Speaker 1: The loft was never truly quiet, not even at two
Speaker 1: in the morning, when the world outside felt hollowed out.
Speaker 1: I'd been sitting there at our long kitchen table, fingers
Speaker 1: wrapped around a chipmunk of herbaltiquun cold, pretending to be
Speaker 1: absorbed in my own sketch, but a page stayed blank.
Speaker 1: I'd left the life low and waited for Nathan's key
Speaker 1: in the door, already rehearsing what I'd say whenever he
Speaker 1: finally made it back from trivia. Maybe I'd make a
Speaker 1: joke about him becoming an honorary history and tease him
Speaker 1: about the time he'd confused how Vetiko Aeriel in front
Speaker 1: of his college friends. Something easy, light, familiar. But even
Speaker 1: before the lock clicked, even before the shush of his
Speaker 1: sneakers against the mat, my lines had curdled into something else.
Speaker 1: Nathan came in, half laughing, half whispering, his pham blade
Speaker 1: bright in his hand. He caught himself a mid text,
Speaker 1: I guessed, amid scrawl, and cradled at his chest as
Speaker 1: though the glowing screen might betray him. I think he said, Hey, Cass,
Speaker 1: but the words barely reached me, ending in a low hum.
Speaker 1: He darted a quick look at the spare room, the
Speaker 1: way he always did when he planned to do more
Speaker 1: work at this hour, then dropped his phone into his
Speaker 1: jackets in a pocket. That's when I noticed the skeitch
Speaker 1: poked up beneath his arm, black slightly freed at one corner.
Speaker 1: Not one of the moleskinds we'd accumulated over the years
Speaker 1: with our lives un lists and thumbnail scribbles. Something new,
Speaker 1: and he knew I'd clocked it. He siffened, gave this
Speaker 1: weird half grin, and slipped it inside his back back
Speaker 1: Before I could say anything. Trivia ran long, he said,
Speaker 1: voice casual to the point of forest. There was this hole,
Speaker 1: like a debate over whether future is over use or
Speaker 1: just you know, a conic, total nonsense. How was your night,
Speaker 1: I shrugged, lonely. I guess I tried to finish that
Speaker 1: brewery logo, but the Klin wants five rounds of revisions.
Speaker 1: In my eyes, hairt you guys must have butten really
Speaker 1: into it if you needed a whole panel discussion on fonts.
Speaker 1: Ha I in for teasing, but he ducked it, answering
Speaker 1: with the distracted classic agency stuff. He smelled finly, of
Speaker 1: elderflower occur and the kind of cologne he only spreads
Speaker 1: on bigrutenis a bit of a ritual that looking shop
Speaker 1: for the outside world. He started fiddling with the mail
Speaker 1: as if it were suddenly fascinating. A minute of silence.
Speaker 1: Then I'm wipe. I've got to polish something up for
Speaker 1: a meeting tomorrow morning. I promised i'd lock it before
Speaker 1: I sleep. You O care if I use the spare room.
Speaker 1: That should have been normal, both of us night els,
Speaker 1: at times rushing to meet deadlines. But Nathan's keys trembled
Speaker 1: a little too much as he headed down the hall.
Speaker 1: I wanted to call after him, ask about the new
Speaker 1: sketchbook or what made tonight so different, but my joy
Speaker 1: refused to co operate. Only after I heard the soft
Speaker 1: click of the spare room door did I flip off
Speaker 1: the kitchen light and catch out of the corner of
Speaker 1: my eye that small glow again Nathan's phone light, and
Speaker 1: up through the mesh of his back, back the notification
Speaker 1: bars showing only in emoji. I couldn't tell which one
Speaker 1: he stayed up past three. I think I drifted to
Speaker 1: sleep alone, listening for the creak of the floorboards, and
Speaker 1: tried to convince myself that we'd both just gotten busy
Speaker 1: stretched then the wacreate of life sometimes demanded. Everyone says
Speaker 1: freelancing is just periods of feasts, then famine, but nobody
Speaker 1: warns you about the gray stretches in between, when the
Speaker 1: closeness you've built on the couch or over paint spatter
Speaker 1: brunch plates gets buried beneath project deadlines and exhaustion. As
Speaker 1: I lay there listening to the soft tap of his
Speaker 1: pencil through the wall, I wondered where he was sketching.
Speaker 1: For the first time in six years. I couldn't picture
Speaker 1: it for a while. Well, our loft had been an
Speaker 1: ecosystem of overlapping projects, half Anish draft swirling between us.
Speaker 1: When we first met six years ago at the Egg
Speaker 1: conference in Seattle, I'd laughed at Nathan Sho's immaculate white
Speaker 1: and practically so in a damper. He asked if he
Speaker 1: could share my umbrella. I told him only if he
Speaker 1: could guess my favorite Panton's watch. He did, because of
Speaker 1: course he did. We joked then that we'd enter every
Speaker 1: ice bricker as a two person team, matching punds and
Speaker 1: heckling the speakers. It worked by the closing party. We'd
Speaker 1: crafted our own brand, sly ambitious, a little too caffeinated,
Speaker 1: both of us believing in cleverness and color theory like
Speaker 1: it was a religion. I fell for the way Nathan
Speaker 1: bit his thumbnail when he was on the cusp of
Speaker 1: an idea, The way he slid away from the crowd
Speaker 1: to check a shadow or take some silly polaroid of
Speaker 1: a sticker on a bathroom mirror. He told me I
Speaker 1: had the best laugh in any room. The clicks so
Speaker 1: fast our friends rolled their eyes when we moved in together.
Speaker 1: We picked an open a last ORPS studio in the
Speaker 1: old Town warehouse district, original brick, high shelves, a big
Speaker 1: room meet cat that we ended up adopting when the
Speaker 1: landlord left it behind. The space fit us weekend's men
Speaker 1: and promptu brunches with friends, gallery crawl until our feet heard,
Speaker 1: all collaborating on side projects. Frifty mid century chase clustered
Speaker 1: around the kitchen island, half a dozen poster ideas propped
Speaker 1: against the wall. In evenings which bowl on the sectional
Speaker 1: with wine, eviscerating the brand choices in whatever streaming show
Speaker 1: we'd picked that week. There were fights. Obviously, I never
Speaker 1: claimed perfect, but I'd loan from my parents disaster of
Speaker 1: a divorce to always be honest, even if the truth
Speaker 1: lefty rule. Nathan said he found that refreshing. His words.
Speaker 1: It's why we work CASS. Everyone else's just performing partnership.
Speaker 1: We're honest about the mess in between. I wore that
Speaker 1: like a badge, believing it more fiercely than may be
Speaker 1: anything else. Lately, though, the EA had changed like a
Speaker 1: new color introduced to an old painting, somehow throwing every
Speaker 1: other shade into question. Nathan claimed he was buried in
Speaker 1: meetings for an agency campaign, especially now that the agency
Speaker 1: had landed a big pitch with a fresh creative team
Speaker 1: pulled from the local community. He dropped Mita's name easily
Speaker 1: at first, usually followed by a quick detail new in
Speaker 1: town from Austin, incredible sense of style, runs on doubles espressos.
Speaker 1: At first, I demired his excitement. After all, new projects
Speaker 1: always let him up, and we'd always encourage each other
Speaker 1: to stretch, to make friends, to keep the social circuit lively.
Speaker 1: Once or twice I caught little weird gaps him leaving
Speaker 1: earlier for agency days. Warding off invitations to join the
Speaker 1: work croup for lunch. I told myself it was healthy.
Speaker 1: Our friends, especially Marco, teased us about being toun meish
Speaker 1: our lives of bran collaboration masquerading as a marriage. Marco
Speaker 1: said it lovingly, but the faintest trace of worry sometimes
Speaker 1: flickered between his words, like when he texts breathed casts.
Speaker 1: Don't let the work take over, I reassured him. Nathan
Speaker 1: and I always found our way back to each other,
Speaker 1: debriefing in the kitchen over cheap malbick roasting, terrible billboard
Speaker 1: redesigns we'd spotted on the drive home, except that transparency
Speaker 1: wasn't what it had been. I'd come into the living
Speaker 1: room later, and later finding Nathan with headphones in sketch
Speaker 1: pulled close back, hunched over something I wasn't shown. When
Speaker 1: I had nice him, he'd stiffened and laugh it off.
Speaker 1: A client wants a big revealed cast. You'd hear this
Speaker 1: style apart before I could get the bones finished. It's dung,
Speaker 1: but not deeply enough then to hurt more than my pride. Still,
Speaker 1: the routines built up, like Sedimond Ritchell's. We relied on
Speaker 1: because we trusted not just to each other, but the
Speaker 1: story we'd been telling usselves for years that we were different, stronger,
Speaker 1: the rare couple others envied. I wanted so badly to
Speaker 1: believe that was still true, even as little details started
Speaker 1: to feel out of place. The first Wednesday, Nathan asked
Speaker 1: me not to come to trivia. It was in the
Speaker 1: gentlest possible terms. He came in late. Is is rym gray,
Speaker 1: And as he set his back down, he said, Hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, trivia's getting real granular next week. Apparently
Speaker 1: it's just tech brainstorming with some of the agency crew.
Speaker 1: He'd be bored out of your mine, babe, he smiled,
Speaker 1: but in this flat apologetic way. It's honestly less fun lately.
Speaker 1: Everyone's weirdly competitive. Don't wait up for me. I tried
Speaker 1: to turn it into a joke, held that my wedding
Speaker 1: ring and said, what, I'm obsolete now I see how
Speaker 1: it is traded in the old model for someone who
Speaker 1: remembers which century Saints seraph was invented, He half smiled,
Speaker 1: wrapped me in one of us quick airy hugs, and
Speaker 1: pressed his lips to the top of my head. Not fair, cass,
Speaker 1: you're replaceable, but Meela's the only one who could spare
Speaker 1: Garriman backward after three Martin News. When he left, he
Speaker 1: took the new sketch pick. Didn't even noticed me watching
Speaker 1: that Sunday, as I was cleaning up the desk before
Speaker 1: starting on a logo draft, I picked up Nathan's back
Speaker 1: back to shove it out of the cleaning path. Inside
Speaker 1: on top of his laptop was a half drunk Claude.
Speaker 1: The cup was from Western Portier, small indy place clear
Speaker 1: across town where we only went twice, both times for
Speaker 1: mutual client meetings. Foam still clinging, elliptic prin mixed with
Speaker 1: pen scribbles on the side. One of those little napkins
Speaker 1: stopped next to a cup with a doodle some kind
Speaker 1: of rabbit in a brairie. I turned the cup in
Speaker 1: my hand, trying to gather a reason that made sense.
Speaker 1: Nathan rarely traveled so far for solo work. When he
Speaker 1: got home, I asked he went to Western Poitier. That's
Speaker 1: a trick, he barely looked up. Yeah, just needed a
Speaker 1: change of scene. I was behind on some concept sketches.
Speaker 1: A change of scene. I wanted to laugh. Normally switching
Speaker 1: up a routine ment and Instagram posts and at least
Speaker 1: two inside jokes. Now he hoarded away caps and napkins,
Speaker 1: hiding the aftertaste in his bag. I nearly mentioned the napkin,
Speaker 1: but the way he was holding his sketchbookt so tightly
Speaker 1: to his chest, so I couldn't bear to hear another defection.
Speaker 1: Dinner with friends that Friday was kind of performance. We
Speaker 1: squeezed for around the bee st row table, passing plates
Speaker 1: of small bite glasses, clinking around conversation. Nathan barely shifted
Speaker 1: when I touched his leg beneath the tablecloth. He was
Speaker 1: animated only when he and Milis arted roofing about absurd
Speaker 1: ad campaigns and the worst ONTs they'd seen on bus wraps. Millah,
Speaker 1: who I had met only once before, seemed to glitter
Speaker 1: all expressive hands, uneasy laughter, her hair short and sharply,
Speaker 1: bawled a little lightning bolt touch you flush at her
Speaker 1: wrist every time Nathan smiled at her, he looked five
Speaker 1: years younger. Later, I fought back a prick of panic,
Speaker 1: instead forcing a laugh when some one mentioned the agency's
Speaker 1: next event. Afterward, while we were brushing our teeth, I
Speaker 1: asked Nathan about Milla's project. Which agency client was it? Anyway?
Speaker 1: He spat, shrugged, and mumbled, you know, just that beautique distillery.
Speaker 1: Miel is a senior designer, so she's running point. They
Speaker 1: pushed me to the background. That's nothing, casts nothing. Why
Speaker 1: did the nothing feel like something I'd always believed? Told myself,
Speaker 1: told Marco, told any one who heard that open communication
Speaker 1: meant nothing could hide in the dark. That week, I
Speaker 1: belief started to tremble. It wasn't that I was jealous,
Speaker 1: I told myself. I was careful about that. After all,
Speaker 1: Nathan and I had never been possessive. We'd build open
Speaker 1: trust instead of boundaries, each of us with our own friends,
Speaker 1: own projects, our own late nights when one might wander elsewhere,
Speaker 1: but always circling back. What gnawed at me was the secrecy,
Speaker 1: the orphaned details he used to offer so much more freely.
Speaker 1: Time slept into a new routine. Nathan, at the door earlier,
Speaker 1: had bent his phone before he'd even finished his coffee.
Speaker 1: His manner got clipped preoccupied. Group texts from his trivia
Speaker 1: team pinged offin, but he answered only if I wasn't
Speaker 1: in the room. While early afternoon, when an unexpected client
Speaker 1: were schedule left me with a rare two free hours.
Speaker 1: I decided on a whim to drop by Nathan's agency office.
Speaker 1: I had told myself I missed our old spontaneous lunches.
Speaker 1: Maybe I could provide the tradition. The agency shared a
Speaker 1: floor in a convertible mill, raw concrete and aged windows,
Speaker 1: the kind of space that always smelled faintly of coffee
Speaker 1: and tone. Nathan almost jumped when I walked in. Cut
Speaker 1: mid conversation with Mielah, heads nearly touching over his sketch book.
Speaker 1: He straightened the sketch for vanishing into his messenger bag,
Speaker 1: and the tone between them snap taut. Mielah recovered, instantly
Speaker 1: smiling up at me and offering a Handshicker energy felt
Speaker 1: both genuinely friendly and locked in on Nathan, eyes glancing
Speaker 1: at him before every answer Gassi. Nathan's voice was falsely bright.
Speaker 1: He introduced me to Milah with a quick, silted summary,
Speaker 1: the most creative person I know. Hope she'll forgive our
Speaker 1: mess and Mielah echoed it, complimenting our logo workers of
Speaker 1: trying to perform the right measure of admiration. The smell
Speaker 1: of takout ty curry our favored to lingered on the
Speaker 1: edge of their shared desk. Two identical cardans both partially
Speaker 1: emptied a pair of chopstick stuck upright in the rice
Speaker 1: power lunch meal. E quipped, grinning toward Nathan. I tried
Speaker 1: to diffuse attention. So can I get a sneak peek
Speaker 1: at these top secret concepts. Nathan looked at Mila, then
Speaker 1: at me. Not quite ready for outside eyes, cass too early,
Speaker 1: agency politics, You know how it is. I pretended I did,
Speaker 1: even though we'd spend years sharing everything from silliest brainstorm
Speaker 1: to sticky revision rounds. The chill at his words pressed,
Speaker 1: I excused myself, quickly, pretending I had a long call scheduled.
Speaker 1: As I walked away, I heard a burst of laughter
Speaker 1: from behind the Glasston door. Back home. As I tidied
Speaker 1: the kitchen, I found a crumpled receipts stuff near the
Speaker 1: bottom of Nathan's messenger bag. Dinner for two at a marrow,
Speaker 1: the tiny beastro we always used to go for celebration
Speaker 1: date stimulights, tut boose candle wax dribbling over the edge
Speaker 1: of cycled wine bottles. He told me it was a
Speaker 1: team lunch last week, a working session, but the time
Speaker 1: stamp was late, just after ten, far too late for lunch.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ignore it, chalk it up to another oversight,
Speaker 1: but doubt verted through everything. I let the topic drop
Speaker 1: That evening, Nathan glanced up from his sketchbrook with tired,
Speaker 1: distracted eyes. Long couple of weeks, he said, massaging his temples.
Speaker 1: Don't know when this stress is going to lead up.
Speaker 1: When Marco called later that week and asked me out
Speaker 1: for a drink, I gladly said yes. He picked our
Speaker 1: regular haunt, a converted warehouse bar, half craft cocktails, half
Speaker 1: aphazard antiques over his second old fashioned. He grew quiet,
Speaker 1: looking at me as I scrolled through my phone, checking messages. Cass,
Speaker 1: you know I love you guys, right, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's been a vibe at trivia, not just agency work
Speaker 1: talk either. He tried to make it sound of hand,
Speaker 1: like he was gently teasing, but beneath it was concerned.
Speaker 1: Nathan and Mila are they not? Probably nothing? Sorry I
Speaker 1: shouldn't have said anything. His doubt seeped into me, like
Speaker 1: cold rain pulling into place as I pretended not to look.
Speaker 1: When Nathan left for trivia that next Wednesday. He was
Speaker 1: already at the door by six, pausing just long enough
Speaker 1: to say, don't wait up, I might crash it BNS
Speaker 1: if we go late. He brushed a quick kiss against
Speaker 1: my forehead, already half whitious. Yeber late that night, scrolling
Speaker 1: social media on my phone, A saw story tagged at
Speaker 1: the trivia bob blurred low light. I squinted. Dad scribbled
Speaker 1: on a napkin was a familiar sketch of stylized where
Speaker 1: Nathan used for years as his Creates signature. Next to it,
Speaker 1: a delicate wrists the edge of a small lightning bolt
Speaker 1: tattoo Meela. I showed Mako the post. He winced and
Speaker 1: changed the subject, urging me to join them at trivia
Speaker 1: sometime soon, and showed these agency people how it's done.
Speaker 1: Work should have been a haven at least, but it
Speaker 1: only made things worse. Signs felt uninspired, flat. Everywhere I looked,
Speaker 1: I saw my own self doubt refracted back. The same
Speaker 1: client stopped praising my drafts so readily, asking if I
Speaker 1: had time for extra revision runs. At night, I found
Speaker 1: Nathan asleep on the couch or hunch at the desk
Speaker 1: muttering about deadlines I never saw materialize on his shaved calendar.
Speaker 1: The tipping point came on a rare evening when I
Speaker 1: managed to face to face conversation with Nathan. No distractions,
Speaker 1: no friends, just us and the swoirling sediment at the
Speaker 1: bottom of a cheap wine bottle. I gathered the courage
Speaker 1: to ask voice forced neutrality, is something going on with
Speaker 1: you and Mielah? Nathan's joe worked a muscle twitching as
Speaker 1: he weighed how to play this. He managed to laugh feeble,
Speaker 1: but practiced. God cass. Mielah's going through a rough break up.
Speaker 1: She's reaching out to everyone at work, leaning on whoever's around.
Speaker 1: I guess I've been there. Maybe I've put too much
Speaker 1: energy into it. But she just needs a friend, that's all.
Speaker 1: You know how agency life gets its stressful as hell
Speaker 1: right now. His explanations felt rehearsed, not quite fitting the
Speaker 1: space between us any more. He reached for my hand,
Speaker 1: squeezing hard. He've always trusted me. I don't want to
Speaker 1: feel like I have to account for every conversation. There's
Speaker 1: nothing to worry about, I promise. I tried to smile.
Speaker 1: O kay, I said, just maybe loop me in every
Speaker 1: now and then, I kind of mishearing about your projects.
Speaker 1: My voice sounded small, even to my own ears. He hesitated,
Speaker 1: kiss my temple, you will when things calmed down, but
Speaker 1: he pulled away a few minutes later. If one glued
Speaker 1: to his hand again, the world kept on as if
Speaker 1: nothing had changed. Trivia knights came and went. Nathan grew
Speaker 1: more expert at a visions drop, his stray comments about
Speaker 1: agency drama, memoring apologies for late dinners, ducking out for
Speaker 1: supposed brainstorming walks with the group. He left for seats
Speaker 1: tangled in his jacket pockets, each one modest, but always
Speaker 1: for two, never three or four. The more I looked,
Speaker 1: the more the evidence curled at the edges, refusing to
Speaker 1: lie flat. One evening alone in the studio space, cleaning
Speaker 1: up the clot and Nathan never seemed to notice. I
Speaker 1: pulled the textbook from the shelf, a design history term
Speaker 1: he borrowed from me, tucked inside as if marking spot
Speaker 1: he needed to reference later. Was a photo I had
Speaker 1: never seen before. Nathan and Miela sithed by side at
Speaker 1: some heard exhibit, armst flung around each other's waists, grinning
Speaker 1: at the camera. With light in their eyes. The gallery
Speaker 1: walls behind them were hung with pieces from an up
Speaker 1: and coming local artist. It was an exhibit I'd wanted
Speaker 1: to see in Nathan had told me he bestuck in
Speaker 1: meetings all weakened. The feeling was less a burst of
Speaker 1: anger than a slow rising tired of fatigue. I pocketed
Speaker 1: the photo carefully, then set the text book back on
Speaker 1: the shelf. My hand shook. Every memory had built of
Speaker 1: our partnership, creative, romantic daily suddenly felt porous, arm reliable.
Speaker 1: In the light of Nathan's new boundaries. The easy transparency
Speaker 1: we'd always had, the casual dropping of details and confidences,
Speaker 1: was gone. I told myself, as I went to poor
Speaker 1: more wine and pretend to work on a client's logo,
Speaker 1: that maybe there was still a harmless explanation. Maybe Nathan
Speaker 1: needed a confidante, someone to share late meetings in raw
Speaker 1: ideas the way he used to whit me. Or maybe,
Speaker 1: as some paranoid part of me whispered, he'd found a mela,
Speaker 1: the thing we'd always believed was unique between the two
Speaker 1: of us. I wanted answers without blowing up a precarious balance.
Speaker 1: I needed to know the truth, but part of me,
Speaker 1: panicked at what stepping further would cost. I waited a
Speaker 1: few days before bringing anything up directly. Instead attracted small clues,
Speaker 1: stacking them up in my memory like pebbles. Nathan's sudden privacy,
Speaker 1: his emotional reticence, the new importance he put on trivia nights,
Speaker 1: and above all, how he no longer wanted to share
Speaker 1: his creative process with me when that used to be
Speaker 1: the heart of our evenings together. When I finally worked
Speaker 1: up the nerve to ask tentatively, almost playfully, Nathan's reaction
Speaker 1: was practiced Meela's just he started trailing off. Then she's
Speaker 1: been in a rough spot and the team needed someone
Speaker 1: to keep the creative energy up. That's all it is. Look,
Speaker 1: I know things have been tens, but you're reading into it.
Speaker 1: On a Friday, Marco called with a suggestion crash trivia
Speaker 1: next week. Cass, Seriously, you've got better brand recall than
Speaker 1: half those dudes. I'll go if your chicken. I laugh,
Speaker 1: Eager for any opening to normal as things, to get
Speaker 1: myself back into spaces Nathan had started subtly pushing me
Speaker 1: from the Next Wednesday, I did join the trivia group
Speaker 1: at the bar. The ambient hum made everything feel more normal,
Speaker 1: old wooden tables, pictures of beer, clusters of friends packed
Speaker 1: too close in the booth. Nathan seemed off on comfortable.
Speaker 1: He fated a smile once, then spent most of the
Speaker 1: evening locked in some technical banter with Mila Fozes pitchlow.
Speaker 1: Ever so often I'd catch Meala looking at me, as
Speaker 1: guarded but not in kind. I tried to keep up
Speaker 1: with the conversation, chiming in about a brand slogan, but
Speaker 1: felt invisible, an outsider to the current that now dictated
Speaker 1: their circle. When Nathan offered to walk me home after
Speaker 1: Meel excused herself quickly, I joked on the way to
Speaker 1: ol Loft, I guess trivia is too cool for me now.
Speaker 1: Nathan only nodded, holding my hand a little looser than
Speaker 1: he used to at home. He poured himself a neat
Speaker 1: bourbon rare for him on a week night, and retreated
Speaker 1: to the spare room, muttering something about a tight deadline.
Speaker 1: The rest of the night I heard him typing, sketching,
Speaker 1: talking in a low voice to some one on the phone.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was Marco, maybe a client. I no longer
Speaker 1: felt confident in my assumptions. The next day, my work
Speaker 1: bled into each hour. I couldn't focus on brown paletts
Speaker 1: or creative concepts. My mind kept circling back to that furdough.
Speaker 1: The shot glances at trivia, the way Nathan shielded his
Speaker 1: phone and sketched were canoe. But when he woke and
Speaker 1: offered me coffee in bed, he was warmth and charming again.
Speaker 1: The Nathan had fallen for and for a dangerous moment,
Speaker 1: I almost almost let myself believe him. Later, cleaning the kitchen,
Speaker 1: my fingers brushed against a fold of receipt in the trash.
Speaker 1: I nearly tossed it, but something habit maybe made me
Speaker 1: look closer. Two entrees at a marrow again that had
Speaker 1: written in Nathan's handwriting. Nathan had set he and the
Speaker 1: geist went out. The check told another story. That afternoon,
Speaker 1: I put all my stray evidence into Pila, my desk, photographs, receipts,
Speaker 1: screenshots of the trivia story, even the west and Podionakin
Speaker 1: just in case. I paced the apartment waiting for Nathan
Speaker 1: to return, were housing reasonable low stakes questions in my head,
Speaker 1: Afraid that if I pushed even a little too far,
Speaker 1: the thread would snap. I heard Nathan come in to
Speaker 1: Key's pitch, in his nervous pattern against the bowl. I
Speaker 1: washed him from the doorways, still clutching his sketch book
Speaker 1: this time, when I asked, Hey, Trivia, was it just guys?
Speaker 1: You said you'd be home by eleven, but it looked fun.
Speaker 1: He hesitated, then nodded, looking over my shoulder. YEA, just
Speaker 1: Ben and a couple from work. We lost. Neil is
Speaker 1: taking a night off. She's got stuff going on. But Mark,
Speaker 1: in a text earlier that night, had said Milla was
Speaker 1: the one who won the last round, besting everyone on
Speaker 1: a gear type Fistrivia. My skin crawled. I felt the
Speaker 1: well tilting beneath me, as if the smallest thing. One
Speaker 1: more unexplained Late night, Getapple Everything. That weekend I decided
Speaker 1: to investigate on impulse, I walked the length of the
Speaker 1: city to Western Poidere. The cafe was half full, students
Speaker 1: tucked behind glowing laptops, single gear bikes locked outside. I
Speaker 1: recognized the regular barrister ride away, a tall woman with
Speaker 1: the neon streak in her hair. She recognized me Nathan's wife, right,
Speaker 1: He and that girl with the tuctior in here twice
Speaker 1: a week they ordered the client table back corner. Don't worry,
Speaker 1: I won't charge you extra, she grinned, oblivious to the
Speaker 1: blood draining for my face. I wandered toward the back.
Speaker 1: There on the community inspiration board hung the sketchric part
Speaker 1: of a local artist showcase. The cover was the same
Speaker 1: at black as Nathan's new one. It was opened to
Speaker 1: a spread a pencil portrait of Mila delicate, lingering lines
Speaker 1: that had thrown back in after Beneath it, in Nathan's
Speaker 1: handwriting was a phrase, a private joke the two of
Speaker 1: us once shared, back from our conference days best in show.
Speaker 1: I reached a trembling hand toward the page already now,
Speaker 1: and then turned away before I could see any more.
Speaker 1: My head buzzed as I made my way home. Logic stuted,
Speaker 1: and maybe Nathan had meant nothing but it. Maybe all
Speaker 1: artist drew their muses. Or maybe I was finally seeing
Speaker 1: the truth that I had been unfolding, quiet and confident
Speaker 1: in the spaces we both refused to fill with honesty.
Speaker 1: I didn't know if I wanted the real answer. I
Speaker 1: collapsed onto our bed, the city sounds muffled by thick windows,
Speaker 1: my phone silent for the first time in days. The
Speaker 1: sketchbook's image pulsed in my mind, the private joke when
Speaker 1: owing to some one else. I felt displaced, floating between
Speaker 1: anger and confusion. The relationship we built no longer somewhere
Speaker 1: I could stand. When Nathan got home, I didn't ask anything.
Speaker 1: I watched him unlock the apartment, settle into his new routines,
Speaker 1: mix a drink, check his messages. He avoided my eyes,
Speaker 1: as if gaging what I might know. I wondered how
Speaker 1: much further I'd have to dig before the defenders slept,
Speaker 1: and how much I wanted to know what really lay
Speaker 1: beneath night Fell. In our old life, this would have
Speaker 1: been the hour with sketch side by side, laughing at
Speaker 1: odd proportions, or trading color notes, showing the comfortable silence
Speaker 1: only deep trust can bring. Now, the apartment felt cavernous
Speaker 1: and strange. Every sound magnified, the divisions between us widening
Speaker 1: by the minute. I went about grouping my own sketch book,
Speaker 1: the corner of Nathan's fertile jutting from its pages, Sleep
Speaker 1: evaded me. All I could do was wait, watching Shaddow's
Speaker 1: form against the wall, promising myself tomorrow had stop pretending
Speaker 1: I could bear not knowing tomorrow. I'd make him answer,
Speaker 1: But the truth I now saw would never come easily,
Speaker 1: especially not from the man I most believed I understood.
Speaker 1: Sleep never really came. By dawn, my nerves were struck
Speaker 1: high humming in the hollow behind my chest. I moved
Speaker 1: quietly so as not to wake Nathan, or maybe so
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have to see me awake before he was ready.
Speaker 1: He curled himself away from me in the nights bynarch,
Speaker 1: toward the wall, his breath shallow and uneven. From the hallway,
Speaker 1: I heard the faintest scrape of paper against paper, him
Speaker 1: again with that secret sketch book. In the guest room.
Speaker 1: The closed door felt like an intentional wound. I poured
Speaker 1: coffee forgetting the sugar, and watched steam ribbon up to
Speaker 1: the skylight while the city noise is slowly built outside.
Speaker 1: When Nathan emerged, I was glazed from too little sleep.
Speaker 1: I studied his movements, the way he wore the same
Speaker 1: black CODI now almost as armor, The way he avoided
Speaker 1: my gaze as he stuffed the sketch but deep in
Speaker 1: his back before even acknowledging me. Morning I managed, working
Speaker 1: to sun casual. I hope for a tiny spark, some
Speaker 1: ordinary joke, some kind overture. Nathan pored a cup beside me,
Speaker 1: only half filling it. A designed call in twenty he said,
Speaker 1: sorry to day's nuts. You know how kick off weeks ago.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday. I kept my tone totally, even usually your
Speaker 1: agency calls on Mondays or Fridays, he blinked, just a
Speaker 1: be too long. Yeah, well, they need me to walk
Speaker 1: through some last minute concerts with the client. There was
Speaker 1: a time when I knew every client by name had
Speaker 1: sat in on these coals as a fly on the wall,
Speaker 1: sketching alongside him for fun. Now a world of his
Speaker 1: work was a country I had once visited, now sailed
Speaker 1: at the border. Before he left, he darted over, pressed
Speaker 1: a careful kiss to my hairline, too quick to hold anyway.
Speaker 1: Don't wait up, he mumbled, scooping up his back back
Speaker 1: and hurrying out before I could say another word. I
Speaker 1: stood in our kitchen for almost fifteen minutes after, and
Speaker 1: to round my mug, mind spinning, I could see, even
Speaker 1: through my own defensiveness and pride, that whatever closeness we
Speaker 1: used to share herd Fred it wasn't only Mila. It
Speaker 1: was the way he didn't see me any more, or
Speaker 1: it did, but in some fogged up, peripheral kind of way.
Speaker 1: Once the front door click shot, I found myself moving
Speaker 1: almost involuntarily, to the guest room. We'd always respected one
Speaker 1: another's privacy, but I no longer trusted the grand rules.
Speaker 1: The air in there was stale and a little sweet
Speaker 1: deodor as a fighting old coffee. The room looked and disturbed,
Speaker 1: but on the desk sat an open pad with a
Speaker 1: few pencil shavings. Near By a different battered sketch book,
Speaker 1: the new one. The black Horn was gone. I ran
Speaker 1: my fingers across a desktop, searching for any trace of
Speaker 1: last night, beside a fewer race marks in a ghostly
Speaker 1: ring of a mug. I reminded myself I wasn't a snoop.
Speaker 1: I wasn't a paranoid's base. If anything, I'd leaned too
Speaker 1: hard toward believing the best of him, trusting too much,
Speaker 1: excusing the kinds of absences and silences he'd never once
Speaker 1: demanded from me. I didn't touch anything. I just stood there, thinking,
Speaker 1: half panicked, half numb. The apartment was oppresively still. I
Speaker 1: opened the windows, let the city move in around me.
Speaker 1: Tried to use the pulse of the morning to propel
Speaker 1: myself into work the logo revisions. I'd promised a client
Speaker 1: glade from my to do list and touched by none.
Speaker 1: After reading and were reading the same creative brief three times.
Speaker 1: I gave up and texted Marca, you were ed need
Speaker 1: to clear my brain, he replied in three seconds, flat
Speaker 1: out in ten trying the new bakery near the station, Marco,
Speaker 1: I realized, was one of the last people left in
Speaker 1: our lives who'd seen me before Nathan, who didn't require
Speaker 1: an explanation for why I might need distraction before nine
Speaker 1: on a workday. He was waiting when I arrived, coffee
Speaker 1: already in hand, pastry platter between us. I forced a
Speaker 1: smile as I sat. Am I losing my mind? Marco
Speaker 1: tell me straight. I tried to make light of it,
Speaker 1: but the mask didn't want to fit any more. He
Speaker 1: glanced at me, Careful, you're not. I wish I could
Speaker 1: say it's all in your head, Cass, I do, but
Speaker 1: Nathan's been different. We used to make fun of ages
Speaker 1: of robots, but lately he's one of them. Mila brings
Speaker 1: this energy. Yeah, she's hot and sharp, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: Everyone notices the chemistry. Most people think he unbothered, though,
Speaker 1: or they did until trevia last night. I flinched at that.
Speaker 1: I hadn't realized that even my attempts to hold it
Speaker 1: together had registered with our friends, or that any one
Speaker 1: would link my silence to what was happening between Nathan
Speaker 1: and Milah. Maybe it really is nothing, I said, voice
Speaker 1: too desperate. Maybe it's just a rough patch I need
Speaker 1: to ride out. Mako didn't answer. He reached over, squeezed
Speaker 1: my hand in his big, warm grip like an ankir,
Speaker 1: and let the silence hold for a minute. Then he
Speaker 1: changed the subject back to the merits of Scone's verses
Speaker 1: crossed us and I fell hollowed out in a new,
Speaker 1: quieter way. When I returned to the loft, the mail
Speaker 1: had come a rare bit of excitement, even now. On
Speaker 1: top the thick envelope, addressed to both Nathan and me
Speaker 1: the returned logo stamped from the Regional Design Council. I
Speaker 1: slid it open, hands trembling inside a judge's letter typed congratulations,
Speaker 1: preliminary round accepted entrance. Nathan Foster and Mela Thompson Root's
Speaker 1: revival branting concept. My name didn't appear anywhere. I scanned
Speaker 1: the rest their concert to historic topography inspired identity for
Speaker 1: some new Danton complex was something Nathan and I had
Speaker 1: rift about months ago, just for fun. Now it was real.
Speaker 1: When counsel led ahead Milla's name pared with his, and
Speaker 1: I'd found out because of a ginneer coenvelope. I set
Speaker 1: the letter on the kitchen island where Nathan would see it. Then, suddenly, furious,
Speaker 1: I dropped it into my own sketch book, as if
Speaker 1: hiding it could erase the reality. Nathan texted as dusk
Speaker 1: fell two hours later than he promised to be home,
Speaker 1: running late agency drinks. Don't wait up for the first time.
Speaker 1: I didn't answer. He didn't come home until almost midnight,
Speaker 1: sho scraping quietly in hull. I stayed in bed as closed,
Speaker 1: listening to the pauses in his routine. Keys down, drink poor,
Speaker 1: A few heavy footsteps, then silence. I knew he was
Speaker 1: standing in the door, rewatching me pretend to sleep. Seconds later,
Speaker 1: the guest room door closed again. I heard the faintest
Speaker 1: sound of vibray sketch book stashed away like a box
Speaker 1: of contraband. In the morning, Nathan was gone before I woke.
Speaker 1: I was left for coffee drags, my own sketch beclosed,
Speaker 1: pages empty. I let the hours pass until I felt
Speaker 1: steady enough to move. I forced down breakfast, then opened
Speaker 1: my laptop and tied out a short email to my
Speaker 1: favorite client, turning down joint proposals with Nathan for the
Speaker 1: next quarter. The ground between us had changed, though neither
Speaker 1: of us had yet said the words. I forced myself
Speaker 1: to keep up the routines. Afternoon, walked to the boga,
Speaker 1: exchanging a few words with the clerk, picking up fresh
Speaker 1: flowers for the kitchen, if only out of habit trix
Speaker 1: to keep the world feeling balanced somehow. The following Friday,
Speaker 1: as I lingered in the living room after midnight, I
Speaker 1: finally caught Nathan on the way back from Trevia. He
Speaker 1: came in flush, laughed, fading quickly as he saw me awake.
Speaker 1: Couldn't sleep, I offered. He nodded, dumping his bags hard
Speaker 1: by the door. Rough game screwed up around on advertising
Speaker 1: tag lines. Let me guess Mila knew them all. He frowned,
Speaker 1: half way between irritation and embarrassment. Not everything has to
Speaker 1: be about Mila. I tried to sit, calmly, measured. Are
Speaker 1: you seriously going to pretend everything's fine? Nathan? My voice cracked,
Speaker 1: more vulnerable than I wanted. He ran his hand through
Speaker 1: his hair. I'm tired, Cass, can we not right now?
Speaker 1: He started toward the guest room, and I watched, feeling
Speaker 1: for the first time something like contempt, not just at
Speaker 1: his evasion, but at my own inability to press for
Speaker 1: the truth. I rose walked our shelf for sketchboks. The
Speaker 1: years of our dating, our marriage chronicled in a messy
Speaker 1: time line of creative hope. I pulled a random one,
Speaker 1: flipping through old spreads, silly portraits of each other, notes
Speaker 1: from your we never painted. The stub of a grocery
Speaker 1: list turned into a typography exercise. Memories punched through the fog.
Speaker 1: Brief welled up so suddenly I sat down hard on
Speaker 1: the kitchen floor, trembling. I pressed my face to my
Speaker 1: knees and let the well shrink for five minutes, letting
Speaker 1: myself feel how lost I felt inside our home. I
Speaker 1: slept badly. The next morning. Nathan was gone for a
Speaker 1: long climb breakfast, his foam ping twice on the counter,
Speaker 1: both times a flurry of notifications that I heard but
Speaker 1: didn't dereject. Later that afternoon, needing something to do with
Speaker 1: my hands, I tided Nathan's side of the closet, organizing
Speaker 1: t shirts and jeans, looking for some anchor and familiar jaws.
Speaker 1: A shirt saf caught on a zipper in his duffel bag.
Speaker 1: I tried to free it and found sipped into the
Speaker 1: inner pouch a fold of receipt from a boutique wine sharp,
Speaker 1: two glasses, one bottle, and a charge which for the
Speaker 1: same night, as is alleged agency drinks. The address match
Speaker 1: to wine bar we'd once gone to when we first
Speaker 1: moved in, hidden away at the edge of the city's
Speaker 1: arts district, meaningful dates now repurposed. At this point, the
Speaker 1: mental tally of inconsistencies was alleger, with far too many
Speaker 1: entries mill after hours were just Mila sketch books, hidden
Speaker 1: projects mentioned only after the fact or not at all.
Speaker 1: Wanting to feel less alone, I texted Marco again. This
Speaker 1: time my text was less a request for coffee than
Speaker 1: a plea for honesty. He called me right away. You
Speaker 1: want me to come over His voice was tight with concern.
Speaker 1: Can we just talk? My voice was so small it
Speaker 1: made me irrationally angry always, he said, be twenty minutes
Speaker 1: when Marko arrived. He didn't bother with platitudes. If I'm
Speaker 1: out of line, castell me. But Nathan, he is with
Speaker 1: Mila a lot trivia, agency drinks, coworking. It's the talk, honestly,
Speaker 1: people Notice how long I asked my throat dry? He
Speaker 1: was quiet, considering since about a month after Meala joined.
Speaker 1: But look, maybe it really is all work. You know
Speaker 1: of a lot of new talent at the agency, and
Speaker 1: Nathan's always gotten close with whoever is most interesting. Right,
Speaker 1: Remember how it was with Kevin. He tried to laugh,
Speaker 1: but even the irony in his voice failed. It never
Speaker 1: felt like this though you two were always solid. Just
Speaker 1: thought you should know how it looks. If I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: I'll apologize forever. I'm glad you told me. I sit softly,
Speaker 1: looking straight at him, and I was if nothing else,
Speaker 1: Marco was proof that I wasn't fabricating this out of
Speaker 1: jealousy or insecurity. The air between us was heavy with
Speaker 1: the weight of things left and said. Marco's visit ended
Speaker 1: with a longer than normal hug that I clung to,
Speaker 1: my fingers digging into his sweater. After he left, I
Speaker 1: felt something shift. My fear, my need for answers finally
Speaker 1: fractured into determination. If Nathan wouldn't tell me, I'd find
Speaker 1: out myself. That Sunday, I spent the morning hunched over
Speaker 1: my laptop, combing through our share Google calendar, our client emails,
Speaker 1: the folders we'd always left open out of mutual trust.
Speaker 1: Nathan's appointment history was at Jake's, a puzzle pieces obviously
Speaker 1: shuffled to Masco for lapse calls. The cut through dinner hours,
Speaker 1: locations mismatched to agency events, Cryptic locks marked agency brainstorm
Speaker 1: that coincided with photos I'd seen of him and Mila
Speaker 1: Art celebrating, arms tossed around one another. A new confusion arose.
Speaker 1: Some evenings looked double booked agency meetings for him, the
Speaker 1: gallery openings for Mela, yet always the after hours drinks
Speaker 1: aligned one footo a Meala's instagram posted the late but
Speaker 1: with metadata from earlier in the evening, showed her sketching
Speaker 1: at a familiar bar, the sleeve of the man sitting
Speaker 1: across from her visible in the corner, mashed Nathan's favorite
Speaker 1: den and jacket warm pail from years of use. I
Speaker 1: tried not to obsess over details, but patterns merged on
Speaker 1: their own, Recurring mentions in captions, Likes exchange within seconds,
Speaker 1: playful comments and private jokes sleep in their public feeds.
Speaker 1: I clicked deeper, followed hasteks to go back through months
Speaker 1: of posts. There it was another photo gallery bathroom selfie
Speaker 1: mere the grinning Nathan's profile in the blurry background, examining
Speaker 1: the towel like he was planning a renovation. The caption
Speaker 1: Some nights, the right company finds you before you even
Speaker 1: know you needed. With each new cleue, the pit in
Speaker 1: my stomach intensified, but so did my resolve. A few
Speaker 1: days later, I set my alarm earlier than Nathan we
Speaker 1: ever expect me up. I waited for him to leave,
Speaker 1: then rummaged through our electronic straw until I found the
Speaker 1: Spirit tablet we both used for creative briefings. Nathan almost
Speaker 1: never locked out of anything. His accounts ought or filled emails,
Speaker 1: shared drives, tea maps. I wasn't sure what I was
Speaker 1: looking for exactly. What I found instead was a trail
Speaker 1: of messages in a group chats for clients up I'd
Speaker 1: only used once or twice under his account. The icon
Speaker 1: was new, an annochious blue speech bubble, easy to overlook inside.
Speaker 1: I score Pastel worked charter until I've found a private
Speaker 1: for it. Between n and Emility, the conversation was thick
Speaker 1: with design jargon, creative banter, and more acutely, jokes and
Speaker 1: confidences that were once my territory. Messages from Nathan sent
Speaker 1: after midnight, sentences trailing intimacy. No one else gets how
Speaker 1: my brain works. Can't believe we only met this year.
Speaker 1: From Miela, Ye make work feel exciting again, like when
Speaker 1: I first started in design. Thank you for making the
Speaker 1: city feel less lonely, then less ambiguous Meelah. If I'm
Speaker 1: being honest, you're the only reason I'm still at this agency.
Speaker 1: Nathan Well, saying, don't know how I'd survived these weeks
Speaker 1: without you keeping it unpredictable. I scrolled further, my hand sweating,
Speaker 1: heart thudding so hard I almost didn't dare keep reading.
Speaker 1: There were no decorations of love, but everything else was there.
Speaker 1: The emotional closeness, the confessions, the belt of trust where
Speaker 1: our marriage used to live. One exchange date stamp three
Speaker 1: nights ago. Stop me flat, Milla. Some day you'll have
Speaker 1: to sketch me for real, not just for a work brief.
Speaker 1: Nathan did that already. Hope you don't freak when you
Speaker 1: see it in a cafacial case. Felt right to show
Speaker 1: what you bring out in me, Millah. I'd never freak.
Speaker 1: You see me the way I want to be seen.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Anne. I dropped the tablet my breath stuttering,
Speaker 1: tears came hot and silent, drawn less from rage than
Speaker 1: from a brutal kind of knowing. It hit me, Milah,
Speaker 1: have replaced me, not in bed, as far as I knew,
Speaker 1: but in every other space that once mattered. I sat
Speaker 1: there until my legs tingled, feeling strip bare. In the afternoon,
Speaker 1: I forced myself up, somehow made it to the kitchen,
Speaker 1: and like I was sturring in a version of some
Speaker 1: one else's life, tixted Marco. Can we talk tonight? Need
Speaker 1: a friend? He answered, immediately here for you. I'll bring food.
Speaker 1: I barely responded. When he arrived with takeout at a
Speaker 1: bottle of wine. I told him everything, all the pieces
Speaker 1: thivery evidence I gathered. He listened without flinching. Let me cry,
Speaker 1: handed me napkins filled my glass. When I finished, he
Speaker 1: was quiet for a long time, the city's noise sneak
Speaker 1: him beneath the slow jazz from the speakers. Cass, You
Speaker 1: didn't do anything wrong, he said finally, But you deserve
Speaker 1: honesty from your partner, even if it hurts. The words
Speaker 1: pulse drew me comfort and a kind of permission. I
Speaker 1: wasn't the villain in my own story. I didn't sleep
Speaker 1: that night, my body wired for confrontation, for clover, or
Speaker 1: at least for something to break the surface. Nathan came
Speaker 1: home late, didn't check my side of the bed, went
Speaker 1: straight for the spare room. The oldest would have culled together,
Speaker 1: spun embarrassing truce healed before sleep, not any more. When
Speaker 1: I woke before dawn, I knew what I had to do.
Speaker 1: I spent the day cleaning the apartment top to bottom,
Speaker 1: picking up books, clear and clatter, consciously denying myself for
Speaker 1: any avenue for distraction. I needed his surroundings to be neutral.
Speaker 1: The spacecrabed of history, no accidental triggers, no arguments about houseworker,
Speaker 1: old text threads on the fridge. By four, I was ready.
Speaker 1: I texted Nathan be home for dinner. Need to talk,
Speaker 1: he replied, with the thumbs up emoji and nothing else.
Speaker 1: He came through the door just after eight, bags in hand, knees, jettery,
Speaker 1: as if he sensed the tension before I spoke a word.
Speaker 1: Something smells good, he said, trying for normal. I didn't cook,
Speaker 1: I replied, keeping my voice flat. He paused, set his
Speaker 1: keys in their usual hovered at the threshold to the kitchen,
Speaker 1: like an intruder in his own house. What's up? I
Speaker 1: led him to the table, the evidence already set out,
Speaker 1: the receipts, a gallery photo, the open sketchbook with Mili's portrait,
Speaker 1: the envelope from the design council, a single knakin with
Speaker 1: a blue and grubbit in a breret. He stared at
Speaker 1: the pile of beat longer than necessary, then shifted his weight,
Speaker 1: started to deny it to spin. But my eyes must
Speaker 1: have told him I was past comforting explanations set Nathan,
Speaker 1: I said, we're not moving until this is up. He
Speaker 1: sat his hands trembling on the table, face sickly pale.
Speaker 1: I took a breath, swallowing hard, willing myself not to cry,
Speaker 1: before the words poured out. Not yet, When did I
Speaker 1: become the outsider in my own marriage? Nathan's mouth opened
Speaker 1: shut open again For a second. I half expected him
Speaker 1: to loff, make some wounded, self deprecating joke, brush it
Speaker 1: away with charm, But all the air scene sucked out
Speaker 1: of him. He looked down at the table instead, tracing
Speaker 1: the edge of the photograph with his thumb, then pulling
Speaker 1: back like it burned. The whole room felt brittle. I
Speaker 1: heard his breath catch a tiny, involuntary sound, and in
Speaker 1: that silence, I realized for the first time that he
Speaker 1: was flat out afraid. Cassie. It's complicated. He started a
Speaker 1: voice rulph, but caught himself. He pressed his palm flat
Speaker 1: to the table, steadying. I reached for steadiness myself. It's
Speaker 1: not did you cheat on me? Nathan? Just say the
Speaker 1: truth right now. I need a clean He squeezed his
Speaker 1: eyes shut, chess working. No, I didn't sleep with her.
Speaker 1: I never crossed that line. But you wanted to my
Speaker 1: voic sure could not angry, only exhausted. He didn't answer. Instead,
Speaker 1: he glanced at every piece of evidence scattered between us,
Speaker 1: the sketch book, the photo, the designed council, letter, the
Speaker 1: clever little napkin. His fingers purged toward his phone, then away.
Speaker 1: I didn't set out to hurt you, he whispered, the
Speaker 1: words drifting. We just connected, that's all Meala got me
Speaker 1: in places I thought he used to. But lately it's
Speaker 1: like you don't even want to talk about work, Cass.
Speaker 1: Whenever I tried, you only had criticism or were too
Speaker 1: wrapped in your own revisions. And to Mela listened. She
Speaker 1: pushed me in the right ways I needed that. I
Speaker 1: wanted to shout that he'd never bothered to tell me
Speaker 1: what he needed, but the truth was too hollow find her. Instead,
Speaker 1: I stood, pushed my chair back, made him look at me.
Speaker 1: So you replace me, I said, quietly, with her, in
Speaker 1: your work, in your nights, in every detail. You stopped
Speaker 1: haunding to me. He finally looked at me, agony in
Speaker 1: something almost childlike in his eyes. I didn't mean for
Speaker 1: it to happen. You and me, we were always partners.
Speaker 1: I just when Mila started, everything was new and I
Speaker 1: felt seen again. I knew it wasn't fair. He could
Speaker 1: have told me, I said, The words sounded foreign old.
Speaker 1: You could have told me instead of lying with every explanation,
Speaker 1: he sagged, then deflated. I was scared. The more I
Speaker 1: leaned on her, the further you seemed, and the more
Speaker 1: I lied to try to keep both. I thought it
Speaker 1: had blow. I didn't think he'd ever his voice failed.
Speaker 1: You didn't think i'd ever see you a finished, really
Speaker 1: see what you become, he cringed, pressing a fist to
Speaker 1: his forehead. There it was between us now, not just Mielah,
Speaker 1: but the truth of Nathan's absence, how he'd left me
Speaker 1: behind in all the thousand tiny ways before ever touching
Speaker 1: her hand. The sketch of clay cracked open as a wound.
Speaker 1: The phrase beneath Miela's portrait cut deeper than any physical betrayal.
Speaker 1: Best in shore, the joke that used to belong to
Speaker 1: us alone. He tried, leaning across the table as a
Speaker 1: distance could be closed so easily. I'm sorry, Cass, for
Speaker 1: all of it, he said. It just got away from me.
Speaker 1: The words barely skimmed the surface. I want this marriage
Speaker 1: to work, he said, a note of desperation. I do.
Speaker 1: We could see someone work through this, dear still my
Speaker 1: best friend. I almost laughed, but it turned into something
Speaker 1: else entirely he made merely your best friend, Nathan. The
Speaker 1: rest is just a wreckage. He put his head in
Speaker 1: his hands. This isn't about her, he started, It's never
Speaker 1: just about her. I interrupted softer. It's what you let happen,
Speaker 1: what you chose, he stopped, letting mean long before you
Speaker 1: let me lay in. The clock ticked on the wall.
Speaker 1: A sorrown echoed from the street below, rising and trailing away.
Speaker 1: Neither of us moved. After a long silence, I cleared
Speaker 1: my throat, found the tiniest scrap of composure. I can't
Speaker 1: stay in a place where E'm an afterthought. I can't
Speaker 1: be third in my own marriage. He looked up for real
Speaker 1: horror in his eyes. You're not Cass, I swear, don't
Speaker 1: say anything you can't make true. He stopped, mouth working
Speaker 1: through a boarded apologies, then just sat his shoulders crumpled.
Speaker 1: He picked at a thread on his sleeve, refusing to
Speaker 1: meet my eye. I went to the bedroom, gathered my
Speaker 1: overnight bag with the noun efficiency of some ontering her
Speaker 1: own life as a rental. Two brush, two changes of clothes,
Speaker 1: a couple of sketch books, as if I was leaving
Speaker 1: for a conference, not a divorce. I could hear Nathan
Speaker 1: pacing the kitchen, the scrape of a glass against the counter.
Speaker 1: He didn't come after me. My heart thundered in my errors,
Speaker 1: but my hands were steady. I slung the bag over
Speaker 1: my shoulder, chat my phone. Nothing from Marco yet, which
Speaker 1: meant he hadn't seen my early text. Still I knew
Speaker 1: he'd answer on the first ray. I stood in the
Speaker 1: doorway a moment, looking at the apartment, the light bleeding
Speaker 1: across our gallery wall, the shells cluttered with years of glaboration,
Speaker 1: every Marcus Garner. Nathan appeared, blocking the exit, tears standing
Speaker 1: on Chad in his eyes. If you go, is that it?
Speaker 1: He asked? Is there no fixingness? I looked him full
Speaker 1: in the face so he could see how much it
Speaker 1: cost to answer. I need you to respect my choice, Nathan.
Speaker 1: I need space to figure out if there's any trust
Speaker 1: you haven't broken. He didn't argue, didn't reach for me.
Speaker 1: Maybe he finally recognized how truly gone I was, how
Speaker 1: little I was left to salvage, how the distance between
Speaker 1: us was bigger than any number of apologies. I didn't
Speaker 1: touch him as I walked past, didn't hark, didn't say
Speaker 1: I loved him, because loving him now would be a
Speaker 1: story I no longer believed the city. Ere hit me
Speaker 1: called outside the building, I die old Marco. He picked
Speaker 1: up with a tangle hell low, and I let the
Speaker 1: tears fall freely for the first time all day. Can
Speaker 1: I crash with you, I asked, voice cracking. I can't,
Speaker 1: I can't be there. His answer was immediate, always, I'll
Speaker 1: make up the couch. As I walked, I felt the
Speaker 1: first ditges of relief cut through de grief, both sharper
Speaker 1: than I'd thought possible. I tried not to look back
Speaker 1: at the windows, the golden rectangle, hiding Nathan behind a
Speaker 1: veil of our old life at Marco's apartment. He didn't
Speaker 1: ask for details. He just handed me a blanket, let
Speaker 1: me fold onto the couch, murmured that I could take
Speaker 1: all the time I needed. I scrolled through my phone
Speaker 1: for an hour, reading and were reading. The group chat
Speaker 1: with Nathan and our wider friends circled, dissecting old jokes,
Speaker 1: holding the fragments of the life, rebuilt, invitations to design
Speaker 1: mete up to trivier caps. Nothing I wanted. Ere I
Speaker 1: typed out a simple group message, shaky but clear, Nathan
Speaker 1: and I are separating. Don't ask for details, please just
Speaker 1: respect that I need space. A few supportive replies came
Speaker 1: in one or two side texts of awkward concern, but
Speaker 1: mostly silence. I felt cutlass from a world i'd thought
Speaker 1: anchored me ent on now. I lay there as Marko
Speaker 1: cleaned quietly in the kitchen, music low and careful from
Speaker 1: his speaker, as if the right plays might keep me intact.
Speaker 1: My phone vibrated one, two, three messages from Nathan. The first,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, please come home. The next, I never meant
Speaker 1: for this to go so far. The last, I'll give
Speaker 1: you space, but I love you, Cass. I stared at
Speaker 1: the screen a long time, feeling the ghost of the
Speaker 1: six years that had made us who we were. I
Speaker 1: didn't answer him. I shut the phone off, finally leaving
Speaker 1: him in the dark, at least for the night. In
Speaker 1: the morning, I composed emails to two major clients explaining
Speaker 1: that all upcoming work with Nathan as a partner would
Speaker 1: be reassigned or dissolved, citing personal reasons. I kept its
Speaker 1: sterile efficient. Most clients replied with short, noncommittal lines, one
Speaker 1: picking up on the tension offered condolences and a promise
Speaker 1: to keep me on solo projects. Cutting Nathan out professionally
Speaker 1: was almost more painful than anything else, the final wound
Speaker 1: in a partnership that used to make me feel brilliant,
Speaker 1: not disposable. Over the next two days, I slept pearly,
Speaker 1: waking in an unfamiliar room to sunlight slanting over Marco's bookshelves.
Speaker 1: When I checked social media, I found Nathan had removed
Speaker 1: the last couple of photos of us together, and Mielah's
Speaker 1: account was newly private. The trivia group chat trank to
Speaker 1: half its members. Sides were being chosen, lines drawn beneath
Speaker 1: the polite surface. I got a few gentle texts fro
Speaker 1: mutual friends, one from Julia, who simply wrote, I'm here,
Speaker 1: no questions. I wept with relief at the kindness. Nathan
Speaker 1: messaged once more, this time with a list of places
Speaker 1: he'd be staying if I wanted the loft alone. He
Speaker 1: didn't ask to me to just signed off. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I hope you find what you need. Marco encouraged me
Speaker 1: to focus on my own work again. He used to
Speaker 1: tell me design was your oxygen, remember, he joked gently.
Speaker 1: He helped me hold my supplies to his guest room
Speaker 1: and set up a makeshift work station. Slowly I started
Speaker 1: to outline concepts for my own solo exhibit. The secret
Speaker 1: idea I'd always put off until life or Nathan's schedule
Speaker 1: made everything else see more urgent. I noticed a shift.
Speaker 1: I wasn't checking Nathan's whereabouts every hour. The question of
Speaker 1: what he might be doing with Miller, if he was
Speaker 1: even seeing how became less relevant, replaced by the throb
Speaker 1: of my own ambition, long stifled by the routines we'd
Speaker 1: let calcify. By the end of the week, my show
Speaker 1: was arranged opening night at a tiny co op gallery
Speaker 1: with plain white walls and the smell of new paint.
Speaker 1: Friends came Nathan did two, arriving late and hovering in
Speaker 1: the entry. I saw him in the reflection of a
Speaker 1: glossy artrant, his hands deep in his pockets. Uncertain. I
Speaker 1: sent a message to the gallery merger. If Nathan asks,
Speaker 1: please let him no, I can't talk. Not to night.
Speaker 1: He left before the show ended. Later Marco said he
Speaker 1: lingered on the sidewalk for a while, but didn't try
Speaker 1: to come in again. I closed the exhibit, pulling my
Speaker 1: favorite pieces at the end, stacking canvases softly in the
Speaker 1: trunk of Marco's car. The air was cold, but the
Speaker 1: silence around me was come. Not the brittle hush of
Speaker 1: my marriage and traveling, but the clean, quiet possibility. On
Speaker 1: the Monday, after I took a morning walk, trying to
Speaker 1: recalibrate my routines, to see if I could find peace
Speaker 1: in the empty spaces Nithan had left behind. I stopped
Speaker 1: in at the bright, bustling Faey I'd always loved most,
Speaker 1: not for the distance from our old haunts, but for
Speaker 1: how the sunlight drew patterns over the little two top tables.
Speaker 1: I ordered coffee and a cossa, pulled a new sketch
Speaker 1: book from my bag, and took a corner seat by
Speaker 1: the window. The walls were patterned with art student canvasses
Speaker 1: and hopeful prints. Above the espresso bar, I hesitated, watching
Speaker 1: my own reflection take shape against the city streams outside.
Speaker 1: I had sworn around the eyes, but recognizably myself. There
Speaker 1: was no one at the table crossed for me, No
Speaker 1: one scrouping, clever and jokes were trading creative secrets. No
Speaker 1: more weight of explanations or a proofs to collect just
Speaker 1: me a blank page, as mudge of pencil held steady
Speaker 1: in my hand, The hum of the cafero is around me, chatter,
Speaker 1: the cline of mugs, footsteps over cracked hardwood flows. I
Speaker 1: set pencil to paper and began to draw. Not for
Speaker 1: a client, not for Nathan, not for a group project
Speaker 1: or trivial prize, but just to see what I could
Speaker 1: make without an agenda. My lines were hesitant, stitched through
Speaker 1: with everything I was feeling, each marked proof that I
Speaker 1: could still make something by myself. I drew until the
Speaker 1: sun moved far enough that my hands gassed faint shadows
Speaker 1: across a page. When I looked up, my reflection in
Speaker 1: the glass gave me back a small, genuine smile, fragile
Speaker 1: but true. For the first time in a very long while,
Speaker 1: I felt the life had built for myself begin to
Speaker 1: take shape, simple, raw and holy mine. As I packed
Speaker 1: up my half finished sketch and tossed my pencil back
Speaker 1: into my bag, my mind inventory in the coming hours,
Speaker 1: I felt the dual weight and weightlessness of change. The
Speaker 1: ache in my ribes a dult kind of hollowsareness, replaced
Speaker 1: by quite a knowledge of what I had lost and
Speaker 1: maybe eventually what I stood again. I lingered with my
Speaker 1: coffee until only court Drakes remain my phone, face down
Speaker 1: and silent. There was no more urgent message from Nathan,
Speaker 1: no new apology, just the drift of notifications unrelated to
Speaker 1: the life. I just cut myself free from on the street.
Speaker 1: The air carried the hint of early spring, sharp and expectant.
Speaker 1: I started back to Maco's. The click of my boos
Speaker 1: on the pavement a mechronum I rehearsed as I walked.
Speaker 1: What conversations were still to come, splitting accounts, final emails,
Speaker 1: maybe the awkward explanation to the neighbors who'd always looked
Speaker 1: up to us as it was artists. It didn't sting
Speaker 1: so much as feel surreal, like watching a routine performed
Speaker 1: by some one else. Days following that last conversation with
Speaker 1: Nathan became a blur of endings. I reached out to
Speaker 1: our landlord, asking about removing Nathan from the lease, exchanging
Speaker 1: practicalities that belonged to a version of me I hadn't
Speaker 1: met until now. There was no drama beyond what was necessary.
Speaker 1: Nathan responded with characteristic restraint, His words flattened to the clinical.
Speaker 1: Packing up my things was a study and detachment and instinct.
Speaker 1: I claimed the showed supplies that were mine, separated his
Speaker 1: sketchbooks and clean stacks, leftis and touched on the lower shelf.
Speaker 1: Each item I picked up seemed to weigh more than
Speaker 1: a shared warm mugs from artists markets Hald's. We'd both
Speaker 1: used doll gear, designed books with margin, eally written and
Speaker 1: a shorthand. Wou'd inventedigator some things I wanted desperately to keep,
Speaker 1: but left behind anyway, certain that hanging on would only
Speaker 1: reenforce a pain I couldn't nurse back into stripe. Marco,
Speaker 1: a reliable buffer, never pressed me to talk, but kept
Speaker 1: close enough that I wasn't entirely alone unless I needed
Speaker 1: to be. He handled the phone calls, saying Cassie will
Speaker 1: circle back to the gallery, reper returning and misplaced text
Speaker 1: from Nathan with a simple she need's time. Midweek, mutual
Speaker 1: friends started reaching out, choosing sides in subtle ways. A
Speaker 1: couple of Nathan's agency but as unfollowed me, shrinking my
Speaker 1: circle further, while Julia and one of the friends sent
Speaker 1: fruit delivery one night with a note take care of yourself.
Speaker 1: We love you, no questions trivia nights I learned to
Speaker 1: Marco slowly evaporated attendants dropped mere the stepped aside, and
Speaker 1: what was left was shy and fractured, unresolved questions, still
Speaker 1: not the edges of my resolve. At random times, I'd
Speaker 1: find myself scrolling back through all photos of Nathan mid
Speaker 1: laugh on an autumn hike, of the two of us,
Speaker 1: arms slung around each other, at a pop up gallery
Speaker 1: of pages and pages of old project notes in both
Speaker 1: our handwriting. I flicked through them quickly, desperate not to
Speaker 1: get stuck, searching for a proof or roman of the
Speaker 1: moment the slide had truly begun. I never found it,
Speaker 1: only lived alongside the quiet, steady erosion of trust. Nathan
Speaker 1: didn't try to see me in person again, but a
Speaker 1: package arrived at Marco's a few days after I had
Speaker 1: moved in a stack of my personal things, and at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the box, and though it slept half
Speaker 1: under a sketch of the two of us from years ago,
Speaker 1: not a letter, just a line in his handwriting I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry. I hope you remembered the good stuff. I
Speaker 1: wanted to snap the paper in half, but instead I
Speaker 1: pushed it back into the envelope and hid it away.
Speaker 1: The separation leaped into every corner of my world. I
Speaker 1: sent the formal email to our freelance clients, an emotional
Speaker 1: and brief carving myself away from the lost collaboration. Most
Speaker 1: accepted my explanation without comment. A couple offered more work,
Speaker 1: as if pity could be currency. I accepted out of necessity,
Speaker 1: but resolved that my next project would be my own,
Speaker 1: untouched by any echo of him. And then there was
Speaker 1: me lais ghostly presence. In the aftermath, I heard second
Speaker 1: tent that she had changed agencies. No messages from her
Speaker 1: except one late night email that hit my spam folder. Cassie,
Speaker 1: for what it's worth, I never meant to hurt you.
Speaker 1: Nathan wasn't honest with either of us. I'm sorry, take care.
Speaker 1: I let it sit on red, unsure whether acknowledgment would
Speaker 1: yeal or just wreck the wound a second time. Between
Speaker 1: all the errands and quiet suffering, there was the strange,
Speaker 1: raw feeling of living alone with my creativity again. I
Speaker 1: started sketching with no purpose but to fill my hands,
Speaker 1: straining together lines and colors, not for a job or
Speaker 1: a brief or an audience, but just to see what
Speaker 1: would come. Sometimes the work was ugly, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: startled me by feeling whole. By the second weekend my
Speaker 1: exhibit was set to open. I handled the details myself,
Speaker 1: press releases, invitations, a hanging schedule that let me choose
Speaker 1: the order of my own pieces. Every decision, every mark,
Speaker 1: belongs solely to me. When Marko drove me to the opening,
Speaker 1: one hand on the wheel, I found myself humming along
Speaker 1: to the radio, nerve spiking not from fear of being seen,
Speaker 1: but from anticipation of whom I might to come, with
Speaker 1: no partner to retreat behind. The night of the opening,
Speaker 1: addressed in a way I hadn't in years, silent black jeans,
Speaker 1: a soft blue shirt I'd always loved but Nathan used
Speaker 1: to say was too bright. Marko grew read mutual friends
Speaker 1: at the door, filtering questions while I made small talk
Speaker 1: and shook hands, letting the noise of other people's excitement
Speaker 1: carry me through. At the center of the gallery, beneath
Speaker 1: strong white lights, I stood before the largest piece in
Speaker 1: my new collection, a strange abstract burst that came together
Speaker 1: in a sleepless midnight fit. Lines and collar blocks swelling,
Speaker 1: edged with a sharpness, and hope I hadn't dare before.
Speaker 1: It didn't look like anything Nathan would have made. Someone
Speaker 1: beside me, Julia, I think, touched my arm and whisper,
Speaker 1: you look like yourself to night. For a moment I
Speaker 1: felt it was true. Somewhere near the end of the night,
Speaker 1: I spotted Nathan outside, standing on the far coat, hands
Speaker 1: deep in his pockets, looking at the crowd, but not
Speaker 1: stepping inside. He stayed for several minutes before finally turning
Speaker 1: away and disappearing down the block. I didn't follow, didn't wave.
Speaker 1: At last, the axes of my world no longer linked
Speaker 1: to whether or not he was near. After the show,
Speaker 1: Marco and I bundled canvasses into the back of his
Speaker 1: hatchback and drove out of the city, the two of
Speaker 1: us listening to old son from our college days, talking
Speaker 1: about anything but the past month. When I finally called
Speaker 1: under the covers of Marco's spare room, I realized I'd
Speaker 1: gone an entire twelve our day without checking my phone
Speaker 1: for Nathan's messages, or worrying about unfinished conversations, or even
Speaker 1: thinking of Mila. When Monday arrived, I worked before dawn
Speaker 1: to a kind of expecting hushin Marko's apartment, as if
Speaker 1: the world were queuing itself up for a final act.
Speaker 1: I slept on sneakers and padded out into the city,
Speaker 1: likes loose and hurroried, no agenda but movement. As the
Speaker 1: sun entered up past the buildings, I let my mind roam, fell,
Speaker 1: the smile twitch at the corners of my mouth, shy
Speaker 1: and unfamiliar, but undeniably real. At the cafe, my hands
Speaker 1: fell back into the habit of solitude. I spread out musketchbook,
Speaker 1: ordered a cappuccino, brought my elbows on the scarred wooden table,
Speaker 1: and just let myself drift. No plans, no pressure, no client,
Speaker 1: no Nathan hovering over my LUNs. I picked up a pencil,
Speaker 1: ghosted some quick experimental lines cross the page. For the
Speaker 1: first time in so long, I let go of needing
Speaker 1: an answer from anyone but myself. Everything around me, the
Speaker 1: cloud of the barrister, the subtle stretch of my feet
Speaker 1: in old boots, the slow cel steam off chip, earth
Speaker 1: and merse seemed to sharpen, even the voices at other tables,
Speaker 1: groups of friends teasing and laughing, didn't bother me. I
Speaker 1: belonged quietly but wholly to the world that was becoming mine.
Speaker 1: And as the morning light slid passed my sleeve, I
Speaker 1: forced myself to look dead on it, my own reflection
Speaker 1: in the cafe window, pale but strong, changed but not crushed.
Speaker 1: My eyes met themselves, and a wave of calm on
Speaker 1: commander broke through. I stopped, let the pencil have it,
Speaker 1: then pressed on. The feeling was pain and pieced together,
Speaker 1: And in that split moment, I chose myself no need
Speaker 1: for witness, no hoping for rescue, no performing for a
Speaker 1: partner already gone. For the first time since everything fell apart,
Speaker 1: I closed my eyes, took a full breath, and when
Speaker 1: I opened them, I knew, however long it took, however
Speaker 1: many pieces still had to be rebuilt, I would draw
Speaker 1: my own life, and it would be enough,