Speaker 1: Friday night openings have always held a kind of magic
Speaker 1: for me. Even to day, after nearly a decade of
Speaker 1: gallery work, frayed nerves, catering, miss apps, a hundred names
Speaker 1: to greet, they still bars, almost like the first nights,
Speaker 1: this one especially, every wall, every corner of the gallery,
Speaker 1: globe campuses drenched and brushtrook, fever and neon, little sculptures
Speaker 1: daring for your attention, my own fingerprints all over the curation,
Speaker 1: and the guestless. I could feel the city, my tiny
Speaker 1: slice of it any way, spending right here in these rooms,
Speaker 1: voices layered like coil, paint, laughter ricocheting off polished concrete.
Speaker 1: It was late, but not too late, that delicate out
Speaker 1: before tipsiness unravels into sloppiness, when sharp shoes are still
Speaker 1: on aching feet and no one started ghosting for parties elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I stood in a cluster, my friend Simon Sharp, tonned
Speaker 1: and flushed from the free pinot, the ever beaming new
Speaker 1: artist Wholly, a couple of collectors, all swelling around the
Speaker 1: same story about sculptors, fire escape, wedding faces I've seen
Speaker 1: for years, lit by excitement and by the pleasure of
Speaker 1: being seen. Mark usually lie for this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: He moves around with a drink in hand, radiates warmth
Speaker 1: for raws out the shy's guest in the room. He
Speaker 1: loves these nights as much for people watching and after
Speaker 1: parties as for supporting me, And it's always been a
Speaker 1: point of pride, not just that he supports me, but
Speaker 1: that he genuinely likes the sometimes in slow world I
Speaker 1: built before and around us. That's why it hits strange.
Speaker 1: The way he approached me from behind the barr's shadows,
Speaker 1: already wirrying, his jacket as fixed somewhere just past my head.
Speaker 1: Hey Zoe, he murmured too softly, and tugged my sleeve.
Speaker 1: Come we get out of here, I blinked. He'd only
Speaker 1: arrived about now before, Freshly shaven sleeves rolled carelessly but deliberately,
Speaker 1: the thin, lingering scent of a smoky I've cologne he
Speaker 1: only wears for event nights. At first, I thought maybe
Speaker 1: he'd found this crowd dull, maybe the conversation about municipal
Speaker 1: grants was too dry even for his stamina. But I
Speaker 1: looked at him, posture hunchedon fingers, slapping a nervous rhythm
Speaker 1: on his thigh, his phone in his right hand, with
Speaker 1: the screen artfully angled down. Already, I tried to pivot,
Speaker 1: light hearted. You haven't even met Holly yet. She's dying
Speaker 1: to talk about the mural project, and Simon's lining up
Speaker 1: the next buckrel. Come on, we're just hitting us ride.
Speaker 1: Mark shook his head, eyes darting across the crowded room,
Speaker 1: avoiding mine. I know, I'm sorry, I'm just I can't tonight.
Speaker 1: Too many people, I might oubt. His voice was hush,
Speaker 1: but more rush than exhausted, like he was eager to
Speaker 1: or trun some one. As he said this, his thumflicked
Speaker 1: across his phone's green nearly invisible, but I caught the
Speaker 1: tiny gesture, a notification previewed maybe before he would have
Speaker 1: tucked the phone away all on with the moment to night.
Speaker 1: It was a shield, or maybe even a leash. I
Speaker 1: pressed again, a little edge to my smile. Just give
Speaker 1: it half an hour. You know what these knights mean
Speaker 1: to me. Stay for the Improvsah, we can leave together
Speaker 1: when it settles down. I reached for his shoulder, but
Speaker 1: he stepped back a fraction too quickly. Is draw tenson
Speaker 1: at the contact, Not to night. I just I need
Speaker 1: a reset, he mumbled. We set, not a word he's
Speaker 1: ever really used until recently, but it's cropped up a
Speaker 1: few times in the past couple of months. I tried
Speaker 1: to read his face to gauge how hard to push,
Speaker 1: But the old Climmer's amusement, affection, mischievous encouragement weren't there.
Speaker 1: Instead detachment and that trich energy of someone wanting escape.
Speaker 1: I scanned the room, made hasty goodbye's field of teasing
Speaker 1: protests from Simon and Hawley, brushing them off with something
Speaker 1: about an early morning. But there was a pointedness in
Speaker 1: the way Mark on back, shadowed as if hoping I'd hurry.
Speaker 1: The night air outside was heavy with smok and the
Speaker 1: distant shriek of subway breaks. The city's lights flickered off
Speaker 1: Mark's tired face. We walked in silence to the cart,
Speaker 1: the heel of my bood echoing on crack pavement, Mark
Speaker 1: unlocking the doors with a mechanical chirp, already halfway before
Speaker 1: I had closed my own door. The drive was mostly wordless.
Speaker 1: The tension sat between us a third passenger. Usually these
Speaker 1: are our decompression rise replays of gossipy snippets, raucous laughter,
Speaker 1: plans for night gaps to night. Mark kept his gaze
Speaker 1: pointed straight ahead, face tight, punctuating the silence with only
Speaker 1: a few vague phrases. We just needed to leave. It
Speaker 1: was too much, the long week at the agency. I'll
Speaker 1: be better company once I've just, you know, unplugged a bit.
Speaker 1: When I tried to tell a story from earlier in
Speaker 1: the night about a collector asking if clients ever requested
Speaker 1: paintings of their pets, Mark didn't even crack a smile. Instead,
Speaker 1: he picked at a thread on his coffin mumble. Maybe
Speaker 1: out as just overwhelming me right now. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: just that a bad week, true overwhelm, a flickering burnout.
Speaker 1: I want to believe it. I told myself not to
Speaker 1: make something out of a moment, not to personalize. But
Speaker 1: when we got home, Mark disappeared straight into the shower,
Speaker 1: passed over our usual post gallery night cap, and barely
Speaker 1: touched my hand as he said good night before falling
Speaker 1: into bed, Exhausted yet electric with some disturbance I couldn't name.
Speaker 1: I lay away long after. I scanned through the night,
Speaker 1: frame by frame, looking for what I'd missed. Did I
Speaker 1: say something wrong? Forget to introduce him. Had he heard
Speaker 1: a bit of criticism, or did some one slight him
Speaker 1: in passing? I replayed a dozen small interactions, mentally orditing
Speaker 1: a register. Did ever lie on him too much as
Speaker 1: my social anchor? Or not enough? Was I making a
Speaker 1: mountain from a mortal I imagine myself telling this to mea
Speaker 1: my closest confidant, who would probably say he no marks.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he's just off, don't spiral? Do you know if
Speaker 1: something was actually up but I turned that phrase over,
Speaker 1: would I really know? Because this didn't feel like just
Speaker 1: being off. It felt like a presence with drawn, something
Speaker 1: quietly shot done behind those hide averting eyes. The next morning,
Speaker 1: Mark was up early, already making coffee. He greeted me
Speaker 1: with an almost performative cheeriness, busying himself with small talk
Speaker 1: about the weather, the frothy milk, his running shoes. He
Speaker 1: avoided etioning the gallery, and within an hour he was
Speaker 1: at the door for a morning jog. Airpod's already in.
Speaker 1: For most of Saturday, my mind cycle fevershly. I forced
Speaker 1: myself to focus on closing some deals, answering galerous emails,
Speaker 1: composing press follow ups, but the image of Mark's hand
Speaker 1: flicking over his phone. The way he'd extracted himself from
Speaker 1: that room kept cutting through my concentration, but I didn't
Speaker 1: push it, not yet. There's always something brewing in a marriage,
Speaker 1: but we'd earn the right to little weirdness, or so
Speaker 1: I hoped that early. And he's placed a hell and
Speaker 1: crack him my sense of a life, a life built
Speaker 1: on more than a decade of wild, bright, sometimes chaotic belonging.
Speaker 1: Ten years ago, Mark barreled into my world at a
Speaker 1: warehouse party in BUSHUK, the kind of night where every
Speaker 1: one was painting on walls and drinking out of plastic caps,
Speaker 1: some law stark collective spinning disco out of a thrift
Speaker 1: shop sound system. I'd been there, hoping for a bold encounter,
Speaker 1: exhausted by postgrad admin jobs and my thing for unavailable musicians. Mark,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, was standing over a brooke and
Speaker 1: vending machine, negotiating with a stranger about the merits of
Speaker 1: abstract college. I remember his law first, unembarrassed, warm, imploring
Speaker 1: you to join the joke, whether you knew the punch
Speaker 1: line or not. He circled over, introduced himself, even though
Speaker 1: he had to yell, and by the end of that night,
Speaker 1: it felt like we were already a duo. The chemistry
Speaker 1: was palpable, maybe Cochet, but only because it was so easy.
Speaker 1: He gave his opinions freely, challenged my stubborness about which
Speaker 1: hero of Basquiat beat out the others flowed a shamelessly.
Speaker 1: By sum rise, we were trading playlists, names of places
Speaker 1: to check out, and scheduling a totally unofficial wankraf for
Speaker 1: the very next weekend. We fit not just as lovers,
Speaker 1: but as co conspirators. Supper clubs and shared lofts. Days
Speaker 1: spent hunting where has book sales, rain sundays, toggling between
Speaker 1: portfolios and agency mock ups, arguing over top us. We
Speaker 1: both wanted to rise to Karvernich. That didn't mean selling out.
Speaker 1: Mark threw himself into coperating, dreaming upaigns that made jaded
Speaker 1: clients pay attention. I worked my way into gallery gigs,
Speaker 1: soaked up curatorial notes, until finally my own place opened,
Speaker 1: tiny but mine. We always had people from Mark's agency
Speaker 1: friends with their speed wrap wit to my art world
Speaker 1: crowd who veered between absurdity and earnestness. Dinners often run
Speaker 1: until the small hours, laughter end disputes, blending with cheap
Speaker 1: vermouthin late night playlists. We became known as that couples,
Speaker 1: social conductors, connectors, reliable instigators of the next wild event
Speaker 1: each new night and occasion. But even in the center
Speaker 1: of a crowd, there was a private us accomplices stealing
Speaker 1: each other into back rooms for make up sessions, challenging
Speaker 1: each other to shop for shot critiques of our despires,
Speaker 1: walking home loudly singing but nineties covers to scare raccoons
Speaker 1: from our steps. Our intimacy was not just sexual, but competitive,
Speaker 1: a low stakes rivalry spiked with private bets. I Betty
Speaker 1: five dollars, Simon will try the galerous wine and spit
Speaker 1: it out, match shots, endless banter, not that we were flawless.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Marx Charisma, Clip's mine. I'd watch him manage at
Speaker 1: dinner table, stories flown out of him and feel a
Speaker 1: twist of envy. People gravitated to ten watresses, new friends,
Speaker 1: the odd excworker, eager to catch up. I trusted him completely,
Speaker 1: but there was always that drop of on these Did
Speaker 1: I need him to anko me socially or did he
Speaker 1: simply light up rooms in a way I never quite
Speaker 1: could For his part, he sometimes drooped about being artdjacent,
Speaker 1: as if he were one step outside the true nucleus
Speaker 1: of my world. Still we worked. We worked so well
Speaker 1: it almost felt inevitable, and we kept working. Both careers
Speaker 1: flourished in tandem. Mark got promoted to art director. I
Speaker 1: expanded my gallery space twies, landing features in local design magazines.
Speaker 1: We never made enough to feel idle, but we earn
Speaker 1: just enough to indulge once a year's blurges at gemic restaurants,
Speaker 1: impulsive gallery trips, bottle of wine sundays in bed. Our
Speaker 1: friends evolved with us. Simon and me in particular, became
Speaker 1: both confidants and referees, helping bridge our art world and
Speaker 1: agency social circles. We gathered for roofed up pop ups,
Speaker 1: impromptu dinner parties, camping weekends that devolved into midnight arguments
Speaker 1: about sculpture vs. Photography. There was a rhythm to these years,
Speaker 1: in jokes so old they required no explanation. The power
Speaker 1: in such friendships came from trust, not just as a couple,
Speaker 1: but as a group. Richel's form Thursday night dinners, a
Speaker 1: rotating chef's choice among the friends. Monthly gallery runs where
Speaker 1: we'd attempt to hit every new opening in a day.
Speaker 1: Rare but precious long weekends upstate, trying out chosen only
Speaker 1: for their bathtubs. Beneath all the bustle. I was quietly proud,
Speaker 1: sometimes envious, of Mack's ability to fit everywhere, to coax
Speaker 1: a smile from strangers, and command a room with self
Speaker 1: a facing wit. It was easy to trust him. Still,
Speaker 1: sometimes I wondered if I'd become a bit player in
Speaker 1: his narratives backgrounded in my own life. But that warry
Speaker 1: never rose to more than a passing thought. Until months
Speaker 1: before that strange Friday, I started seeing Mark drift, sometimes
Speaker 1: to warf but just as often away. A week after
Speaker 1: the gallery night, we had another industry of vent to
Speaker 1: charity dinner at convert a brewery downtown. Half funderies are
Speaker 1: half excuse to mingle. Mark said he'd meet me there
Speaker 1: after work. As usual, I dressed with him in mind,
Speaker 1: a ross velvet dress I knew he liked, pleased, thinly
Speaker 1: veil text he sent confirming attendants. The room shimmered with
Speaker 1: glassware and too bright laughter. I floated between circles our
Speaker 1: pr gallery, a couple of my artists making mental notes
Speaker 1: for the post event. Right up, Mark showed up half
Speaker 1: with your dinner eyes, a little glaze, sued maculate hair
Speaker 1: rescue in a way that always made him look younger.
Speaker 1: He kissed my cheek, but it felt mechanical, not rude,
Speaker 1: not I see, just checked out. He stuck close, but
Speaker 1: didn't bother with the usual flare. No saories, no flirting
Speaker 1: with the bartender, no spontaneous toasts. When Simon drifted over
Speaker 1: and read us about the after party for just the
Speaker 1: fun ones, Mark shook his head and muttered, I'm heading
Speaker 1: out soon early morning tomorrow. He left before dessert, said
Speaker 1: the space was giving him a headache. Too many bodies,
Speaker 1: stiff competition for deals at work. I laughed, tried to
Speaker 1: wrap my arm around his shoulder to squeeze the tension away,
Speaker 1: but he gently brushed me off. Don't worry, I'll uber's
Speaker 1: day have fun. The next day, I was recounting the
Speaker 1: busy end of the night with me and Simon, and
Speaker 1: Simon smirked. Mark really missed out. He would have gotten
Speaker 1: that inside joke about the mustard doug especially after the
Speaker 1: drinks of Catmans on Wednesday. There was a split second
Speaker 1: catch and me as expression of flecked there and gone.
Speaker 1: I shook my head. I didn't know you guys all
Speaker 1: met up. Simon shrowed, already diving into a story about
Speaker 1: a waitress with a face tattoo. Me changed the subject
Speaker 1: quick as a snap. Later, I asked Mark about it
Speaker 1: casual while making dinner. Did you guys go out on Wednesday?
Speaker 1: Simon mentioned something about cashman's Mark's face focused on chopping
Speaker 1: basil didn't change. Oh yeah, just a random after work
Speaker 1: than last minute. Just needed to decompress. There's been some
Speaker 1: drama with a client. Didn't want to drag it home,
Speaker 1: He grinned, without looking at me. Honestly, it was nothing.
Speaker 1: You dodged a bullet, if you ask me, I forced
Speaker 1: to laugh, the old cashman's bullet. He slid the cutting
Speaker 1: board into the pan and leaned against the counter, his
Speaker 1: arms crossed over his chest, implicitly asking me to let
Speaker 1: it go. It was nothing. Probably we both gone out
Speaker 1: in small groups before, separate from each other, But the
Speaker 1: casual secrecy stalne There was a pattern emerging. The more
Speaker 1: he tried to keep up, the more he seemed content
Speaker 1: to let me miss moments. I wasn't sure whether it
Speaker 1: was my own workload stretched with a new artist sued
Speaker 1: and a tricky collector negotiation that left me feeling left out,
Speaker 1: or whether the Mark had simply started coughing out a quieter,
Speaker 1: more private stretch of his days. More little things popped
Speaker 1: up some nights. Mark never a phone at the table,
Speaker 1: person slipped away outside during dinner parties to take calls
Speaker 1: or answer messages. When I poked him about it, Hey,
Speaker 1: come back, You're the main event, he dismiss it. Sorry,
Speaker 1: cline fire, they are all insomniacs. I scanned his face
Speaker 1: for irony, but there was only a tight smile. He
Speaker 1: started texting in bed, holding his phone flat on the
Speaker 1: comforter barely glance in my way. Once he was gone
Speaker 1: so long during a gathering that I joked to Mere
Speaker 1: should I go outside and see if he was abducted
Speaker 1: by board accountants. We laughed, but I remember scrolling through
Speaker 1: all four to us that night, comparing his face then
Speaker 1: and now. It was subtle, but there I pulled towards
Speaker 1: something more away from us. I cut myself off from
Speaker 1: over analyzing. Mark was busy. His agency was landing a
Speaker 1: monster account with a big art brand. The entire office
Speaker 1: running lay I could easily imagine myself escalating simple fatigue
Speaker 1: into soap opera. I'd become sensitive to any clue that
Speaker 1: something was unraveling, perhaps because I was bracing myself for
Speaker 1: the stress of my own next exhibit. What has days
Speaker 1: rolled by? Every fresh glance at his touseled hair and
Speaker 1: bright face carried the trace of the unease. It built,
Speaker 1: a drip feed of warrior kept dismissing as mere projection,
Speaker 1: as if foising it would make it real. Three weeks
Speaker 1: passed like this, each with its own interruptions, each ending
Speaker 1: a little less together than the last. Our Thursday night
Speaker 1: dinerous standing, sacred virchel abruptly vanished. Mark taxted that first week,
Speaker 1: sorry client dinner, Can we reschedule the next week? No explanation,
Speaker 1: just silent until late, followed by a one line apology,
Speaker 1: working overtime again, Love you by the third Thursday was
Speaker 1: a running joke among our friends. The agency had eaten
Speaker 1: Mark alive. The punchline lost its comedy after a while.
Speaker 1: Mark was always careful with money, but the credit cards
Speaker 1: are joint. I was online one night sorting out accounting
Speaker 1: for the gallery when I noticed a string of charges
Speaker 1: on his car, upscale restaurants, Boutiquine, Boss, Rialtoe Fridays, Ivy
Speaker 1: and Grain, little places less frequented by our usual crowd,
Speaker 1: and all within a few blocks of Mark's agency. Some
Speaker 1: of the transactions are relapsed with the same night as
Speaker 1: his client meetings places. We never went together, as quinted
Speaker 1: at the transaction list, reading it again and again, trying
Speaker 1: to remember whether I had missed a random dinner plan,
Speaker 1: but there was nothing. At a brunch soon after, Simon
Speaker 1: brought up the upcoming group dinner. Surprised that I'd already
Speaker 1: told Mark you were out, I looked at him blankly.
Speaker 1: I never got an invite. Simon frowned. Mark said you
Speaker 1: were slammed this week and probably wouldn't be up for it,
Speaker 1: so I just never mind. He laughed it off, but
Speaker 1: there was a question in his eyes. Did I know
Speaker 1: my own week? It added up to something unsatisfying just
Speaker 1: below the surface. That night, while scanning Instagram's stories for
Speaker 1: the galleries tags, a spot a Mark at a dinbar
Speaker 1: blurry in the background of a group shot had thrown
Speaker 1: back with laughter. I noted the date and scrolled my calendar.
Speaker 1: Another working late night, I didn't mention it. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was a quick drink before heading home. Maybe I was
Speaker 1: cataloging problems because I was too tired to fix them.
Speaker 1: At a Tuesday opening, another piece fell into place I've
Speaker 1: always there. An artist client of Mark's, famous for massive
Speaker 1: murals and a follow in that outgrew local galleries. Two
Speaker 1: years ago, she joined my newest show as a guest,
Speaker 1: and I greeted her with the the usual effortless professionalism.
Speaker 1: When I circled back later, Mark was talking to her
Speaker 1: at what I would have called an intimate distance, laughing
Speaker 1: with his whole body, voice low enough that it was
Speaker 1: almost secretive. They broke about the second I approached. The
Speaker 1: conversation cut in mid sentence, Alva smiled brilliantly at me.
Speaker 1: We were just talking about the wine bar fiasco. She nudged, Mark,
Speaker 1: you tell it better. Mark flush quick to change the subject,
Speaker 1: pivoting back to my show. Alva's got a new commission
Speaker 1: she just signed this morning. Both their eyes seemed brighter
Speaker 1: than the context deserved. I watched as they migrated back
Speaker 1: to the group, tension and new unspoken jerk passing between them,
Speaker 1: carefully masked for general attention. That night, Mark's caatbook was
Speaker 1: abandoned on the kitchen table, left open next to his
Speaker 1: agency badge and all Day is cologne. While cleaning up,
Speaker 1: I glanced at the pages, expecting the usual layouts for campaigns,
Speaker 1: fragments of headlines, thumbnails of possible ad spots, But this
Speaker 1: time scattered mon design concepts were personal notes, random phrases,
Speaker 1: a list of name, staff, clients, acquaintances. In the margins,
Speaker 1: one name stood alone, Ava, surrounded by a rows and dates.
Speaker 1: I read the dits twice. All corresponded to the string
Speaker 1: of late work nights and client dinners. I shot the
Speaker 1: book and shoved it beneath the stack, feeling guilty, but
Speaker 1: couldn't and see the patterns. The next day, over drinks
Speaker 1: with friends, some one made a teasing common to Yunova,
Speaker 1: always egging each other on, and Mark shot them a
Speaker 1: look so quick and sharp that even Simon bit his lip,
Speaker 1: changing the subject fast. Suddenly our intimacy began to cool
Speaker 1: in ways I could not unnotice. I reached for him
Speaker 1: in the way couple's due, playful teasing, spontaneous affection. Late night,
Speaker 1: Foot tangled with his under the coal. Each time he responded,
Speaker 1: never coldly, but with a surge and coiled distance, a
Speaker 1: new distractedness. Touches became perfunctory kisses, grown brief. Bedroom time
Speaker 1: reduced to tie of rituals that ended more in silence
Speaker 1: than entangle cheats. He started staying late at work, arriving
Speaker 1: home after I had already drifted off in front of
Speaker 1: a documentary. Even on week ends, excuses abounded, big deadlines
Speaker 1: moved for just being alone by crides to clear out
Speaker 1: the weak. Stress. Late one night, driven by equal parts
Speaker 1: heard and curiosity, broke garrul. I never thought I'd cross.
Speaker 1: I opened Mark's laptop. Few barriers between us, We've always
Speaker 1: shared devices. There was nothing of her, A handful of
Speaker 1: text threats, gallery related agency banter, a few jokes with
Speaker 1: Simon and me, and nothing out of the ordinary. I
Speaker 1: opened his calendar, mostly work meetings, creative briefings remind us
Speaker 1: to call his mother, but every so often block windows
Speaker 1: marked only as holds or of ideas. I hesitated grolling
Speaker 1: the reason into neet history, but it was minimal, eat
Speaker 1: it truly dull or selectively clean. I put the lot
Speaker 1: up away, wrestling with guilt what had I become? But
Speaker 1: as I stared up at the dark recticle of the ceiling.
Speaker 1: My mind looped past every moment I doubted myself, Simon
Speaker 1: glancing away me a tensing up laughter at a wine bar,
Speaker 1: I hadn't been invited to a joke about being in
Speaker 1: the know. I started to wonder was everyone else and
Speaker 1: on something? I was? A one evening, I caught Marked
Speaker 1: texting on the gallery steps, face illuminated in the faint
Speaker 1: blue of his phone, smiling absently at some message. When
Speaker 1: I called out, he tucked the phone away, stride brisk
Speaker 1: as he joined me, deflecting my who was that? With
Speaker 1: an effortless justs agency, He banter, don't worry. Each new
Speaker 1: piece of evidence, insignificant on its own, built toward a
Speaker 1: picture I did not want to see. Maybe I wanted
Speaker 1: to catch him, or maybe, if I'm honest, I wanted
Speaker 1: desperately to be proven wrong. I tried, at last to
Speaker 1: dress it upright. Mark was at home, plying for a
Speaker 1: stack of take out containers, looking like the tide had
Speaker 1: finally pulled him under after weeks of frantic motion. I
Speaker 1: sat beside him, legs tat beneath me and let the
Speaker 1: words come out, careful but clear. Are we are? Kay? I?
Speaker 1: Tried it nervously, after covering self doubt. You've been somewhere
Speaker 1: else lately. He paused, chewed, considered, his eyes, softened, voice
Speaker 1: lowering to a registrar. I craved for weeks. I know,
Speaker 1: so it's the work. I should have been clearer. He
Speaker 1: ran a hand through his hair and let his shoulders
Speaker 1: fall for the first time in weeks. Alva's campaign has
Speaker 1: been a nightmare. She's talented and brilliant, but honestly, she's
Speaker 1: impossible as a client. She calls at midnight the man's
Speaker 1: last minute changes, and sometimes I don't even remember agreeing
Speaker 1: to half the dinners we've scheduled. I'm embarrassed at how
Speaker 1: much it's bled into us. He looked at me, looked
Speaker 1: for the first time in what felt like months. It's
Speaker 1: not you. I just let the boundaries get foggy. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I know how it looks with the late nights and
Speaker 1: random dinners. I'll set some limits. Don't let me off
Speaker 1: the hook if I pull this again. There was a
Speaker 1: crushing sincerity to him. I wanted to believe it needed to.
Speaker 1: Mark had a way of performing remorse and gentleness that
Speaker 1: cut all my doubts in half. He followed it up
Speaker 1: by suggesting a week anyway, just us up state o
Speaker 1: Throberg to our first years. He booked a B and
Speaker 1: B picked a restaurant with no cell service, and for
Speaker 1: two days we did all the things I'd been missing.
Speaker 1: Wine in bed, hiking around lakes, lazy hourspend in bookstores
Speaker 1: and coffee shops. On the drive home, I felt myself
Speaker 1: listening letting him back in. I felt ridiculous for ever
Speaker 1: doubting the core of our bond. We made love that
Speaker 1: night with a sweetness that felt healing. He laughed, told
Speaker 1: me he'd missed this, called himself an idiot for ever
Speaker 1: letting were cull into our relationship. That's it, he promised.
Speaker 1: New lines knew us, but reality crept back in quickly.
Speaker 1: Monday evening, while folding laundry, I opened marks I Pad
Speaker 1: to cue up a podcast. His in books was open
Speaker 1: an email from Alver at the top and note that
Speaker 1: read less like a client request him more like a
Speaker 1: seekert joke. I can't wait for our next secret adventure.
Speaker 1: That bore you picked is still my favor art. Did
Speaker 1: ye ever find your coffin? I read it again, The
Speaker 1: familiar electric pulse in those words undeniable, the rest full
Speaker 1: of emojis at teasing, bent to the phrasing lines about
Speaker 1: keeping things ours. The tension that had briefly to solve
Speaker 1: Friday nights snapped back stock cold, and this time impossible
Speaker 1: to ignore. I gaze crossed the apartment at were Mark's
Speaker 1: hair lapped up, balanced on his knees, focused deeply on
Speaker 1: a spurdgee. I watched his pro varbathe in the light
Speaker 1: of the screen and tried to reconcile this man, my husband, charming, beleaguered,
Speaker 1: loving with the person hiding the separate bread. The piece
Speaker 1: that had barely settled cracked and toppled instantly. A part
Speaker 1: of me crave to explode, to demand answers on the spot,
Speaker 1: but I stopped phone trembling in my grip, pulsehammery. I
Speaker 1: riplied every clue, dinners, laughter, inside jokes. The list of
Speaker 1: dates in his sketch book is abrupt, with all from parties.
Speaker 1: What else had I mistaken for stress, for simple fatigue,
Speaker 1: for the cost of a career? I put the iPad down,
Speaker 1: careful not to wake suspicion. My heart busts in my chest,
Speaker 1: confusion and dread noughting my stomach. I no longer trusted
Speaker 1: my own readings of markneul Lander. Sure if I'd ever
Speaker 1: been trusted? In turn? Work was impossible that week. Every
Speaker 1: time I phone chined, I thought it was another secret
Speaker 1: leaking through did IV No I'd seen the message? Were
Speaker 1: friends really ignorant? Were just unwilling to tell me the truth?
Speaker 1: At the gallery of his name haunted every meeting, every mention,
Speaker 1: Feeling weaponized. That night, after Mak rolled over to sleep,
Speaker 1: I spent hours in the bathroom, mind racing, scrolling every
Speaker 1: share device and account we owned, all messages, calendar invites,
Speaker 1: client lunch entries, each one lining up too perfectly, with
Speaker 1: credit card charges, with blocked up nights and miss dinners,
Speaker 1: with dates from the sketch book, and emails. I started
Speaker 1: matching up Instagram stories, finding my own friends tagging Mark
Speaker 1: at bars. He was supposedly too busy to see photos
Speaker 1: of him in opposite and closely laughing over drinks, not
Speaker 1: quite damning. In the broad daylight of public posting, no
Speaker 1: one would look askounts at two agency typed sharing a martini,
Speaker 1: But suddenly everything looked different. I called Mia VOI shaking.
Speaker 1: I told her enough to tilt the scales. Have you
Speaker 1: seen Mark out with Ovelately? Am I losing my mind?
Speaker 1: Or Mia hesitated, sighing. I thought you already knew how
Speaker 1: much time they spent. She's at the agency all the time,
Speaker 1: even after hours. I figured it's all for the campaign.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's a lot, so more than with anyone
Speaker 1: else from his work. She trailed off. I wanted to usk,
Speaker 1: wanted her to confirm the very worst, but I could
Speaker 1: hear it in her tone. Maybe everyone else could see
Speaker 1: what I was finally being forced to. A day later,
Speaker 1: I ran into Simon at a friend's studio opening. He
Speaker 1: pulled me aside uncharacteristically saw her. Has Mark been all right?
Speaker 1: He asked, appointedly. I tried laughing it off, but gave up. Honestly,
Speaker 1: lately it feels like he's somewhere else. Simon winced, He's different, secretive,
Speaker 1: leaves dinners early, always on his phone. I ras, Saorry,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have just you should talk to him. I
Speaker 1: drove home weeplaying every conversation, every slow pull of intimacy
Speaker 1: away from me, the way friends closed ranks or dropped
Speaker 1: tints that landed just short of the truth. At dinner
Speaker 1: that night, Mark was too eager, too forced with his lightness.
Speaker 1: He cleaned up without being asked, scheduled a movie night,
Speaker 1: texted mutual friends about our next great camping trip. I
Speaker 1: watched him half awake in the tension between affection and doubt.
Speaker 1: For the first time in years, I felt like a
Speaker 1: stranger in my own marriage, a hundred when concludes, adding
Speaker 1: up to only one conclusion. Whatever was happening, it wasn't work.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just long hours, creative stress, bad timing, the
Speaker 1: pressure of a campaign. I didn't know whether to be
Speaker 1: angrier at myself for not seeing it or at him
Speaker 1: for thinking I never would. But I knew, with sick
Speaker 1: certainty that the story had changed. Our rituals had not
Speaker 1: just been been to the broken. There was more tancovera
Speaker 1: but already old trust had been replaced with brisolt waiting silence,
Speaker 1: and still I ate for some thread, any thready to
Speaker 1: pull us back. The following night, the air in our
Speaker 1: apartment felt heavier, somehow saturated with the tension that didn't
Speaker 1: have a source I could point to, but that was
Speaker 1: there all the same. I couldn't bring myself to ask
Speaker 1: about ov O of the messages, or whether we had
Speaker 1: crossed some invisible threshold. Instead, I folded laundry with care,
Speaker 1: matching socks, lining up Mark's shirt with mechanical precision. I
Speaker 1: listened to the familiar clink of his whiskey pouring into glass,
Speaker 1: his voice carrying in from the living room. As he
Speaker 1: faced tied. He said with a colleague about a pitch deadline.
Speaker 1: His laughter was tired, too loud. I pressed a shirt
Speaker 1: to my chest, as if I met rintruth from cotton.
Speaker 1: Minutes crawled by, I heard the call in, but Mark
Speaker 1: didn't come in to say good night. Instead, he stepped
Speaker 1: out onto a small balcony, phone in hand. I peeked
Speaker 1: through the blind slats. He stood against the city lights,
Speaker 1: head down, fingers tapping, always the same small smile he
Speaker 1: used when speaking to some one who delighted him. For
Speaker 1: a moment, I caught a reflection in the glass of
Speaker 1: our neighbors window, the ghostly outline of Mark grinning as
Speaker 1: he typed, charmed by every one. The phrase gnawed suddenly guttural.
Speaker 1: I texted Mia, you up? It was almost midnight, but
Speaker 1: she responded instantly, what's going on? Should I call? Before
Speaker 1: I could answer, Mark came back in. He leaned in
Speaker 1: the kitchen doorway, watched me fuss with draw dividers like
Speaker 1: it might be performance art. But do you want to
Speaker 1: watch something I can't sleep? I scanned his face for fatigue, gilt, please,
Speaker 1: for comfort? All I found muta restlessness, Maybe, I answered,
Speaker 1: folding the last towel, Or maybe we could just talk.
Speaker 1: It feels like we keep missing each other lately. He hesitated,
Speaker 1: Only a heart be too long? Yeah, sorry, He walked over,
Speaker 1: sat across from me at the kitchen table. I know
Speaker 1: I've been a goat. Promise it's not you. So he
Speaker 1: works just ridiculous. I don't want a note on you
Speaker 1: every night. I reached for his hand. He let me
Speaker 1: take it his grip. Limp, you can tell me anything.
Speaker 1: That was always a deal, wasn't it. He smiled in
Speaker 1: a way that landed behind his eyes. Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: We sat like that, mosey quiet until I excuse myself
Speaker 1: for bed. He stayed up from flicking across his phone,
Speaker 1: the screens blue shinely king under the door. That weekend,
Speaker 1: I tried to reassert our us. I suggested making a
Speaker 1: day of it, brunch at the usual bakery, leafing through
Speaker 1: market's stalls. Maybe even a return to the stretch of
Speaker 1: Riverwalk where we've first gone after moving in together. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'll meet you at the bakery. Mark called from the shower,
Speaker 1: voice muffled by steam. We met up at noon. Mark
Speaker 1: busied himself with a crossword, barely looked up as I
Speaker 1: ordered for both of us. He brightened when our friend
Speaker 1: Holly dropped by. Ol dramatics and hawks were killing us
Speaker 1: with a wild story about a mural client. Mark sparred
Speaker 1: with her, joked and teased in his old way. But
Speaker 1: when Holly left and up lates emptied, he lapsed again
Speaker 1: into a text conversation. From darting back and forth, his
Speaker 1: smile reappearing only for the phone. I tried to catch
Speaker 1: a name flickering on his locks green, but he glanced
Speaker 1: up just as I leaned over, shielding the phone on instinct.
Speaker 1: We ambled through the market, Mark pausing to answer a
Speaker 1: work call, apologizing, but never breaking away from the conversation.
Speaker 1: As he trailed behind me at each doll he was
Speaker 1: dead but not there, ghost trailing beside me. I was
Speaker 1: tracking some constellation I wasn't allowed to see. By evening,
Speaker 1: I was coiled height. We stopped by Simon and his
Speaker 1: girlfriend Cam's roofed up drinks, determined to reclaim at least
Speaker 1: one night of normalcy. Old and jokes rippled around the group,
Speaker 1: jokes about agency types and the eternal few between copyriters
Speaker 1: and artists. But I noticed the way conversations slid around Mark,
Speaker 1: how Cam asked me if everything was good gallery wise,
Speaker 1: as if checking my mood for cracks. At one point
Speaker 1: I overheard Simon, muder, you two still haven't Saturday for
Speaker 1: that double camping trip. Ha. I realized they had message Mark,
Speaker 1: not me about it. Fragile things, plans fragile too, this
Speaker 1: sense of being quietly excluded, as though Mark was living
Speaker 1: in a second parallel orbit. That night, I waited until
Speaker 1: Mark slept, then padded barefoot into the living room. I
Speaker 1: opened a sketch be again, something I swow I wouldn't do.
Speaker 1: His penmanship, once wild and loose, was suddenly bunched. At
Speaker 1: the corners of the pages. I found more than campaign ideas,
Speaker 1: loops of phrases, shared silences, the bar with the mirrors,
Speaker 1: initials that weren't mine, a swell of doodled hearts and arrows.
Speaker 1: I tore my gaze away, pulse hammering so hard, I
Speaker 1: worried I'd left physical evidence of my search. In the morning,
Speaker 1: I tried bringing up of it directly. How's the campaign
Speaker 1: with her going? Really? I feel like I never hear
Speaker 1: about accept the stressful stuff. Mark shrugged, too casual. She's brilliant,
Speaker 1: but honestly, we're almost done. I think I'll keep her
Speaker 1: at arms lent professionally wanted wraps. Some people just aren't
Speaker 1: worth the anxiety. Do you like her? I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: why I asked the words escaped. He glanced at me,
Speaker 1: brow forward, but the look was quickly replaced by a
Speaker 1: practice smile. She's fine, dramatic, good for business, not for
Speaker 1: peace of mind. He kissed my forehead too fast, then
Speaker 1: left for a run. Jim Bag already packed the lies
Speaker 1: in everyday kindness hurt worse than out right refusal. In
Speaker 1: those hours after he left, I couldn't bring myself to
Speaker 1: reach out to anyone. I felt in you a copyra
Speaker 1: kind that made me look back to the first stages
Speaker 1: of our relationship, trying to measure the difference between Nan
Speaker 1: and No, not just in years, but in what I
Speaker 1: still recognized is real. One afternoon a few days later,
Speaker 1: I saw an artist I trusted to Lucas at a
Speaker 1: coffee shop near my gallery. We exchanged pleasantries and he
Speaker 1: mentioned I ran into mack Anova at Ivy in grainlast Friday.
Speaker 1: It seemed like they were prepping for a big presentation.
Speaker 1: The two of them looked like they were having a blast,
Speaker 1: he laughed. Never seen campaign stress look so fun. I
Speaker 1: forced my own laugh, made some excuse about scheduling, but
Speaker 1: inside everywhere landed like a stone. I trapped the date.
Speaker 1: Last Friday, Mark had told me spend the night working late,
Speaker 1: twamped and turned down my offer to bring takeout. I
Speaker 1: thank Lucas kept my tone light, but after toward I
Speaker 1: sat in my office, lights offt the soft hum of
Speaker 1: a portable heater barely masking the punch of humiliation. How
Speaker 1: many white lives make one red flag? My defense is
Speaker 1: bilf lindsay. I cycled from anger to desperate optimism. Maybe
Speaker 1: there really was a presentation, Maybe Lucas had misread their energy,
Speaker 1: but a suspicion now lived in my bones. By evening,
Speaker 1: my appetite was gone. I decided to try again for truth,
Speaker 1: not on a screen or a borrowed device, but face
Speaker 1: to face. That night, as we curled up on the sofa,
Speaker 1: I turned off the TV in the middle of a
Speaker 1: run and shifted to face him. Mark, Please, I need
Speaker 1: you to be straight with me, or you're an nov
Speaker 1: Is there something I don't know? Because lately it feels
Speaker 1: like everyone else is part of an inside joke and
Speaker 1: I'm just not invited. The silence that followed was so
Speaker 1: thick I thought he might not answer at all. He
Speaker 1: finally placed his hand on my knee, I searching mine,
Speaker 1: lines of exhaustion spidering at the corners of his mouth. Zoe,
Speaker 1: I am not cheating on you. I swear to you.
Speaker 1: Ofvs a work thing. I know I haven't been present.
Speaker 1: I know I've been hiding in my phone and it's
Speaker 1: shameful hist rope barbed. But it's not what you think.
Speaker 1: This campaign is a monster. She's monster of a client.
Speaker 1: She cracks jokes. Yeah, and I'd probably let it get
Speaker 1: too friendly. But I regret that nothing's happened. I promise.
Speaker 1: Something in his voice begged to be believed. I wanted
Speaker 1: desperately to comply. I nodded, okay, but I need to
Speaker 1: feel I can not just on the outside of my
Speaker 1: own relationship. He hugged me, held me longer than usual,
Speaker 1: and then later in bed, reach for me in a
Speaker 1: way that tried to raise the past few weeks. I
Speaker 1: led him because I didn't know what else to do. Afterward,
Speaker 1: as he slept, I lay awake, replaying the cadence of
Speaker 1: his words. They sounded practiced, as if he tried them
Speaker 1: out before. Still, the next morning, I slid back into
Speaker 1: routine emails, planning, texting the artists for Priceless, setting up
Speaker 1: meetings with a local critic. On impulse. I called Mark
Speaker 1: at work, hoping for the happy accident of his voice
Speaker 1: man instead of the practice warmth he could summon on command. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's me just thinking of you. Thought maybe we'd grab
Speaker 1: take out to night, just chill. My voice sounded strange,
Speaker 1: like some one else's. I heard the false cheer in
Speaker 1: it and hung up before he could answer. He replied
Speaker 1: an hour later with two texts, swamp, but sounds good, Hi,
Speaker 1: and then moments later, sorry for being at my ee.
Speaker 1: We'll make it up to you tonight. I went home
Speaker 1: early that candles made a playlist a mechanical gesture, but
Speaker 1: Richell's matter, I told myself. Mark came in late, hair
Speaker 1: must tied loose with a bag of tie and a
Speaker 1: bottle of our usual malbick. He made an effort. I
Speaker 1: gave him credit, telling stories from work, reminiscing about the
Speaker 1: warehouse parties where we'd first met, even dancing mere round
Speaker 1: the kitchen to an old O c D sand system track.
Speaker 1: But as he cleared the plates, I saw him hesitate
Speaker 1: near his phone, thumb hovering. I watched the conversation curdle
Speaker 1: back into silence. A few minutes later, both of us
Speaker 1: too tired to keep the fast going. The routine, our
Speaker 1: scripted life continued, but now it did so with the
Speaker 1: waddach dinned, the punch line muted, the weakened. I found
Speaker 1: a break in my own schedule. Mark was slated for
Speaker 1: a more dabrieinstorm at the agency, a plausible alibi that
Speaker 1: now read differently in my mind. After coffee with Mia,
Speaker 1: who glanced at her phone as if waiting for a
Speaker 1: call that never came, a surprise Mark at his office
Speaker 1: with a box of pastries. The receptionist, a polite woman
Speaker 1: ad known VI's, seemed caught off guard to see me.
Speaker 1: She buzzed me in a gesture towards the bead back lounge,
Speaker 1: her smile quick and brittle, a tinge of something unreadable
Speaker 1: in her eyes. When I found Mark, he was standing
Speaker 1: near a whiteboard, laughing with ofv over an elaborate float shirt.
Speaker 1: She was perched on a still bare foot, painting her
Speaker 1: nails with a borrowed marker. The above fell silent. When
Speaker 1: I entered the snapping taut Ov greeted me with performative affection,
Speaker 1: sooy stealing him for lunch. Mark's smile was just plausibly surprised. Hey,
Speaker 1: didn't expect you. Everything okay. I pressed a pastry into
Speaker 1: his hand, careful to keep my expression neutral. Ava watched
Speaker 1: me cork at the corner of heelippo look that dared
Speaker 1: me to claim my turf. I made small talk, careful
Speaker 1: not to linger. But as I walked away, my stomach
Speaker 1: turned over. For the first time, I saw the dynamic
Speaker 1: of clothes, something unspoken, vibrating between them in a way
Speaker 1: that left me called back home. I couldn't shake the
Speaker 1: feeling that I'd interrupted something not sex, not even of
Speaker 1: her flirtation, but intimacy and deniable in its smallness, the
Speaker 1: gentle way Mok had laughed at her joke. These of
Speaker 1: the silence together. I kept looking for evidence, subtle, then
Speaker 1: less subtle. I started turning his arrivals and departures, watching
Speaker 1: his location pings on fine my friends, I justified as
Speaker 1: wanting to be surprised, included, but I was cataloging, cross
Speaker 1: checking time minds against everything I'd been told. Cruks appeared
Speaker 1: among our friends too. Miya, everforefight invited me for drinks
Speaker 1: with up Mark. She kept asking if I wanted a
Speaker 1: second glass, then finally said, is there something you want
Speaker 1: to ask me? I almost did, but pride borne through
Speaker 1: the impulse. No, just glad to catch up. Things are hectic,
Speaker 1: that's all. After as I stepped into a ewber, I
Speaker 1: glimpsed her face in the bars window, worried. Unresolved, Mark
Speaker 1: texted at midnight you up. I answered, tried to keep
Speaker 1: my side breezy, but our messages died off a neutral
Speaker 1: ground work friends weather next morning a rare sunny stretch.
Speaker 1: I received a rund in group text to Simon had
Speaker 1: made a new meme of agency life featuring cachin doctors
Speaker 1: reviving a client with cold brew and post its. Alva
Speaker 1: replied with a gift Mark. A minute later, I realized
Speaker 1: I hadn't been included until now, and the joke, built
Speaker 1: on a story I didn't know, left me reeling. This
Speaker 1: was the universe in which everyone else existed, a universe
Speaker 1: that orbited somehow outside of my knowledge. Later I scold
Speaker 1: Simon's social photos from a wine bar, always shadowy and
Speaker 1: uncertainly damning. But Mark anov together more than one, always
Speaker 1: with the group, yet always sitting just a little too close,
Speaker 1: excludes from the chaos for a moment, a world in tandem.
Speaker 1: I took to inventing reasons to head to Mark's agency,
Speaker 1: dropped off lunch, used gallery flies as pretext, lingered after work,
Speaker 1: waiting for his meetings to end. Each time I found
Speaker 1: him farther away, conversations with me shorter, as though he
Speaker 1: were eager to return to world and no longer belonged to.
Speaker 1: One Thursday, our friends gathered at the gallery for a
Speaker 1: late show and drinks before dinner. Mark said he'd be
Speaker 1: late wrap up a declient. As everyone filtered out and
Speaker 1: I wiped down glasses, I found Mark's phone on the
Speaker 1: bathroom shelf. He left it in his rush. A message,
Speaker 1: Privy flash, Arva, can I tell you something wild? Meet
Speaker 1: for a nightcap. I scrolled back further, heart hammering, but
Speaker 1: the thread was mostly cleared, only a handful of recent
Speaker 1: replies visible medium five. Haha, too much to your trouble.
Speaker 1: I taped the phone away, feeling both relieved and destroyed.
Speaker 1: Nothing explicit, but I everything implied. I told myself again,
Speaker 1: maybe I was just seeing what I feared. But now
Speaker 1: even my own self reassurance felt like a lie. At
Speaker 1: the gallery, empty, Simon lingered to help pack up. He
Speaker 1: worked in silence, then finally said, don't be mad, but
Speaker 1: you and Marcury, you guys, all right? I froze why.
Speaker 1: He shrugged, eyes fixed on a stack of catalogs. He's
Speaker 1: just he's different you ner. I tried to invite you
Speaker 1: both for drinks last week. He said ye were homeworking,
Speaker 1: but then he barely stayed ten minutes before running off
Speaker 1: with AVA. It's not my business, but I thought you
Speaker 1: should know that admission, quiet and unadorned was what snapted
Speaker 1: something in me. I thank Simon, hugged him a little
Speaker 1: too tight, and closed the gallery with shaking hands. At home,
Speaker 1: Mark was already there, feed up as scented cantle burning
Speaker 1: the apartment of naturally neat, he smiled as I dropped
Speaker 1: my back. How was the show? I leaned against the door. Fine.
Speaker 1: Simon stayed late, he says he misses dinners with both
Speaker 1: of us. Said, ye seemed busy. Mark's face closed down,
Speaker 1: registering the challenge is the usual sory. People always want
Speaker 1: more of your time than you've got. He kissed my cheek.
Speaker 1: The gesture practiced, want a glass of wine. I didn't answer.
Speaker 1: My silence prompted and to busy himself in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: Humming tunelessly, I washed his back, counting every small domestic
Speaker 1: ritchel that had come to fill hollow papered with explanations
Speaker 1: that no longer fit. I slept in this fare room
Speaker 1: that night, telling myself it was a migraine. Wc barely protested.
Speaker 1: I listened to the sounds of him brushing his teeth,
Speaker 1: his fourd illuminating the gap beneath the door, another side
Speaker 1: of the bed that fell further than any distance in
Speaker 1: the city. Friday morning, a delivery came flowers from the agency.
Speaker 1: Card insigned had it told me it was from Mark,
Speaker 1: But even that small gesture made me once every kindness
Speaker 1: felt like a cover, every absence of silent confession. I
Speaker 1: called Mia. Let the words pour out in a rush,
Speaker 1: all the lunches, the private jokes, the cold spots in
Speaker 1: our bed. Her comfort was cold, the kind of reassurance
Speaker 1: you offer when you can promise anything. I started to plan,
Speaker 1: in a secret undertow, how I would find proof, not
Speaker 1: just of emotional betrayal, but the thing itself, hard and
Speaker 1: naked and ugly. I wanted to be wrong more than anything,
Speaker 1: but my faith in accident or innocence was gone. That afternoon,
Speaker 1: I made a point as kamhaalf and she'd been seeing
Speaker 1: Mark at friendly gatherings outside of work, Oh, just occasionally,
Speaker 1: always with agency folks, sometimes avel, mostly just the two
Speaker 1: of them in charge of fun. She didn't catch the
Speaker 1: way her words landed, but her curiosity flared when I
Speaker 1: began asking more. By evening, I found myself following Mark's
Speaker 1: location on my phone out of habit. He said he
Speaker 1: was working late again, but at almost midnight he was
Speaker 1: still at a bar a few blocks from his office,
Speaker 1: nestled into the familiar triangle of wine bars. I walked
Speaker 1: over in a haze, just to see, telling myself it
Speaker 1: was just a coincidence. Through frost blurred windows. I saw
Speaker 1: Mark backward and Gold over beside him, both sharing a plate,
Speaker 1: heads tipped together in laughter. He was animated in a
Speaker 1: way I hadn't seen in months. I stood for five
Speaker 1: minutes outside that window, then walked home, slowly, my body
Speaker 1: braced against the possibility that this was only the surface
Speaker 1: of what was hidden from me. I walked in the
Speaker 1: door now later. Mark was home, already showered in swepons.
Speaker 1: He greeted me with long night at the gallery, as
Speaker 1: if we'd spent the entire evening in parallel stories that
Speaker 1: neatly failed to overlap. My exhaustion nearly undid me. I nodded,
Speaker 1: let him believe what he wanted to believe, and shut
Speaker 1: my door. Late that night, I received the calendar notification
Speaker 1: Mark had blocked off dinner w slash after the rest
Speaker 1: was truncated. When I asked later that weekend, he said
Speaker 1: it was just a client dinner, but declined to name
Speaker 1: who else attended. By Now I was numb. I looked
Speaker 1: for signs in every ordinary detail, the way he laced
Speaker 1: his shoes, the exchanges of glances over breakfast, the trailing
Speaker 1: scent of his work colown, lingering only on coats he
Speaker 1: wore to the agency, never to dinner with me. Saturday,
Speaker 1: I tried one last time to reach the person I
Speaker 1: love to. Sat next to him, Hans folded Mark. I
Speaker 1: started forcein, if you ever need to tell me something,
Speaker 1: really tell me. I want you to know you always can.
Speaker 1: He shot me a tired smile, brushing a stround of
Speaker 1: head from my face. The Zoe, You're the only person
Speaker 1: I want to come home to if something was wrong,
Speaker 1: I'd tell you, I nodded. Let him convince us both,
Speaker 1: just for the space of a single two bright day. Inside,
Speaker 1: I already knew a line he wouldn't cross was a
Speaker 1: line back to us. That night, while Mark slept, I
Speaker 1: opened my laptop, determined to siffer every last art of
Speaker 1: social financial digital. Somewhere in the tangle there had to
Speaker 1: be the thing I craved, hard proof for utter exoneration,
Speaker 1: or reason to stop hating myself for still wanting him back.
Speaker 1: Even as the evidence dackle like stones against my chest,
Speaker 1: the cursor blinked in the search bar as isle in question.
Speaker 1: Was I ready to press ender? Was there? Ready to know? Finally?
Speaker 1: Everything that came next? My cursor hesitated above the search
Speaker 1: bar for a long time before I pressed enter. I
Speaker 1: went through Marx's email archives and scroll, searching for something definitive,
Speaker 1: of something beyond pausable deniability. The screen filled with message dread,
Speaker 1: some business as usual, others dripping with familiarity that veered
Speaker 1: too close to intimacy for a client relationship. Offers messages
Speaker 1: about their adventures, shared memes, and side jerks mojis flung
Speaker 1: back and forth in the small hours. The third was deep,
Speaker 1: spanning months, peppered with lines I could neither dismiss nor excuse,
Speaker 1: thanks for last night, next to a winking face. Let's
Speaker 1: try that new spot down the block. He pit the wine.
Speaker 1: We don't forget mondays just for us. I sat there,
Speaker 1: skin hot, scrolling through evidence, each new screen a blow
Speaker 1: I couldn't absorb. The sense of dislocation was so physical.
Speaker 1: I clamped my hand to the desk, grounding myself. My
Speaker 1: mind cycled between wild hope for an innocent explanation and
Speaker 1: the slow dropping certainty I'd spent weeks fending off. I
Speaker 1: barely slept. Around dawn, the City's room be filtered through
Speaker 1: the curtains, and I blearly pat myself for the day.
Speaker 1: No uptight just still, coffee and loose hair twisted into
Speaker 1: a knot. I watched Mark's sleep must slack one on
Speaker 1: from wide, as if he couldn't hold enough space for himself.
Speaker 1: For a second. In this vulnerable sprawl, I remembered him
Speaker 1: as the boy from the warehouse party, a memory almost
Speaker 1: painful in its clarity, And then the pain of nash
Speaker 1: afted away. At the gallery, I went through the motions,
Speaker 1: adjusted light tracks for an insulation, handled collector follow ups,
Speaker 1: answered staff questions. My voice sounded normal until it didn't,
Speaker 1: cracking on a noontime coal with a gallery sponsor, my
Speaker 1: mind flaring with the night's discoveries. I ducked into my office,
Speaker 1: hand shaking, and for the first time in years, cried
Speaker 1: at work. I kept it silent. Nothing about this could
Speaker 1: be public, not yet. After I'd wet my face and
Speaker 1: reapplied mouscaa, I called Mia. She picked up instantly, her
Speaker 1: voice gentle with whirr. What happened. It's not just emotional, Mia,
Speaker 1: it's everything. I found messages, not just jokes and business,
Speaker 1: but plans and God. Just this is more than I
Speaker 1: wanted to know. The silence on her end was loaded.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. Zoe. I honestly thought i'd react with anger.
Speaker 1: I just feel hollow. My lips trembled. I can't tell
Speaker 1: if I'm more embarrassed that he lied or that I
Speaker 1: let myself down my own instincts for so long. She
Speaker 1: didn't say, oh, I told you so, maybe because there
Speaker 1: was nothing left to say. The hours dragged, My work
Speaker 1: was careless. I caught myself making errors on imvsses, forgetting cold, time's,
Speaker 1: losing track of an art disappointment. At three, I snapped
Speaker 1: when an intern asked where we kept the card reader
Speaker 1: at my patiences furdbear. I apologized, but the distance between
Speaker 1: myself and the life i'd built yon wider. Mark texted
Speaker 1: just after five, can pick up dinner if you want,
Speaker 1: or just meet at home. Let me know. The nomalcy
Speaker 1: of em made me want to scream instead. I texted
Speaker 1: back at the galeryl, though I knew I wouldn't be there.
Speaker 1: I needed more than digital proof. I needed resolution, something concrete, undeniable,
Speaker 1: and delivered face to face. I had to see Mark
Speaker 1: as he answered, to listen for the fishes in his voice.
Speaker 1: So that evening I left the gallery early, but didn't
Speaker 1: go home. I walked the streets around Mark's agency, circled
Speaker 1: the wine bars and restaurants from his credit, carved records,
Speaker 1: every spot that held late night convenience, and the slide
Speaker 1: indoor of plausible deniability. I even walked past Ivy and
Speaker 1: grained one Lucas had mentioned. I didn't see Mark or Offer,
Speaker 1: just familiar ghosts in every corner, couples talking too close.
Speaker 1: After bending between tables. The city felt hostile, a stage
Speaker 1: where every couple might be performing my private betrayal. With
Speaker 1: nothing left to check, I walked home slowly, my stomach
Speaker 1: notted with a low gray creeasiness. When I stepped inside,
Speaker 1: Mark was already home, reading on the sofa, takeout containers
Speaker 1: on the counter, the living room rendered falsely domestic by
Speaker 1: soft lamp light and the familiar smell of pepperine needles.
Speaker 1: He looked up, eager, almost poppyish. Hey you're early. I
Speaker 1: already ordered figured you'd want it. He stopped at the
Speaker 1: look on my face. I couldn't pretend any longer. We
Speaker 1: need to talk, Mark. He set the book aside, face
Speaker 1: slowly draining of color. OKH, I know about you and Nova,
Speaker 1: I said, unable to cover the tremor in my voice.
Speaker 1: I've seen the messages that emails, the dinners, the jokes
Speaker 1: everyone else is in on. I need the truth, all
Speaker 1: of it. He took a second, jaw flexing, mouth opening
Speaker 1: and closing. It's not what you think. My love was shot, bitter.
Speaker 1: Please don't do that. Don't gas like me. I know
Speaker 1: more than you think I do. Was it an affair?
Speaker 1: Was it emotional or was it physical too? You can't
Speaker 1: bullshit me, not after all this, he sighed to head
Speaker 1: in his hands. Sowey, I, I didn't mean for it
Speaker 1: to happen like this. Just tell me, I said, my voice, craping,
Speaker 1: Tell me how long? Tell me the truth. He didn't
Speaker 1: answer right away. Something flickered in his expression, shame, fear,
Speaker 1: something uglier. It started with work. We got close during
Speaker 1: the campaign. She she made me feel like I was
Speaker 1: new again. We had these ideas together. We talk late
Speaker 1: and God, Sowey, I know it's not an excuse, but
Speaker 1: that attention, nitch it was reminded me of when we
Speaker 1: were first together. I wasn't looking for this, those woods,
Speaker 1: wasn't looking as sounded foreign, hollow. I wanted to shake him.
Speaker 1: So what happened? Did you sleep together? He looked away,
Speaker 1: Hans covering his mouth. For a terrible second, I thought
Speaker 1: he'd lie again, then softly yes. Once after that late
Speaker 1: night at the agency, when the campaign launched, his voice
Speaker 1: crumbled on the syllables. We both knew it was crossing
Speaker 1: a line. I fell sick afterward. I told her it
Speaker 1: was a mistake, that it couldn't happen again. We we
Speaker 1: kept working together, but I tried to make it just
Speaker 1: about work. To got blout. I don't know any more.
Speaker 1: My breath rushed out of me like a punch. The
Speaker 1: urge to sob swelled, and I thought it. Tried to
Speaker 1: make my voice daddy. Did our friends know? He grimaced.
Speaker 1: No one knew for sure. Maybe they suspected. I tried
Speaker 1: to hide it. I was so careful, I thought you'd
Speaker 1: never his voice broke again. Careful. You were careful for you,
Speaker 1: not for me. You let me look stupid in front
Speaker 1: of everyone. You made me feel crazy. Mark started to cry, ugly,
Speaker 1: quiet tears that he tried to swallow. I'm sorry, I am,
Speaker 1: I just so. I didn't want any of this. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to lose you. I almost believed him, the
Speaker 1: Mark I loved would have said all the same things.
Speaker 1: Maybe the Mark I loved was gone, or maybe he'd
Speaker 1: always been this and I just couldn't see it through
Speaker 1: the charm. I want to fix it. They'll quit working
Speaker 1: with her. I'll go to therapy. I'll tell everyone the truth.
Speaker 1: If you want, I'll do whatever you need. I stared
Speaker 1: at him, seeing not my husband but the architect of
Speaker 1: a slow personal fire. I don't know what I need,
Speaker 1: but you can't fix this. To night he looked small
Speaker 1: or chastened. I watched him crumple and wanted to feel satisfaction,
Speaker 1: to see justice in his pain. Instead, I felt nothing
Speaker 1: but exhaustion and the ache of a hollow where trust
Speaker 1: had been. I gathered my things, key items only, grabbing
Speaker 1: my bag and coat, phone charger, a change of clothes.
Speaker 1: Mark stood as if to follow, but I shook my head.
Speaker 1: I'm not staying here. I can't. I'll go to mees.
Speaker 1: Don't call me, so we please don't. I walked out
Speaker 1: into the coal street, lights yellowing the sidewalk. I tried
Speaker 1: to steady my steps one block, then to heart beat
Speaker 1: laod in my head. I passed familiar buildings, a restaurant
Speaker 1: where we'd spent a birthday, a laundromat we patronized during
Speaker 1: a busted machine summer, all feeling distant, waitless at me
Speaker 1: as she met me with quiet, open arms. She didn't
Speaker 1: ask for details. I dropped my bag at the foot
Speaker 1: of her guest bed and sat at her kitchen table,
Speaker 1: staring at my phone. The notifications multiplied A text for Mark,
Speaker 1: miss Colls, a long email subject line begging me to
Speaker 1: let him explain more. I silenced my phone, left it
Speaker 1: face down. Sleep didn't come easily. I lay awake for hours.
Speaker 1: May's regular breathing, a fragile, comforting sound down the hall.
Speaker 1: Each time my mind started to drift, I replayed the
Speaker 1: worst of Mark's confession. The shock of his honesty pressed
Speaker 1: jacket against the months of careful deceit. By morning, the
Speaker 1: story had trickled out, first to Simon, who texted me
Speaker 1: and all caps, are you okay? Then to the odders.
Speaker 1: Cam texted em meandering offer her loyalty, awkward and sweet,
Speaker 1: bending over itself to avoid blame, Holly sent just a
Speaker 1: harp emoji. I left my responses brief, pulling the blanket
Speaker 1: tighter round my shoulders. I didn't want sympathy. I only
Speaker 1: wanted time, space to breathe. I called the gallery's board
Speaker 1: member to I needed a handful of days away from events.
Speaker 1: She was tactful for him, didn't ask for details. We'll
Speaker 1: handle it rests. Zoe. Marquis mailed again a message full
Speaker 1: of apologies, declarations that the affair was over it, that
Speaker 1: he was cutting ties, that he'd do anything. I didn't reply.
Speaker 1: I instructed him not to show up at me as
Speaker 1: to let me reach out first. Practicalities forced my hand
Speaker 1: through motions that felt deeply unfair. I locked into our
Speaker 1: utility accounts, checking for bil set to autopay. I texted
Speaker 1: me to bring me a sweater if she had. When
Speaker 1: my body eat of cold. That was less about temperature
Speaker 1: than about loss. In these procedural moments, the weight of
Speaker 1: humiliation and anger shifted to numb clarity. I was now
Speaker 1: responsible for the tempo of my own life again, familiar
Speaker 1: rituals of partnership no longer applied. That afternoon, when the
Speaker 1: apartment was empty, I returned to gather what I needed
Speaker 1: to close for a week. Laptop, my favorite mount, and
Speaker 1: the potted phone from my studio window. Mark wasn't there.
Speaker 1: The space was neat too, neat, as if he tried
Speaker 1: to scrub the evidence of last night away. I worked quickly,
Speaker 1: not trusting myself to stay on through any accidental encounter.
Speaker 1: Before leaving, I glanced at one last trace, the framed
Speaker 1: photo of us from two summers ago, arms slung around
Speaker 1: each other, win whipping hair across laughing faces. I left it,
Speaker 1: face down on the shelf, back at me. As I
Speaker 1: showered and changed, tried to rally myself for dinner. She
Speaker 1: reheated soup, pressed a glass of wine into my hand,
Speaker 1: filled her kitchen with the idle talk about a new
Speaker 1: gallery opening. I watched her lips move, the words lost
Speaker 1: beneath the surface of my own thoughts. By midnight, Mark
Speaker 1: had sent another volley of messages, texts, miss calls, even
Speaker 1: a voicemail I couldn't bring myself to listen to. Yet.
Speaker 1: Mick caught the wounded look on my face as I scrawled,
Speaker 1: you don't have to desire anything to night, She said, quietly,
Speaker 1: Just stay I've got you. I nodded, the gesture, almost
Speaker 1: childish in its relief. When I finally slipped into me
Speaker 1: as guest bed, I could still hear the city distant
Speaker 1: traffic a neighbor's television leaking through the wall. The world
Speaker 1: was unchanged, stubbornly indifferent to hearbreak Don came early, a
Speaker 1: faint old cracking the horizon outside the shutters. I shuffled
Speaker 1: into the kitchen, poured coffee with hands that shook only
Speaker 1: a little, and leaned against the window to watch the
Speaker 1: street come alive, a slow, ordinary rhythm. I wanted nothing,
Speaker 1: not even answers, just silence. Has faced too tender for questions.
Speaker 1: I hovered over my phone, staring at Mark's name. I
Speaker 1: started to type, deleted the words, typed again. Any time
Speaker 1: stopped fac space the entire thing should it often put
Speaker 1: a face down on the table. I was both nowhere
Speaker 1: and exactly here. It spended in the simple clarity of
Speaker 1: having nothing else to lose. I pressed my fingers to
Speaker 1: the cool countertop, watching sunlight's getter across the window frame,
Speaker 1: turning Desmote's liquid gold. Somewhere outside, a bus wheeze passed
Speaker 1: a woman with a bright scarf herding an old dog
Speaker 1: down the block. Ordinary life apace. I envied if the
Speaker 1: way these strangers floated through morning, with no teutonic plate
Speaker 1: shifting beneath the feet, the silence became a presence with
Speaker 1: its own weight. Even me, a tiptoeing around Meronas sought
Speaker 1: it to feel like a thread stretch too tight, her
Speaker 1: concern tinge by a helplessness I'd seen before in other
Speaker 1: people's crises, never in my own. I kept thinking, with
Speaker 1: a bitter kind of clarity, that I now lived behind
Speaker 1: a wall, invisible only to those who lost this way.
Speaker 1: At mid day, the messages from Mark stopped. The halt
Speaker 1: was its own message. He'd realized, maybe what lines had
Speaker 1: finally been crossed. I kept waiting for my anger to ignite,
Speaker 1: but what shut up with something quiet, of the exhausted
Speaker 1: dick of loss that comes when a rupture won't stop
Speaker 1: widening the reality pressed in. Our friends would choose sides,
Speaker 1: Allegiances would fracture, the city would look a little different forever.
Speaker 1: Late morning, I found myself clearing out the small suit
Speaker 1: case had thrown together the night before, trying to impose
Speaker 1: some kind of order on my scattered belongings. There in
Speaker 1: the side pocket I found Mark's old lighter, a relic
Speaker 1: from his cigarette face, the trinket left over from some
Speaker 1: unremarkable summer night long before any of this. My chest constricted.
Speaker 1: Even the most ordinary objects now seemed loaded. Their significance
Speaker 1: were written mere return from a yoga class with two
Speaker 1: coffees in a practical suggestion, you'll want to sort out
Speaker 1: the accounts, so keep it clean. You shouldn't have to
Speaker 1: see his name every time you pay a bill. She
Speaker 1: tried to mask her hesitance, but I heard the careful
Speaker 1: way she chose her words and tethering me gently from
Speaker 1: my married life. I took a breath, sipped coffee, and nodded.
Speaker 1: She watched me, waiting as I logged into our bank
Speaker 1: account on my phone, transferring funds, severing the connections with
Speaker 1: a series of sterile digital clicks. As each confirmation went
Speaker 1: a flashed away, the anceremoniousness struck me. This was the end,
Speaker 1: not hammered out in grand declarations or screaming matches, but
Speaker 1: by the invisible work of entangle in two ordinary lives.
Speaker 1: There was something devastating the adult about it, the banality
Speaker 1: of heartbreak when it gets down to brass tacks and usernames.
Speaker 1: Around noon, I finally glanced at my phone's notifications. The
Speaker 1: torrent of messages from the gallery crew had begun. People
Speaker 1: trying to read the subtexts offering support and measured words,
Speaker 1: some likely guessing at the particulars even if they'd never
Speaker 1: dare name them. Cam left of voicemail soft round about
Speaker 1: the way you might talk to someone newly widowed and
Speaker 1: show what language to use. Hey, so just just saying
Speaker 1: I'm here, No rush, We're all thinking of you. You
Speaker 1: don't have to answer, just yeah, love you. I played it,
Speaker 1: let it hang in the air, then deleted it. For once.
Speaker 1: I didn't need more words. By the afternoon, practicalities reasserted themselves.
Speaker 1: Mere drew up a basic to do list on the
Speaker 1: back of an envelope. New keys, cloud accounts, direct deposit
Speaker 1: for gallery funds. I gratefully focused on the mechanics, the
Speaker 1: tiny checkprints of independence that felt less like victory and
Speaker 1: more like catching your breath after Sprindy never meant to run. Occasionally,
Speaker 1: I found my mind returning to the gallery, to the
Speaker 1: routines that usually provided a buffer where Ava's name was
Speaker 1: still likely on incoming mail subject lines, messages from Mark's agency.
Speaker 1: I kept picturing her the way she looked up at
Speaker 1: me from that barcel, barefoot, confident, unconcerned. I wondered if,
Speaker 1: on some level, she wanted me to know, as she'd known.
Speaker 1: He cave the group thread pinged again, Simon, gentle and apologetic,
Speaker 1: asking if I needed company or ride anywhere. I tapped
Speaker 1: out a thank you and set my phone aside. My
Speaker 1: mother called. I let it go to voicemail, knowing I
Speaker 1: wasn't ready to package this into a narrative for family.
Speaker 1: Yet the word affair sounded corrozov too flower, not enough
Speaker 1: to fit the brutal specifics, the jokes, the dinners, the
Speaker 1: private orbit that had spun out right beside me for months.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until late in the day at Mark's silence brook.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear the front door, but miss quick steped
Speaker 1: down the hole. I told me he texted, not me,
Speaker 1: but her. A minute later, she pok her head round
Speaker 1: the kitchen door, a phone in hand. He wants to
Speaker 1: know if you'll talk just for ten minutes on the phone,
Speaker 1: she said, reluctant to deliver even this, My refusal almost
Speaker 1: came as a surprise to me in his steadiness. Not now, maybe,
Speaker 1: not ever. Can you let him know how reach out
Speaker 1: if I am ready? She nodded, not pressing, and slipped away.
Speaker 1: I wondered what exactly Mark thought he'd say in those
Speaker 1: few minutes that could salvage anything. Or maybe it was
Speaker 1: about absolution, some last beard for a narrative where he
Speaker 1: didn't have to be the villain. Evening leaked in the city,
Speaker 1: shifting through blue of purple and then the hard clarity
Speaker 1: of street lights. I caught myself occasionally checking the window,
Speaker 1: half expecting Mark so wet on the stew a small
Speaker 1: pathetic coat. There might still be a speech samplead it
Speaker 1: might ald to the weight of the truth. Just after sunset,
Speaker 1: I heard the apartment buzzer. May checked into come. Mark's
Speaker 1: worst carrying up strained, requesting just five minutes. My stomach tightened,
Speaker 1: some vestige of ov reflex mia. Looked at me question
Speaker 1: in her silence. I shook my head, but guilt, responsibility,
Speaker 1: and need forclosurely all swirled one coll pulse. I realized
Speaker 1: I did need five minutes, but I would set the terms.
Speaker 1: I pressed the intercom. I'll come down alone MEA's eyes softened.
Speaker 1: I'll stay up here, shout if you need me. The
Speaker 1: building smells cooked onions, bleach reminded me of all the
Speaker 1: other lives and touch running parallel. Mark waited by the entryway,
Speaker 1: hands in his pockets, faced drawn with sleeplessness. He looked smaller,
Speaker 1: the way people do when they are waiting to absorb pain.
Speaker 1: He stood straight as I pushed open the door, expression
Speaker 1: a collision of herpen remorse. Zowie, thank you for coming down.
Speaker 1: I need this to be fuss, I said, I'm not
Speaker 1: ready for a heart to heart, but I don't want
Speaker 1: to leave it wordless. He nodded, swallowing, I know you
Speaker 1: hate me. I don't blame you, but just he cut
Speaker 1: himself off, pressing fingers to his eyes. I want to say,
Speaker 1: there's no justification. I got caught up in myself, in
Speaker 1: feeling wanted I let it happen. I thought I was
Speaker 1: being careful, but really I just didn't want to lose
Speaker 1: what she made me feel, And now I lost you.
Speaker 1: I'd do anything, anything if it meant he'd ever trust
Speaker 1: me again. I know that's gone. You deserve better. His
Speaker 1: words didn't ignite rage or even pity. They just existed, inert.
Speaker 1: For all the messy, beautiful things we'd built, it was
Speaker 1: remarkable how simple the language of endings could be. I
Speaker 1: steady my breath. There's no fixing this right now. It's
Speaker 1: not just about forgiveness, it's what's left, and right now
Speaker 1: I don't see anything left. He looked at me, truly, looked,
Speaker 1: as if accounting for the years. I will always love you.
Speaker 1: I am so sorry. I loved myself a single truth,
Speaker 1: heavier than anything i'd spoken yet, and it left my
Speaker 1: mouth almost softly. If you ever loved me, you should
Speaker 1: let me go. He nodded. Tears trembled on his jaw
Speaker 1: un shed. He took a step back, leaving the doorweed,
Speaker 1: and as he did, the sheer gravity between a snapped,
Speaker 1: leaving me standing on my own legs. I turned, punched
Speaker 1: in the door, code, closed the door on the small
Speaker 1: echo of our last words, and climbed the stairs, hearing
Speaker 1: each footful abbify into a new solitarue rhythm. Inside. Maa
Speaker 1: looked up from her book, ready with a hug or
Speaker 1: a laugh, or drink, but I shook my head, No need,
Speaker 1: not for now. I poured water, carried it to the
Speaker 1: kitchen window, braced my arms against the counter. The city
Speaker 1: glowed in the blue. I was each way and a square,
Speaker 1: each life moving on. I set my phone beside the glass,
Speaker 1: let out of breath I'd been holding since the night
Speaker 1: at the gallery, and stood there perfectly, steel spended between
Speaker 1: the throb of everything lost and the fragile hush of
Speaker 1: beginning again. And that is the end. Thank you for listening,
Speaker 1: and I will see you in the next one.