private spheres, showing off little corners of
Speaker 1: our lives, letting the other book around a foltered. She
Speaker 1: liked showing me her playliss, her old journals, even the
Speaker 1: dorky voice memos she'd record as reminders. Now our phone
Speaker 1: was a fortress. Her calendae doudded with ambiguities alerts labeled
Speaker 1: meeting or catch up, so Generica could barely distinguish one
Speaker 1: from the next. Her laughter when it broke through was softer,
Speaker 1: trailing away before it ever reached me. Sometimes I'd hear
Speaker 1: her murmuring quietly in the bathroom, just beyond the threshold,
Speaker 1: a tone that was intimate, a tambour I recognized from
Speaker 1: nights when we'd lie in bed sharing secrets until dawn.
Speaker 1: But now I was on the other side of the wall.
Speaker 1: Excluded One morning over breakfast, as she scrolled ups mindedly
Speaker 1: through her phone and tried to close the distance. Do
Speaker 1: you want to go see that new hiking trail Saturday?
Speaker 1: Just us We could get lost for a few hours
Speaker 1: out of the city. She didn't look up. I think
Speaker 1: I'm probably pulling overtime again. Sorry, babe, rain check. I
Speaker 1: nod a forcing smile, just thought it would be nice.
Speaker 1: It's been a while. She smiled back, small and apologetic.
Speaker 1: I know after this quarter, I promise. She tucked her
Speaker 1: phone away, but I caught her glancing at it out
Speaker 1: of the corner of her eye, as if she were
Speaker 1: waiting for a sign. After she left, I sat at
Speaker 1: the kitchen table, surrounded by fragments, her unused coffee muk,
Speaker 1: the empty yogurt container, a pair of Weibert's tangle beside
Speaker 1: the fruit bowl, and felt the weight of all the
Speaker 1: words I didn't say, pressing down until my throat aches.
Speaker 1: I tried to lose myself in work, in errands, in
Speaker 1: iOS of passer scrolling, in popcasts, but nothing dulled the
Speaker 1: vigilance in me. I'd started keeping little notes on my phone,
Speaker 1: a makeshift detective's log. Times she came and went, excuses,
Speaker 1: given suspicious silences. It felt both petty and necessary to
Speaker 1: compulsion borne of having trusted too much. The next Thursday,
Speaker 1: Sasha suggested another game night. Part of me wanted to
Speaker 1: cancel to avoid the ever of keeping up appearances, but
Speaker 1: I agree. Our friends filtered in arms full of snacks
Speaker 1: and half baked jerks. Jess arrived with a bottle of
Speaker 1: cheap champagne for Sash's bullated birthday, and Marquise Mark slipped
Speaker 1: in last a little late, a bag of specialty chips
Speaker 1: in hand. I frozen the doorway when Hippy had hot
Speaker 1: thudding so loud I was sure every one could hear it,
Speaker 1: but Sasha greeted him with nothing more than a quick hug.
Speaker 1: Her face slipped for the group, Mark gave the room
Speaker 1: a slyigrin, catching my eye, as if everything between us
Speaker 1: was perfectly ordinary. We played a couple of rounds of
Speaker 1: code names, laughter echoing louder than the awkward gaps between us.
Speaker 1: Half Way through set, Sasha excused herself, grabbing her phone
Speaker 1: and slipping out the front door, muttering something about needing
Speaker 1: a real air, not jest, take up vieunes. When she
Speaker 1: was gone, Mark watched the closed door, and then, perhaps
Speaker 1: sensing my attention, said, hope Sasha gets the bricks in
Speaker 1: workspin brutal right. I forced to laugh, yea work is
Speaker 1: all she talks about these days. The game continued, nobody
Speaker 1: mentioning the strangeness. When Sasha returned ten minutes later, she
Speaker 1: was pale but smiling, her phone vanishing into her back pocket.
Speaker 1: She sat beside me, close enough that our knees brushed.
Speaker 1: I felt an old, lawning flare, the wish that she
Speaker 1: would just reach from my hand, press I to mine,
Speaker 1: give me some proof that I was still the one
Speaker 1: she wanted. But after another half hour, as laughter and
Speaker 1: banter waned, Sasha stood stretching. I need to call it,
Speaker 1: she said, fairly, meeting tomorrow, and if I'm laid again,
Speaker 1: my boss will kill me. She turned to Mark, voice lighter,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming, old man, even if he nearly tanked
Speaker 1: our team score. He just shrugged, sharing a little lopsided
Speaker 1: grin with her as she grabbed her coat. Our friends
Speaker 1: filtered out in pairs, and soon the apartment was quiet
Speaker 1: except for the clatter of me stacking empty glasses. When
Speaker 1: Sasha emerged from the bathroom, she paused at the threshold,
Speaker 1: watching me for beat too long. You okate, you seem
Speaker 1: off tonight. I wiped the counter, feeling raw, just tired,
Speaker 1: I managed. She hesitated, as if weighing something major. Then
Speaker 1: she closed the space between us, arms looping around my
Speaker 1: shoulders avoid brushing my cheek. We'll have a quiet weekend,
Speaker 1: I promise. I almost believed her. Almost that night I
Speaker 1: couldn't sleep. Sasha's breathing so beside me was as steady
Speaker 1: as ever, but her phone bust on the chrowger and
Speaker 1: first letted eyes. I watched her reach over and check
Speaker 1: the screen in the dimblow chivery for a moment, biting
Speaker 1: her lip, thumb moving in swift, silent reply. Then she
Speaker 1: rolled away from me, taking the covers with her. The
Speaker 1: following Saturday, I tried to reset things. Planned a brunch
Speaker 1: at a favorite spot, made reservations weeks in advance. I
Speaker 1: cleaned said the table, even bought little daises from the
Speaker 1: street market. When Sash emerged from the bedroom, dressed and charming,
Speaker 1: I felt some old, full spark flickerback to life. But
Speaker 1: half way through the meal, her phone bust in the table.
Speaker 1: She checked it, I starting across the screen, then looked
Speaker 1: up with apology, sorry, one sec work. She pushed back
Speaker 1: from the table and left for the alley, phae pressed
Speaker 1: to her ear, voice fading. I sat there for nearly
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, coffee cooling, the sun shifting through the cap
Speaker 1: of a window, alone with the clink of utensils and
Speaker 1: laughter from other couples. When she returned, she offered a
Speaker 1: weak explanation of team crisis, you know how it is,
Speaker 1: and resumed picking at her food. We walked home in silence.
Speaker 1: By Sunday, I was unraveling. Our apartment felt smaller, tighter,
Speaker 1: marked by silence, into faint homosage's voice enclosed rooms. When
Speaker 1: I tried to talk, to really talk, she shut down,
Speaker 1: folding into herself, turning the subject to waiting plans, all
Speaker 1: work again, So the photographer sent through Portfoliolynx. I tried
Speaker 1: over dinner, pushing Grilsbergs around my play. Do you want
Speaker 1: to look? She poked her salad. You know it's not urgent.
Speaker 1: We still have months? Can we not to night? I
Speaker 1: have a headache, I nodded, knuckles wide around my fork.
Speaker 1: I watched her push away from the table, played hardly
Speaker 1: touched as she headed to the couch and buried herself
Speaker 1: in her film. Late that night, I wandered into the
Speaker 1: living room for water and froze in the glow from
Speaker 1: her screen. She was scrolling through photos, some of them
Speaker 1: blurry and familiar, restaurant tables, a glass of red wine
Speaker 1: and ashes hand as liver of marks played, shirt visible
Speaker 1: at the edge of one frame. When she he saw me,
Speaker 1: she clicked her screen off fasts, switching to some new sight,
Speaker 1: but her face was pale. Couldn't sleep, she said, I hovered,
Speaker 1: feeling useless. YEA me neither. She sat wordless, tension radiating
Speaker 1: from every part of her. On Tuesday, it came to
Speaker 1: a head. Sasha had been colder than usual. All we can,
Speaker 1: avoiding my eyes barely touching her dinner. Then, before heading
Speaker 1: at the door, she turned to me, almost urgent. Don't
Speaker 1: forget the landlord stopping by this afternoon for that leek inspection.
Speaker 1: Can you handle it? I agreed, and Sasha vanished into
Speaker 1: her work day. The landlord came and lent a blur
Speaker 1: of pounding pipes and master apologies, and I was left alone,
Speaker 1: nerves raw, I cleaned, tried to read, watch the hands
Speaker 1: of the clock creep along. By five. I knew Sasha
Speaker 1: wouldn't be home on time. I shot her a quick
Speaker 1: text have you eaten? Should I start dinner? And got
Speaker 1: only silence. Another Iri slipped by, looking for something to do,
Speaker 1: I remembered her work tablet left charging on the sideboard.
Speaker 1: My fingers hovered over it kilt, clashing with the spike
Speaker 1: of furious curiosity. I logged on, rationalizing that maybe, for once,
Speaker 1: the innocuous explanation was true. But the browser history was
Speaker 1: scrubbed and the only open apps was spreadsheets and calendars
Speaker 1: until I checked them. Familiar folder on the deathtop labeled
Speaker 1: cone Reports inside Bird two folders deep was an innociously
Speaker 1: named documented chat lock, inexplicably exported to PDF. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have clicked, but I did. A few lines leapt out
Speaker 1: at me. M dinner was perfect. Can't stop thinking about
Speaker 1: the way you laughed at that stupid story, Sasha. Let's
Speaker 1: go again. Need a break from the chaos. Do you
Speaker 1: make me forget about the wedding stress in the best way?
Speaker 1: There were dates times cross referencing was almost too easy.
Speaker 1: These were the nights, she claimed, drinks with Jess or
Speaker 1: late reviews at work. My hands shook as I scrolled further,
Speaker 1: reading code of justifications in jokes, even a few lines
Speaker 1: so intimate, I fell physically ill. I heard Sash's keys
Speaker 1: in the door before I could close the app. Before
Speaker 1: I could even think, she walked in, shrugging off her
Speaker 1: coat and stopped dead when she saw me at her
Speaker 1: work set up. My face must have been a meso
Speaker 1: cocktail of rage and greed. The mask finally off. She
Speaker 1: didn't say a word, just froze, backpack in hand. I
Speaker 1: forced out, who's am? Sasha? She blink fast, color draining
Speaker 1: from her cheeks. What are you doing? I gestured at
Speaker 1: the screen. Don't insult me? Who's em? For a long moment,
Speaker 1: she just stared let's parting, panic flickering in her eyes.
Speaker 1: Then she rallied, voice too calm. It's just someone at work,
Speaker 1: where clothes. He's been helping me out with the project.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to make things weird? Is that why
Speaker 1: you lied about where you were all those nights? You
Speaker 1: claimed you at meetings or were out with Jess? Her
Speaker 1: mouth opened and closed. I watched the practice patient's collapse,
Speaker 1: her shoulders rounding, eyes feeing for mine. It's not what
Speaker 1: you think. I cut her off, was ragged. Please, I
Speaker 1: saw you at the Beastro with Mark. I know everything.
Speaker 1: Just tell me the truth. Tell me was it worth it?
Speaker 1: Sasha's facaw broke or a flicker, A single wound decreased
Speaker 1: between her brows. Alex fy her voice caught I didn't
Speaker 1: want God, I didn't want to hurt you. I stowed
Speaker 1: muscles taut, but you did, and you lied about everything.
Speaker 1: Why just tell me why? Her hands fumbled nervously, eyes shiny,
Speaker 1: but and crying. I don't know. I thought maybe if
Speaker 1: I kept it separate, it wouldn't mess things up. I
Speaker 1: was stressed with work, with the wedding, with how huge
Speaker 1: everything felt. Mark was just easy to talk to, easy
Speaker 1: to talk to. The words came out sharper than I intended,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't stop. You called him when you said
Speaker 1: you were calling your mom. You spend nights with him
Speaker 1: and told me it was work. That's more than easy
Speaker 1: to talk to. She flinched. I know, I know, O K.
Speaker 1: It's started as just talking. It goth complicated. I never
Speaker 1: wanted it to happen. My voice dropped suddenly small. Did
Speaker 1: you love him? A beat of silence passed. Sasha stared
Speaker 1: at the floor. No, it wasn't love, not like us.
Speaker 1: I think I was terrified of everything changing, of not
Speaker 1: being enough, of screwing up the only thing I was
Speaker 1: sure about. I shuddered, torn between reege and pity. So
Speaker 1: you burned it down before it could change? Did you
Speaker 1: ever even plan to tell me. Sasha shook her head
Speaker 1: of teas finally brimming, voiced raw. No. I just kept
Speaker 1: telling myself it would end, that I could fix it,
Speaker 1: that we were still okay. There it was the final drop,
Speaker 1: The heavy truth bloomed between us, choking out everything else.
Speaker 1: I need you to get your stuff, I said, quietly,
Speaker 1: and go. I can't do this to night or tomorrow
Speaker 1: or I don't know when. She nodded once, swallowing a sob,
Speaker 1: and stumbled to the bedroom. I sat at the table,
Speaker 1: head in my hands while Sash gathered her things. She
Speaker 1: moved quietly, as if afraid even to touch the space
Speaker 1: we'd made together. When she emerged, Duffelbeck slung over her shoulder.
Speaker 1: She lingered at the doorway. I'm sorry, Alex, I really am.
Speaker 1: I didn't answer. She closed the door behind her with
Speaker 1: a gentle click. The silence that followed felt every corner
Speaker 1: of the apartment lava, somehow than any argument we'd ever had.
Speaker 1: The doors closing fed rippled through the apartment, followed by
Speaker 1: slippid silence spilling out everywhere there used to be sound.
Speaker 1: The air seemed rearranged enter, but never truly empty. Like
Speaker 1: the shape she had left in the apartment's gravity was
Speaker 1: still present, a weight that pressed on every corner. I
Speaker 1: could make out the faint scent of Sash's perfume, the
Speaker 1: citrusy one she'd started to wear for work, laced over
Speaker 1: the exhausted, red tinged memory of half whispered argue, months
Speaker 1: of deflection, and broken hush of some one who once
Speaker 1: answered everything without fear. I sat and stared at the
Speaker 1: kitchen table where everything had unraveled, my hands glenching and
Speaker 1: unclenching on the edges. The residual heat of confrontation left
Speaker 1: my whole body dittery, veins thick with static. At first,
Speaker 1: I didn't do anything. What could I The darkness outside
Speaker 1: pressed close to the window, city lights flickering like a pulse,
Speaker 1: just out of reach. I just tried to breathe, but
Speaker 1: it hurt, thick and shallow, like the air and side
Speaker 1: was being mashed. Sasha's toothbrush was still in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Two half empty bottles of showy yel she could never
Speaker 1: decide on one, A sack crumpled behind the heater, A
Speaker 1: lone silver who beering on the bedroom dresser, A stray
Speaker 1: Bobby pin embedded in the bathma, the ghostly trail of her.
Speaker 1: Too many things left and claimed. I wanted to run
Speaker 1: from each piece, but there was nowhere to go that
Speaker 1: she hadn't touched. I stared at my reflection in the window,
Speaker 1: distorted by the street lamb square. I looked crumpled and diminished,
Speaker 1: eyes hollow, cheeks drawn. I was conscious suddenly of how
Speaker 1: I'd spent months squinting at her, parsing every word an
Speaker 1: absence for hidden meaning. It wasn't just my heart that
Speaker 1: was broken. It was my confidence in what I'd witnessed
Speaker 1: and interpreted. Had I missed more? For? How long? Had
Speaker 1: I chosen to unsee it? Time passed unnoticed until my
Speaker 1: phone blinked with a new message, Sasha's name, a blue
Speaker 1: speech bubble. Let me know if you need anything, nothing
Speaker 1: more not? Can we talk poor? Are you okay? I
Speaker 1: turned the phone over, screened down, the gesture instinctive and final.
Speaker 1: I no longer wanted to know the next thing she
Speaker 1: might say. The apartment, usually a haven after long days,
Speaker 1: had become an exposed cavity, every wall echoing with things
Speaker 1: left and said. I walked from room to room, haunted
Speaker 1: by memories so I didn't want her left bencing off
Speaker 1: the kitchen tow during drunkenly competitive gain nights. The time
Speaker 1: she dropped lad or splattering soup and doubled over, shaking
Speaker 1: with glee. I saw her reading on the couch in
Speaker 1: an old hodie, knee pressed to the coffee table head
Speaker 1: drooping side was until I'd have to shake her awake
Speaker 1: and lead her to bed. Ordinary nights that sharpened now
Speaker 1: into loss. Every detail suddenly precious and toxic at once.
Speaker 1: For her absence had a shape, amorphous and changing, but
Speaker 1: always there in the corner of my eye. I wanted
Speaker 1: to sweep her out, destraw evidence, scald the shower, break
Speaker 1: her favorite mark. I wanted to coil into myself, barricade
Speaker 1: the wounded parts, and simply blink away into numbness. I
Speaker 1: found myself standing before our freezer. O my freezer rummaging.
Speaker 1: Verna cooked and I had forgotten we'd bought months ago,
Speaker 1: one lost meal neither of us would eat. I threw
Speaker 1: out the withered bread, dumped the half emptea milk, tackled
Speaker 1: the sinkful of dishes we'd been letting palap Each sound
Speaker 1: was roberated a too loud punctuation in a place that
Speaker 1: once thrumbed with easy co existence, night dragged itself forward.
Speaker 1: When I lay down on the bed, just one side,
Speaker 1: the sheets were cold, her scent still present but dissipating.
Speaker 1: I closed my eyes, but immediately replayed the confrontation. I
Speaker 1: heard again the way her voice faltered, searching for a lifeline,
Speaker 1: grasping out excuses that had already floated away. Had she
Speaker 1: always been capable of this, of splintering our future? So
Speaker 1: quietly I twisted in the dark, alone except for the
Speaker 1: city's distant white noise, pulse racing stomach a pit of
Speaker 1: acid and dread. Sleep, when it came was shallow and mean,
Speaker 1: dreams shoulted by the memory of her. I woke again
Speaker 1: before dawn, blinking at the ceiling, unable to tell if
Speaker 1: it was guilt or grief. Anchoring me to the mattress.
Speaker 1: Her side was a flat hollow. The apartment started to
Speaker 1: feel haunted, not by ghost, but by repetitions of our
Speaker 1: happier past, leaking into each minute. I pressed my fingers
Speaker 1: over my eyes, wanting anything else. The following morning, I
Speaker 1: sat at the kitchen table with a stale mug of coffee,
Speaker 1: phone faced down beside me and cycled through the motions
Speaker 1: of a day that didn't fit any more. I crawled
Speaker 1: over the Countess, showing the outline of dust where her
Speaker 1: keys had been. Her mug was gone. She must have
Speaker 1: taken it last night. I tried making eggs and fail,
Speaker 1: letting the yoke run out into the pan. Something inside
Speaker 1: me was unspooling, and I couldn't put it back together.
Speaker 1: Calls from friends trickled, then Jess left a short voice.
Speaker 1: Mill Mark's number blink once, then disappeared. I didn't answer,
Speaker 1: not yet. The idea of explaining, of rehearsing the story
Speaker 1: for fresh ears seemed insurmountable. By mid afternoon, the numbers cracked,
Speaker 1: and something savage erupted from within. I jerked through drawers
Speaker 1: of crom sashes, remaining things into shopping bags, a hoodie,
Speaker 1: a set of chargers, notebooks, half used skin care, tangled jewelry,
Speaker 1: all remnants, none of it really now. I wanted to
Speaker 1: raise her, but her finger prints lived everywhere. At the
Speaker 1: tupperwhere labeled in her knee hand, the silly comic sticky
Speaker 1: note on the fridge, a crumpled vision board for a
Speaker 1: waiting that would never happen. I piled her things in
Speaker 1: the hallway and stepped away for ires. They loomed an
Speaker 1: accusation against the wall. Late in the day, when I
Speaker 1: finally looked at my phone, two messages from Sasha waited short, brittle,
Speaker 1: hope you're okay. I need some of my things soon.
Speaker 1: Text me when you were out, if that's easier. I
Speaker 1: tied to reply and deleted it a dozen times, finally
Speaker 1: settling on I'll leave your things inside the door, pick
Speaker 1: them up when I'm at work. Her reply was quick, thanks,
Speaker 1: no punctuation, no harp. The next day she came and
Speaker 1: went while I sat him my car a block away,
Speaker 1: hands trembling on the steering wheel, staring at the numbers
Speaker 1: of our apartment building. I watched her cross the street,
Speaker 1: duffel slung over one shoulder, chintucklow some of usses, hiding
Speaker 1: her face. Even though it wasn't sunny. She took the
Speaker 1: stairs fast, gone in two minutes. I didn't see her
Speaker 1: come out. I waited until I was sure the coast
Speaker 1: was clear before slipping back inside. In the entryway, the
Speaker 1: bags were gone, and absurdly so was the sticky note
Speaker 1: coming from the fridge that night, and those that follow
Speaker 1: blow together, each one a little empter, a little quieter.
Speaker 1: The apartment at first felt violated, then merely silent. I
Speaker 1: started slipping into a set of routines, work, home, TV, shower, bed,
Speaker 1: repeating in a gray loop. Sleep came late, fitful and unreliable.
Speaker 1: I looked for Sasha and crowds twice, thinking i'd heard
Speaker 1: her voice, but it was never her. I kept thinking
Speaker 1: about Mark, not as a villain, but as a person
Speaker 1: I once trusted. What would I say if I saw him?
Speaker 1: What was there to say? I trusted both of them,
Speaker 1: not just with each other, but with the entire scaffolding
Speaker 1: of my life. Now it was gone. After a few days,
Speaker 1: Jess called again, this time more insistent. I picked up
Speaker 1: horse and out of practice, Alex, Jesus you, saund are
Speaker 1: you okay? Where have you been? I cleared my throat,
Speaker 1: tried to sound like someone who had answers. I MI
Speaker 1: am hanging in, Sorry, I just needed some space, I figured.
Speaker 1: She hesitated. I heard from Sasha that you guys broke up.
Speaker 1: She didn't say why she's staying with Mira. The words
Speaker 1: landed with a weight I hadn't expected. Of course, she'd
Speaker 1: be someone else's problem, now, someone else's hurting project. I
Speaker 1: wanted to offload the full story right then, but everything
Speaker 1: caught at the back of my throw. Stuff happened, It's complicated.
Speaker 1: There was silence, a rare gentle one. Do you want
Speaker 1: to talk about it? I don't know, I laughed, only
Speaker 1: half better, Not sure I have the words. You don't
Speaker 1: owe anyone an explanation. Okay, not right now, I nodded,
Speaker 1: knowing she couldn't see it. Thanks, yes, listen, I can
Speaker 1: come by, or just sit with you on the phone,
Speaker 1: or we don't have to talk about it, whatever you want.
Speaker 1: I considered, picturing her feet tucked in the armors of
Speaker 1: my couch, sipping Cammele, making space for me to process.
Speaker 1: The idea felt both inviting and inmageable. Maybe not yet.
Speaker 1: I just everything's too loud, okay, she paused. Then just
Speaker 1: know you aren't alone. After we hung up, I stared
Speaker 1: at the wall again. She was right, but it didn't
Speaker 1: feel true. At work, I performed going through the mushians,
Speaker 1: feeling calls and responding to endless emails. My boss asked
Speaker 1: about my energy rough week, Allerge's acting up. I invented
Speaker 1: giving as little away as possible. No one pressed harder,
Speaker 1: which was a relief and sting all at once. Lunch,
Speaker 1: I ob became the worst part of the day, too
Speaker 1: long to fill with tasks, too quiet, when usually at
Speaker 1: betraying means for Sasha or complaining about office coffee. Now
Speaker 1: her absence echoed in every small moment, the sharp difference
Speaker 1: in what I'd known verses what was left. One day,
Speaker 1: while absently scrolling through news on my phone, I saw
Speaker 1: a photo from our engagement announcement months earlier. Her hand
Speaker 1: twined in mine city park behind us, beaming. Comments were
Speaker 1: still trickling in, people asking for updates for wedding details.
Speaker 1: One mutual friend even messaged, how are the plans coming?
Speaker 1: I wanted to throw my phone in the trash. Instead,
Speaker 1: I muted every notification, closed the app, and buried my
Speaker 1: head in my arms. At night, I reaplaid old conversations
Speaker 1: with Sasha. Words she said that I had ignored. We've
Speaker 1: got time, she used to say, of our engagement, or
Speaker 1: I needs base to think. Things that signaled nothing to
Speaker 1: me then, but now glimmered with new sharper meaning. She'd
Speaker 1: been folding herself away long before she left. I stopped cooking,
Speaker 1: I stopped hiking. I left the wedding binder and touched
Speaker 1: on the top of the wardrobe, unable to throw it away,
Speaker 1: but unable to bear to look. I let the mail
Speaker 1: pile up. The weight of her betrayal never faded, but
Speaker 1: sometimes as shifted, lost, stretted through with anger, humiliation, or
Speaker 1: just the raw ache of missing someone who'd once been
Speaker 1: easy to love. More than once. I considered texting her,
Speaker 1: if only to ask why wasn't I enough? Or was
Speaker 1: any of it real? But each time I stared at
Speaker 1: the blank message window and locked my phone instead. The
Speaker 1: group chat we'd both been in started to fracture. Some
Speaker 1: friends sided with her, some with me. Others ghosted both
Speaker 1: of us, Unable to pick our social universe, once overlapping
Speaker 1: and full, was now map ripped along afresh seam. I
Speaker 1: learned through Jess that Mark wasn't coming to group events
Speaker 1: any more. No one said why. People stopped mentioning wedding plans,
Speaker 1: treating a whole thing like a bad secret. They were
Speaker 1: waiting for me to expose myself. But the trueful luck
Speaker 1: came in quite a moment. Sitting at the window alone,
Speaker 1: noticing Mark's Sash as plants had left in the cell
Speaker 1: fire ending a half finished cross, were tapped into her
Speaker 1: night's end, or catching her handwriting in the margin of
Speaker 1: a book I had forgotten we owned. These things were dramatic,
Speaker 1: but the smallness of them, the ordinariness, made the law's
Speaker 1: ach sharper. As more weeks passed, Sasha texted a handful
Speaker 1: of times short, compose, cold, I convemor you from my
Speaker 1: half of rent if you need, and let me know
Speaker 1: if you get any of my mail. Neutral efficient. Once,
Speaker 1: she wrote, I'm sorry for everything I know I hurt you.
Speaker 1: I didn't reply. I deleted the text twice, only to
Speaker 1: fish it from the trash, reading and rereading the words,
Speaker 1: looking for some scrap of sincerity. I drifted sleep groose bars,
Speaker 1: and the conversations I had when I Hadney felt dull,
Speaker 1: like I was acting out a version of myself that
Speaker 1: had lost direction. A few friends invited me to their places,
Speaker 1: urging me not to stay alone, but mostly I made
Speaker 1: excuses and pulled inside. One Saturday, months after Sasha left,
Speaker 1: I started cleaning in earnest. I tore through the closets,
Speaker 1: bagged up clothes I never wore, sorted our tangled cables
Speaker 1: into donation piles, and finally tackled the box marked wedding
Speaker 1: stuff that had been gathering dust on top of the wall.
Speaker 1: Inside were favors, half assembled colors watches. This in both
Speaker 1: our handwriting seeding chot featuring friends we no longer spoke to.
Speaker 1: I read over Sash's notes to check with Alex's aunt
Speaker 1: ree clute and free the exclamation mark. Bright and eager,
Speaker 1: I dropped the folder back and sealed the lid tight.
Speaker 1: Buried at the bottom, pressed between pages of the binder,
Speaker 1: I found a single folded node and Sash's handwriting, not
Speaker 1: a to do list, an actual letter. My breath caught
Speaker 1: him a chest as I read, Alex, I know things
Speaker 1: are about to get busy and may be messy, but
Speaker 1: I want you to know this. There's no one I'd
Speaker 1: rather do life with. Even when I get stressed so silly,
Speaker 1: even when I'm moody, or when I lose my keys again.
Speaker 1: Please know you're the only thing that feels like come.
Speaker 1: I'm a little afraid I'll mess it up, but I
Speaker 1: want us to get through anything. I love you. I
Speaker 1: can't wait for all our plans. As the paper trembled
Speaker 1: in my hands. I read it again, the word shifting,
Speaker 1: meaning had this been before Mark, before things began to unravel?
Speaker 1: Where after as a desperate plea for normalcy, she knew
Speaker 1: she'd never recover. I wanted to ask, but the impulse passed.
Speaker 1: The answers wouldn't change anything. Painfully, I tore the letter
Speaker 1: in half, then stowed it in the drawer, andable quite
Speaker 1: to throw it out. By now, most people who'd known
Speaker 1: us had heard some version of the story. Sasha cheated,
Speaker 1: Alex called off the wedding, Mark vanished from the frank group.
Speaker 1: The couple every one thought would last simply failed. No
Speaker 1: one printed invitations, but everyone had opinions, even those who'd
Speaker 1: never met Sasha or me in person. It was a
Speaker 1: kind of death, only much slower. Night remained the most difficult.
Speaker 1: As the city bus faded, I sat at the kitchen table,
Speaker 1: the same place suspicion planted itself so many months ago,
Speaker 1: crumb scattered from breakfast I'd eaten alone, hands wrapped around
Speaker 1: a coaling muk. The silence lingered. Sometimes I'd imagine Sash
Speaker 1: opening the door, laughing about something trivial, tossing her keys
Speaker 1: in the dish. Sometimes, if I let my mind wander,
Speaker 1: I'd reap our early days, trying to trap exactly where
Speaker 1: the fracture began. I wanted a villain, a moment somewhere
Speaker 1: I could pin everything, But there were only myria, tiny fishes,
Speaker 1: each invisible until the whole thing collapsed. I blamed her,
Speaker 1: I blamed Mark. Sometimes I even blamed myself for being
Speaker 1: in atentive, for not noticing sooner, for loving some one
Speaker 1: so thoroughly I lost the ability to see her clearly.
Speaker 1: But mostly I just lived with it, dig muted by time,
Speaker 1: but always present, like a stubborn bruise that refused to fade.
Speaker 1: In the weeks that stretched into months, small bits of
Speaker 1: my old self began to return. I went hiking once alone,
Speaker 1: taking our trail Sasher and I had planned but never managed.
Speaker 1: The trees surged overhead, dappled light on the softer thunder
Speaker 1: my butts, and I almost felt pleasure in sweat and solitude,
Speaker 1: the air heavy with the scent of pine and damp soil.
Speaker 1: At the summit, I sat and let myself cry as
Speaker 1: quietly as I could, shoulder shaking with the full force
Speaker 1: of every bird feeling I had refused. No one saw,
Speaker 1: and no one needed to. I let the tears run out,
Speaker 1: wiped my face, and started back down. Something in me mudded,
Speaker 1: but unbroken, survived. I started cooking again, forcing myself through
Speaker 1: recipes four and even botched one's tasted better than take out.
Speaker 1: Eaten in the dark, I saw friends and learned not
Speaker 1: to flinch when wedding news filtered in from other couples.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I even felt present, as though my life was
Speaker 1: beginning to breathe again, beyond the margin's asher i'd occupied. Once,
Speaker 1: months after I passed much in the street. He was alone,
Speaker 1: chin tucked, hands and pockets. I shadowed, He glanced up,
Speaker 1: saw me. We froze just feet apot, caught in that
Speaker 1: old bitter tension. My pulse rattled. I almost said something, almost,
Speaker 1: but he shook his head minutely, not in denial, but
Speaker 1: as if to warn me away, and stepped past without
Speaker 1: a word. I watched him go, The old hatred hot
Speaker 1: in my fur. But grief was what lingered after he
Speaker 1: was gone. Life flimped forward. What else could it do?
Speaker 1: I called my mother more often, no longer dodging her
Speaker 1: efforts to help, even when her sadness for me was maddening.
Speaker 1: I started opening the curtains in the morning, letting the
Speaker 1: city in. I counseled our wedding venue deposit, lost the money,
Speaker 1: and sent back the simple invitations deleting the mock ups
Speaker 1: with a pen. Each a risure, hurt, but each cut
Speaker 1: also bled away the worst of my attachment. By summer,
Speaker 1: there was little left that belonged to both of us.
Speaker 1: Yet I never truly exercised her. There were always echoes,
Speaker 1: the feel of her laughter in a crowded bar when
Speaker 1: it wasn't even her. I'd heard the shivering pauses when
Speaker 1: couples negotiated softly in public, the souvenirs of conversations from
Speaker 1: what fell like some one else's life. One cold Sunday night,
Speaker 1: I was washing mugs and stacking dishes when I heard
Speaker 1: my phone buzz again. For a moment, muscle memory made
Speaker 1: me reach for it with a hopeful jolt. Most of
Speaker 1: our life had lived in that digital churn. But the
Speaker 1: message was from Jess checking in movie Night Wednesday, o'lbrings
Speaker 1: next to needs socialization. I stared down at her words,
Speaker 1: and for the first time, the idea didn't make me panic.
Speaker 1: I found myself replying almost without thinking, YEA sounds good. Thanks.
Speaker 1: The reply came instantly, I'll be there at seven. You
Speaker 1: picked the movie. Something loosened in me, not warmth exactly,
Speaker 1: but a sense that the eyes had begun to crack
Speaker 1: at last. Afterward, I set the phone aside, the code
Speaker 1: Name's game box still perched on the side table, just
Speaker 1: gathering along its edge. I paused, considering for a moment,
Speaker 1: I almost reached for it. Instead, I looked around at
Speaker 1: the apartment, the kitchen where dou had blossomed, the couch
Speaker 1: that saw too many quiet betrayals, my own face reflected
Speaker 1: in the dark window. I exhaled, letting the past slip
Speaker 1: a little further away. In that pause, possibility flickered, attentive,
Speaker 1: small but real, I and kid myself. The heart would last,
Speaker 1: the memory of Sashe's betrayal was and buried. It never
Speaker 1: truly would be. But I no longer swallowed my day's hull.
Speaker 1: What was left, fragile and fractured as I was belonged
Speaker 1: to me now. So I did what I hadn't let
Speaker 1: myself do in so long. I texted a friend. I
Speaker 1: reached out. I picked up a fern and coal Jess,
Speaker 1: her voice quick with surprise but happy, as we treated
Speaker 1: movie ideas and jokes about the worst snacks. For the
Speaker 1: first time in months, laughter scraped out of me, jagged,
Speaker 1: a bit, rusty, but alive. And if in the quiet
Speaker 1: after I still heard sashes echo in the shuffle of keys,
Speaker 1: or the shift of the city outside, I could live
Speaker 1: with it. The betrayal had changed me, burned away my trust,
Speaker 1: but not him, not entirely. As I sat at the
Speaker 1: kitchen table alone my own, the city's glow full in
Speaker 1: the night, I poured myself a glass of wine, picked
Speaker 1: up a book, and settled in. Then not in my
Speaker 1: chest had yeast, if only a little. Some endings are
Speaker 1: slow and quiet. Some don't feel like endings all until
Speaker 1: long after the choice is made. For all the clamor
Speaker 1: and pain, it was ordinary silence that remained me day
Speaker 1: after day, as I learned carefully how to live with
Speaker 1: los an, eventually how to trust what might come next.
Speaker 1: I stayed there at the table, finger tips drumming against
Speaker 1: the old wood, letting everything settle for once, with no
Speaker 1: rush to escape the moment. The cities hushed deep through
Speaker 1: the crack window, Distant carhorns and ambulances, lope, the low
Speaker 1: thud of someone's base below. For so long I tried
Speaker 1: to fill every idle second with distraction, as if quiet
Speaker 1: itself would pull all the worse memories into focus. But
Speaker 1: now I just sat leg bouncing. The air was cool,
Speaker 1: almost pleasant. I listened to the patched creek the neighbors
Speaker 1: a bus shuffle, and realized dully that this was it.
Speaker 1: There were no more wheeze, just me, just what I
Speaker 1: did next. Jess's message hovered on my mind, the promise
Speaker 1: of moving night laughter a little still to maybe, but
Speaker 1: still something genuine. There had been a time when even
Speaker 1: the idea would have sent me closing blinds, making excuses,
Speaker 1: hiding from any proof of the world continued outside of
Speaker 1: my clothes pane. Tonight, though, I found myself running my
Speaker 1: tongue along the inside of my cheek, surprised by faint
Speaker 1: ripple of anticipation, a creek in the old flour my
Speaker 1: own feet. I got up, restless and wandered over to
Speaker 1: the living room winder, letting the traffic's rhythm become background noise.
Speaker 1: The wallletwa wash blurred with midweek grain, headlights sliding on
Speaker 1: slick asphot below my reflection caught faintly in the glass,
Speaker 1: a double exposed face, haunted by the pale light of
Speaker 1: my phone, A familiar stranger absently. I toiled the ring
Speaker 1: box we'd never used, unopened for weeks, sitting like an
Speaker 1: accusation in my junk drawer. I opened it. The ring winked,
Speaker 1: a tiny fragment of a plan that never happened. I
Speaker 1: shut the box, and on impulse, stuffed it into the
Speaker 1: back of the closet, behind the winter gloves I barely used.
Speaker 1: I wasn't readied upon it, not yet. I couldn't throw
Speaker 1: it away, but I didn't have to display it in
Speaker 1: the night, sent like a question any more. The mails
Speaker 1: out clicked, some junk mail skidded across the worn hallway rug.
Speaker 1: I let it sit. I paced the room, circled the
Speaker 1: old table, found myself drawn to the bookshelves, half empty,
Speaker 1: now without Sash's fantasy trilogies and cookbooks. I let my
Speaker 1: finger to trace the edge of her favorite poetry collection,
Speaker 1: Basha's slim battered volume with her pencil scribbles as margin notes.
Speaker 1: I opened a random page and found in her herd
Speaker 1: scrip our good days never long enough. I almost laughed.
Speaker 1: I closed the book, holding it loosely, then set it
Speaker 1: on the shelf, let it lie there. Memory and all
Speaker 1: laid her. Hunger returned, dull but consistent. I reheeded some
Speaker 1: left of her pasta. The sauce congealed from the night before.
Speaker 1: I ate, standing over the sink, come watched the flashes
Speaker 1: of traffic below. I realized, with some discomfort that I
Speaker 1: was replaying Sash's presents any more, or her departure. The silence,
Speaker 1: though still heavy, was shifting, not as vengeful. My phone
Speaker 1: buzzed again, not just this time, but my another friend
Speaker 1: who kept her distance. You up, She wrote, want to
Speaker 1: go for a walk. The urge to decline flared my
Speaker 1: old pattern avoidance. Tiredness is excuse, but something stubborn in
Speaker 1: me reply, YEA, met and ten. The act of pulling
Speaker 1: on a jacket, lacing up shoes basic grounding. I left
Speaker 1: the apartment, breathing night into my lungs, and patted down
Speaker 1: the stairs outside, my waited hood up, hands buried in
Speaker 1: her coat. She smiled, uncertain but real Hey. I tempted
Speaker 1: to smile back. Thanks for reaching out. We fell in
Speaker 1: step without talking for a while. Our shoe scuffing damp pavement.
Speaker 1: The city at night felt anti septic, hollowed out, but
Speaker 1: beneath that I sensed the faint animal pulse of life,
Speaker 1: bar chatter, a dog somewher, barking, warm windows casting yellow
Speaker 1: oblongs against the wet side walk. Eventually MI spoke, jes
Speaker 1: sad you could use company, but I get if you
Speaker 1: don't want to talk. The words tumbled out before I
Speaker 1: meant to say them. I'm tired of talking, or may
Speaker 1: be just tired of thinking I can't. We walked another block,
Speaker 1: lighting the silence to a little healing. I felt all right,
Speaker 1: familiar but new. I confess more than I expected about
Speaker 1: the quiet, about the ache, about not being sure. If
Speaker 1: I hated Sash er missed her, simply miss my own certainty.
Speaker 1: Maya's answer was, gentle, you were brave, Alex. Don't let
Speaker 1: anyone tell you otherwise, I said, feels more like defeat,
Speaker 1: tis it? Though? Ye know YE saw it through most
Speaker 1: people they never even look. That landed in me sharp
Speaker 1: and a little true. Had I looked for the right things,
Speaker 1: had I wanted to see or just survive? Near the
Speaker 1: park wherein is delightly we pulled our heads up and
Speaker 1: for a few moments walked in silence that didn't ache.
Speaker 1: Eventually I asked about her work, her own family, drama,
Speaker 1: her garden. I realized somewhere in there she drawn me
Speaker 1: into her small disasters, and I'd let her. The conversation
Speaker 1: tilted back and forth, less a confession and more in
Speaker 1: exchange of weather. To day was this, and then tomorrow
Speaker 1: will be something else? Maybe. We circled back toward my building.
Speaker 1: At the door, my paused, tax me, if you want
Speaker 1: to get out again? O K I will, I said,
Speaker 1: and found amend it. She pulled me into a rough,
Speaker 1: brief hub before heading off down the block, disappearing into
Speaker 1: the wet dark. I watched her go, the shape of
Speaker 1: my own loneliness now maught by a thin, hopeful outline
Speaker 1: rather than puel loss inside. I peeled off my jacket,
Speaker 1: pushed wet hair from my eyes, and glanced around the apartment.
Speaker 1: There was still so much unclined to books, stray shampoo, bottles,
Speaker 1: a heap of mail for both our names. The urge
Speaker 1: to clean swept over me all at once, not to
Speaker 1: aries exactly, but to reclaim what could be saliged. I
Speaker 1: pushed the code name's box aside, wiped the kitchen, Countess
Speaker 1: vacuim the corner where Sash's tumble weeds of hair lingered.
Speaker 1: I made a pile of things to give away. I
Speaker 1: sawed it through the tangle of scarves and nickacks, their
Speaker 1: provements irrelevant, now just objects. I let my hands fall
Speaker 1: over each thing, reluctant, but determined to strip the place
Speaker 1: of the burden of guessing when or if she come
Speaker 1: back for them. I found the box of photo's actual prints,
Speaker 1: not just digital ghost trips up state, silly snapshots from parties,
Speaker 1: Sash and a hallowing costume making a face at the camera.
Speaker 1: I saw it through, pausing when I found my own
Speaker 1: face reflected with hers. Arms entwined, young and hopeful. There
Speaker 1: was a last one. The two of us in the
Speaker 1: park the day of the proposal, our faces flush hair
Speaker 1: when blown, the sky's streak of lowering sun behind us.
Speaker 1: For a moment my vision swam, not quite tears, but sting.
Speaker 1: I stacked those photos and two piles. Indecisive. Was I
Speaker 1: allowed to keep them? Would holding on be admitting I
Speaker 1: hadn't moved at all? In the end, I sealed one
Speaker 1: stack in an envelope fall later, maybe one day I'd
Speaker 1: look again and feel gratitude more than pain. The days
Speaker 1: threaded together, but the seams weren't so jagged any more.
Speaker 1: Moving night arrived croocker and expected. Jess came early, bag
Speaker 1: of chips, under one arm, sweapons and hay wild. Pick
Speaker 1: your poison, she said, flopping on the couch. We settled
Speaker 1: on a Damacian movie, the sort we always mocked together.
Speaker 1: The room filled slowly with laughter, half real at first,
Speaker 1: then building. We talked through half the dialog, picked apart
Speaker 1: the plot, and when Jess offered to order pete, I
Speaker 1: didn't protest. In the middle of mocking a truly ridiculous
Speaker 1: car chase. She nudged my elbow voiced quiet for a moment,
Speaker 1: You're doing better. You know that, right, I shrugged. Maybe not, maybe,
Speaker 1: she insisted, you are. Some of the movie's noise softened
Speaker 1: as we drifted into talking not about Sasher, not about Mark,
Speaker 1: not about the passa all, but about music, our coming events,
Speaker 1: weird neighbors upstairs, the small, silly realities of life carrying on.
Speaker 1: It occurred to me gradually that I had more to
Speaker 1: say about to day than I did about all the
Speaker 1: old wounds. It was late when Jess left. I stretched
Speaker 1: cleared the table, and as I did, my phone buzzed
Speaker 1: a message from a number I hadn't saved. I hesitated,
Speaker 1: then opened it. It was short, Alex. I know you
Speaker 1: probably don't want this, but I'm sorry. I just thought
Speaker 1: you should know I'm leaving time for a while. Take
Speaker 1: care of yourself, Mark, of course. The words sat on
Speaker 1: the screen, timid and uncertain, failing to answer or demand anything.
Speaker 1: I considered ignoring it. God he didn't deserve a reply,
Speaker 1: but then thought of all the anger I'd carried and
Speaker 1: how it numbed everything. I tighted, handshaking a little. I
Speaker 1: hope you find what you're looking for. Please don't reach
Speaker 1: out again. I hit s end, chest tight, but a
Speaker 1: low gray relief swept me. I'd said the last thing
Speaker 1: I needed. Maybe he had to the next night, after work,
Speaker 1: I found myself walking along block out of my usual path,
Speaker 1: stopping outside the Old Beastraw on Cyprus. The windows glowed
Speaker 1: with golden light, laughter and music drifting through the scened glass.
Speaker 1: For a moment, my hot squeezed tight, body prickling with memory,
Speaker 1: I stood still. The restaurant was just a building, now
Speaker 1: just strangers inside. I took a deep breath, let the
Speaker 1: bitterness answer itself, It's only a place, and I let
Speaker 1: the urge to go into solve. On the cool air.
Speaker 1: I went home shouting that skin spring came sparking the
Speaker 1: city alive, trees crusted with buds, daffodil sprouting chaotical on
Speaker 1: the sidewalks. It always amazed me how seasons changed, even
Speaker 1: when nothing else seemed to. I cleaned again, more decisively. Now,
Speaker 1: the last of Sashe's things got boxed, donated, sent to
Speaker 1: her Vikar server set up online. I wrote my name
Speaker 1: on the mail walks alone. I opened windows, leaden sun.
Speaker 1: I said yes to more invitations, moves with jets, picnicked
Speaker 1: with old room mates, a friend's band, shown a krant
Speaker 1: matam bar. Sometimes, when the loneliness graped, I looked back
Speaker 1: through that later envelope of photos. I let myself remember
Speaker 1: the good, her hand in mine, her shy grin, the
Speaker 1: certainty that once swept us forward. I could grieve that loss,
Speaker 1: but I could also see the person I'd been before
Speaker 1: everything curdled, engaged, eager, flawed, but honest, someone worth care
Speaker 1: from others and from myself. These worked loose of the
Speaker 1: habitual pain. I started running again on the trail by
Speaker 1: the river headphones in city, rushing by when cresponnd my face.
Speaker 1: Twice a week, I cook new recipes, posting groany success
Speaker 1: stories to a group chat had started with Meyer and
Speaker 1: Jess prompting terrible puns in fruity one upmanship. I went
Speaker 1: to small parties, lost at trivia, lowering people's news without
Speaker 1: comparing my winds to theirs. One warm Friday, as I
Speaker 1: was heading upstairs and a familiar envelope caught my eye
Speaker 1: in the mail books, no return address, but my name
Speaker 1: in leaping geffelhand. Dread and curiosity mingled. I brought it upstairs,
Speaker 1: slicing it open with a butter knife. Inside a single photo,
Speaker 1: no note. It was Sasha and me, from our first
Speaker 1: trip to the mountains, a polaroid. She'd insisted we'd take
Speaker 1: it the summer. She'd ridden on the back months or
Speaker 1: years ago. First of many as plus a no plea,
Speaker 1: no apology, no signature. I sat with it a while.
Speaker 1: For the first time, it didn't feel like a winded,
Speaker 1: just a marker of what was irrevocably past. I slipped
Speaker 1: the photo into the envelope, tucked it in my desk drawer,
Speaker 1: and let it be. Sometimes I watched other couple's hands
Speaker 1: grazed at crosswalks after pealing down from balconies, arguments and
Speaker 1: low tense voices, and felt the ache sharp and hollow,
Speaker 1: like losing something I'd barely begun to experience. And yet
Speaker 1: I sensed impossibly that it was better to feel emptness
Speaker 1: than the shapeless numb of mistrust. One lazy Saturday, the
Speaker 1: apartment clean rainsilking at the windows, I logged in for
Speaker 1: a videocal with Maya and Jess. The three of us
Speaker 1: cooked the same recipe in our own kitchens, miscrewing up
Speaker 1: the Rosotto's order, just making jerks about my dedication to
Speaker 1: undercurt vegetables. I'll laugh. The bounced off the tilee, peeking
Speaker 1: when my stove hissed and the camera jounced with my
Speaker 1: frantic stirring. Cooking dawn, we left our cameras on, still
Speaker 1: talking long after food disappeared. May caught me off guard,
Speaker 1: How are you really, Alex? I looked at their faces,
Speaker 1: fused by pixel grain, and considered better. I said, still
Speaker 1: hurts sometimes, but I don't live there any more. Jess grinned,
Speaker 1: progress is progress, MI said, let us know a few backs,
Speaker 1: lad Hot. No more drifting from movie nights aloud, I promised,
Speaker 1: and meant it. After we hung up, I lingered at
Speaker 1: the window, bowl in hand, looking out at the shifting city,
Speaker 1: rain swept in sheets, street light smearing gold through the blur.
Speaker 1: My own reflection stared back and dramatic ordinary. I let
Speaker 1: myself feel both relief and sadness, braided and inextricable, but
Speaker 1: clearly my own. I looked around at the apartment, no
Speaker 1: longer haunted, simply lived in. I set the bowl in
Speaker 1: the sink, padded barefoot to the living room, and reached
Speaker 1: for a book. The urge to tex Sasher to rehash,
Speaker 1: or revisit, or find some final verdict no longer tubbed
Speaker 1: at me. The story I had finished telling itself. The
Speaker 1: wound had closed, and even at the edges, but closed
Speaker 1: all the same. I come through, not its gate, not triumphant,
Speaker 1: but living, letting in people again, letting myself risk the
Speaker 1: scrutiny and care friends, the pleasant accident of laughter, the
Speaker 1: possibility of being seen and eventually trusted. Outside the city's
Speaker 1: night thick and swollen with rain, but I poured another
Speaker 1: glass of wine and settled in heart braised for the
Speaker 1: next small thing. Not an ending, not exactly, but the
Speaker 1: beginning of something that belonged to me. New Rich was
Speaker 1: built not from the ruins of betrayal, but from a
Speaker 1: quiet certainty that, however loniurk, I could still make a
Speaker 1: home inside my own skin. And that is the end.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
Speaker 1: the next one.