Speaker 1: Saturday morning in our neighborhood cafe, always as a way
Speaker 1: of amplifying whatever mood you bring in. Sunshine poured across
Speaker 1: polished tables and caught the laughter of the week end crowd,
Speaker 1: everything amplified by the scent of espresso and cinnamon pastries.
Speaker 1: I sat by the window, my phone propped up against
Speaker 1: a chipped ceramic sugar bowl, pretending to be productive with
Speaker 1: a half open Google dock. Across from me, a chair
Speaker 1: sat empty except for Eric's flannel jacket, which I tossed
Speaker 1: over it out of habit. He texted again ten minutes ago,
Speaker 1: running late, club went long, Promise be there soon. My
Speaker 1: coffee was lukewarm, a pale ring framed in the mug.
Speaker 1: I swirled it, watching bubbles form and fade, the way
Speaker 1: I often did when I felt a certain kind of waiting,
Speaker 1: the difference between patients and expectation. The cafe was full
Speaker 1: of couples, the pair at the next table flirting over pastries,
Speaker 1: the older couple debating crossword answers, even two people in
Speaker 1: jim gear. Flushed and glowing. Weekends were our time, or
Speaker 1: at least that's how I mark them in my mind.
Speaker 1: If I made the right reservation, imagined the right brunch.
Speaker 1: Eric would slip into that space, and I'd feel the
Speaker 1: world line up neatly again. He d promised a lazy
Speaker 1: morning together all week after Saturday's run. I'm all yours.
Speaker 1: Let's not plan to see where the day goes. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'd blocked off three hopeful hours on our shared calendar,
Speaker 1: written a reminder in mine with a stupid heart emoji.
Speaker 1: That was how I worked. Put it in writing, Maybe
Speaker 1: make it real. The door swung wide, the early rush
Speaker 1: replaced by yoga leggings and jim bags and in strode Tara,
Speaker 1: one of those people who always greets you like she's
Speaker 1: half way through a great story. She spotted me before
Speaker 1: I could look distracted. Oh hey, brunch date, She cocked
Speaker 1: an eyebrow, squeezing between chairs. Tara and I floated in
Speaker 1: the same friend group, joined at barbecues, planned hikes together,
Speaker 1: shared gossip by osmosis. I'm waiting for Eric He's I
Speaker 1: flicked my phone screen, running late. Literally, She smirked, you're
Speaker 1: a saint, you know that he must do what twenty
Speaker 1: miles every Saturday. At this point I gave the practiced smile.
Speaker 1: I'd adopted for justifying Eric's schedule. It keeps him sane.
Speaker 1: I think Tara rifled through her bag digging for gum.
Speaker 1: Weird though I never see Eric at the club runs.
Speaker 1: She tossed the gum into her mouth. I run past
Speaker 1: their start at eight every week, and he's never there
Speaker 1: when I finish. Isn't that when he goes? The hum
Speaker 1: of the cafe seemed to sharpen around me, sounds rising
Speaker 1: like feedback in the back of my head. I shrugged,
Speaker 1: studded the table. Maybe he joins later or runs a
Speaker 1: different route. You know, Eric, he likes doing his own thing.
Speaker 1: She was already looking at the clock. Probably anyway, I'll
Speaker 1: see you later for movie night. Yeah, I nodded, smiled
Speaker 1: a little too brightly, and she swept out with her
Speaker 1: mat and energy gust in her wake. I sat back, still,
Speaker 1: staring at the strip of text on my phone running late,
Speaker 1: club went long. That was Eric's typical Saturday script, something
Speaker 1: I'd never questioned because it fit a run the after
Speaker 1: glow brunch. All his routines had become invisible background music
Speaker 1: to my own planning. But now that Tara said it,
Speaker 1: the whole story clunked in my head not quite fitting.
Speaker 1: Why was someone genuinely social like Eric, never at the
Speaker 1: club runs, never in the group photos they posted online,
Speaker 1: always slipping in if he was there at all. After
Speaker 1: everything had ended, my hands were cold, coffee abandoned. Was
Speaker 1: this the kind of thing you noticed because you missed someone,
Speaker 1: or because deep down you suspected them. I spent a
Speaker 1: few minutes scrolling back through old messages, streaks of green
Speaker 1: bubbles from Eric, light on detail, full of energy. See
Speaker 1: you soon crushed it, quass us in coming. I tried
Speaker 1: to shake it off. Maybe I was just being paranoid.
Speaker 1: We had a good thing, didn't we. But as I
Speaker 1: left the cafe some time later, Eric finally texting, just
Speaker 1: wrapping up, go ahead and order me whatever you like.
Speaker 1: A subtle sense of our knees stuck to my ribs.
Speaker 1: I didn't bring it up when he finally arrived. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to pick a fight over something so small.
Speaker 1: But I started watching, quietly, rewinding our routines, flicking through
Speaker 1: recent saturdays in my mind, searching for holes I hadn't
Speaker 1: realized were there. Memory pulls with a kind of gravitational force.
Speaker 1: Once you start massaging the facts, details shake loose changing shape.
Speaker 1: In the light of suspicion, I caught myself replaying the beginning,
Speaker 1: how easy it had always been to trust Eric, to
Speaker 1: let his endless curiosity and refusal to settle infect our days.
Speaker 1: When we first met, it was a dinner party, one
Speaker 1: of those large mismatched gatherings in some one's half unpacked apartment.
Speaker 1: I'd sat to his left, trying to avoid whoever was
Speaker 1: talking about Bitcoen investments on the right. Eric had a
Speaker 1: way of asking questions that made you feel like your
Speaker 1: answers mattered, Drawn forward by his delighted energy. In those
Speaker 1: early days, everything was an adventure, Racing for last minute
Speaker 1: movie tickets, walking home in the rain just because spontaneous
Speaker 1: week ends out of town, because we'll get more stories
Speaker 1: if we don't overthink it. But behind his velocity I
Speaker 1: recognized something I envied, a lack of fear around the unknown,
Speaker 1: the unplanned. I was the opposite. I owned a color
Speaker 1: coded planner before color coding was cool. Our apartment was
Speaker 1: a monument to our differences. My tidy rows of herb
Speaker 1: jars lined up in the kitchen, his strings of festival
Speaker 1: wristbands draped over the bookshelf, Our competing calendars, scribbled everywhere,
Speaker 1: but mostly it worked. Life got busier as we both
Speaker 1: moved up in our fields. Eric the tech project manager,
Speaker 1: trailing Slack messages and new app sign ups in his wake,
Speaker 1: Me running communications for a non profit. My world ruled
Speaker 1: by meetings and event dates. Even when we were together,
Speaker 1: we were multitasking, wine glasses on the balcony, laptops between us,
Speaker 1: sharing funny emails and winks over deadlines. The difference was
Speaker 1: that back then we felt like a team, always recapping,
Speaker 1: always finding each other again after the noise. Our friend
Speaker 1: groups overlapped, but didn't merge completely. He was the center
Speaker 1: of every social plan, always orchestrating after work drinks or
Speaker 1: urban hikes, while I preferred quieter one on one catch ups.
Speaker 1: We kept Sunday nights sacred, no matter what, ordering take out,
Speaker 1: reliving our week ends together, no phones allowed. The running
Speaker 1: club was his addition two years ago, after he'd spent
Speaker 1: too many weeks complaining about burnout. I need my own thing,
Speaker 1: he'd said, brightly, and I'd agreed. He'd even teased my
Speaker 1: calendar addiction, promising he'd put his runs in so i'd
Speaker 1: never double book him. The thing that scared us. Most
Speaker 1: was settling into a life too predictable to feel alive.
Speaker 1: But there were signs. I realized that we'd let the
Speaker 1: business steal our attention, trimming back on dates, sometimes even
Speaker 1: forgetting our Sunday ritual. In the moment, it felt like
Speaker 1: growing up, not drifting apart. After Tara's off hand comment,
Speaker 1: I started to see details differently. That night, I did
Speaker 1: the laundry, sorting our mixed heap of athletic wear. I
Speaker 1: remembered Eric coming home last Saturday, claiming he'd been caught
Speaker 1: in the rain during his run, his cheeks flushed, hair damp.
Speaker 1: But when I pulled out his running shoes, my hands stilled.
Speaker 1: They were spotless, barely even scuffed, no soggy laces, no
Speaker 1: caked mud, just faintly smelling of new rubber. I chalked
Speaker 1: it up to memory. He must clean them after every run,
Speaker 1: I thought, or maybe he'd worn an old pear last week. Still,
Speaker 1: as I folded his bright white Strava branded T shirt,
Speaker 1: the one he'd picked up at a half marathon the
Speaker 1: year before, I noticed the synthetic texture felt stiff, like
Speaker 1: it hadn't been through a wash cycle. He'd claimed to
Speaker 1: have worn it just that morning. Was I looking for
Speaker 1: meaning in jim clothes? Now? I caught myself half laughing,
Speaker 1: emptied the rest of the hamper, and forced myself to
Speaker 1: change focus. But something stuck. The next day, in the
Speaker 1: quiet between meetings during my lunch break, I opened the
Speaker 1: Strava app on my phone. Eric had made a show
Speaker 1: of connecting it to our fitness watches, always pleased at
Speaker 1: the endorphin spikes it logged only now. Navigating to his profile,
Speaker 1: I found almost nothing, just a couple of short Wednesday
Speaker 1: evening jogs, no Saturday activity in the past month. Maybe
Speaker 1: he'd stopped uploading, or maybe there was an issue with
Speaker 1: his account, or maybe he was using another tracker for privacy.
Speaker 1: Did Peep do that? I checked his privacy settings. The
Speaker 1: account wasn't hidden from friends. I closed the app. My
Speaker 1: head buzzed with unease. Maybe Tara just never ran into
Speaker 1: him because their times didn't line up. Not everything required
Speaker 1: an explanation. He deserved privacy, didn't he? And yet the
Speaker 1: details looped in my head the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: By dinner time, I chided myself for doubt. We've been
Speaker 1: stressed both a little distant lately. Maybe I was just
Speaker 1: making something into more than It was a reflex, not
Speaker 1: a red flag. That night, as we cleaned up after
Speaker 1: a quick pasta dinner, I reached for lightness, aiming for
Speaker 1: casual curiosity to bridge us back to each other. So
Speaker 1: Tara ran into me at the cafe yesterday. She says
Speaker 1: she never sees you at the club runs, even though
Speaker 1: she's there every week. I tried for playful rather than accusatory.
Speaker 1: Eric snorted, scraping plates. Yeah, Tara likes to clock everyone,
Speaker 1: doesn't she He didn't quite meet my eyes. I usually
Speaker 1: just run the second leg alone. It's less chaotic. I
Speaker 1: catch up at the end for a coffee, bit of space,
Speaker 1: you know, I like clearing my head before the crowd.
Speaker 1: He smiled, then warm, as if he just told a
Speaker 1: cute secret. He leaned close, nudging me. Next time, I'll
Speaker 1: text her my GPS coordinates. I almost laughed. The story
Speaker 1: made sense. Maybe he really did find group running too social.
Speaker 1: I let myself relax, the tension fading, reassured by his affection,
Speaker 1: except at Jamie's birthday the following Saturday, a stray comment
Speaker 1: reset my nerves. We de split off into our predictable
Speaker 1: clusters at the brewery, Eric holding court with Mason and
Speaker 1: a few new faces, Me catching up at the other
Speaker 1: end of the long table. At some point, the group's
Speaker 1: laughter rose around a joke about Eric's quass our addiction
Speaker 1: recovering at Augustine every Saturday. Jamie teased the bowgiest post
Speaker 1: run ever. I looked up, Where's Augustin? Is that the
Speaker 1: bakery out by the canal. Eric fielded the question with
Speaker 1: the quick, defensive lightness I'd sometimes seen when I tried
Speaker 1: to plan ahead for him. Just another hang out spot
Speaker 1: Saturday treat. He shrugged, but his smile froze too long.
Speaker 1: The group moved on, but I caught the way he
Speaker 1: kept glancing at me, as if to see whether I'd
Speaker 1: remember any details he'd forgotten to share. Later that evening,
Speaker 1: as we paid our respective shares and ewbered home, I
Speaker 1: tucked away the name Cafe Augustin, turning it over in
Speaker 1: my mind. I couldn't recall Eric ever mentioning it in
Speaker 1: our weekly catch ups, and it wasn't on any of
Speaker 1: our favorite cafe lists, odd for someone who obsessively cataloged
Speaker 1: the best flat whites in the city. The next morning,
Speaker 1: after Eric left early again, for his run. I curled
Speaker 1: up with my laptop and waited for his payment notification,
Speaker 1: something I'd usually ignore, except part of me was already
Speaker 1: searching for a bread crumb. Sure enough, our joint account
Speaker 1: reflected a steady trickle of small charges dollar nine fifty
Speaker 1: twelve dollars and twenty cents, fourteen dollars and seventy five
Speaker 1: cents every Saturday, always different locations, none of them along
Speaker 1: the river path where the running club kept their routine,
Speaker 1: One for Augustine Cafe, another for north Side Roasters, a
Speaker 1: couple even further out, near the art district. I put
Speaker 1: together a mental map, noticing the triangle, none close to
Speaker 1: either of our usual haunts, not on the way to
Speaker 1: the park, impossible to explain away as random. I hesitated,
Speaker 1: not wanting to become the sort of person who suspects
Speaker 1: their partner of a major deception based on a cafe receipt. Still,
Speaker 1: I kept the spreadsheet open, fingers hovering. Maybe I could
Speaker 1: surprise him one week, join for a run and make
Speaker 1: it a date spur of the moment, like him. That afternoon,
Speaker 1: I tossed the idea at him while we picked through
Speaker 1: lunch prep. You know I've been thinking about joining you
Speaker 1: for a run. I could start slow and meet your group.
Speaker 1: He didn't look up from the avocado he was slicing.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't like the pace. Honestly, this crew is intense.
Speaker 1: Maybe when the weather cools down. He changed the subject
Speaker 1: before I could answer, asking about my friend Sam's new job,
Speaker 1: doubling down on praise for how organized I was. It
Speaker 1: felt more like being strategically redirected than comforted, but I
Speaker 1: laughed along anyway. Still, each Saturday, our routines drifted more
Speaker 1: and more apart. When I suggested we take a Sunday hike,
Speaker 1: he hedged, still tired from yesterday, Babe. Dinner plans met
Speaker 1: with claims of just want to stay in. I reasoned
Speaker 1: he was stressed, maybe on the edge of burnout again.
Speaker 1: I tried to share my unease with my sister Brionni
Speaker 1: over face time one evening. She listened, eyebrows pinched together.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's just going through a weird phase at work.
Speaker 1: Haven't you two both been slammed lately? She leaned toward
Speaker 1: the camera. You know what he's like, runs away from stress, literally.
Speaker 1: I nodded, relieved to have my own doubts echoed back
Speaker 1: as something ordinary, not ominous. For a few days, it
Speaker 1: was easier to let the issue go and believe that
Speaker 1: was all there was to it. But the next time
Speaker 1: I saw Eric among our friends at one of those
Speaker 1: group hikes that drew a big crowd, the dynamic had shifted.
Speaker 1: He was restless, half listening his phone, barely leaving his
Speaker 1: hand as someone cracked a joke about how Eric's legs
Speaker 1: must be insured. He grinned distractedly, then slipped off the
Speaker 1: main path, muttering about taking a call for work. By
Speaker 1: the time we made it back to the trailhead an
Speaker 1: hour later, he disappeared, later texting me an apologetic sorry,
Speaker 1: needed to jump on a client call. Didn't mean to bail.
Speaker 1: I brushed off my annoyance in the moment, but later
Speaker 1: it came why was he always at arm's length these days,
Speaker 1: unable to relax into a plan, especially when I was
Speaker 1: around other people We both knew. My arguments with myself
Speaker 1: grew louder. He deserves space versus I deserve honesty. The
Speaker 1: line between the too narrow and slippery. Midweek, I tried
Speaker 1: a new tactic, honest, direct conversation. I decided to talk
Speaker 1: to him that night. After we finished grilling take out
Speaker 1: burghers on the balcony, staying away from the edge of
Speaker 1: accusation and instead focusing on how I missed him. We
Speaker 1: cleared plates and stood close, the city lights behind him
Speaker 1: blurring the sharp angles of his face. Can I ask something?
Speaker 1: I traced a finger along the edge of the countertop,
Speaker 1: trying to keep my voice steady. It s felt off lately.
Speaker 1: We hardly see each other on the week ends. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I worry You're not yourself. Is everything okay? Eric stared
Speaker 1: at the skyline a moment, then down into his empty glass.
Speaker 1: After a tense poor he put a hand to his temple,
Speaker 1: rubbing there as if drawing out words. Honestly, I haven't
Speaker 1: been going to the club as much. I'm kind of struggling.
Speaker 1: He met my gaze, and his eyes were red around
Speaker 1: the edges, as if from too little sleep or too
Speaker 1: much caffeine. Work is a shitch. Sometimes I just need
Speaker 1: to get out, but I end up sitting at these
Speaker 1: little cafes instead of running. I just don't want you
Speaker 1: to worry. I'm figuring it out. It wasn't the answer
Speaker 1: I'd expected. He sounded more exhausted than defensive. Why didn't
Speaker 1: you just say something? I pressed quietly a wry smile.
Speaker 1: I dunno. I'm supposed to be the grounded one, right,
Speaker 1: your calm, adventurous guy, not the stressed out jerk ghosting
Speaker 1: on brunch plans. We drifted closer, his arms winding around me,
Speaker 1: a different sort of intimacy than we'd had in weeks.
Speaker 1: I brushed his hair back, leaned into the warmth for
Speaker 1: the first time in months. We talked earnestly about work,
Speaker 1: about missing each other, about how the world had worn
Speaker 1: them both thin. I apologized for being so obsessed with scheduling,
Speaker 1: for sometimes hiding behind color coded certainty. He squeezed my
Speaker 1: hand genuine Let's promise to flag it sooner. Okay, I
Speaker 1: want us to be that couple who talks even when
Speaker 1: it's ugly. We made plans for the week end. No runs,
Speaker 1: no meetings, just the sort of spontaneous time we both
Speaker 1: used to crave. I fell asleep in his arms, relief,
Speaker 1: warring with residual guilt at having doubted him. But as
Speaker 1: often happens with relief real or false, I found myself
Speaker 1: once again circling the edges of our knees. A few
Speaker 1: days later, I told myself, I owed it to both
Speaker 1: of us to accept his version of events. The problem
Speaker 1: was that the feeling I was being managed, not confided in,
Speaker 1: never quite faded. That Saturday, we kept our agreement for
Speaker 1: the weekend together, a breakfast at a new place, a
Speaker 1: meandering stroll through the used bookstore, a couple of dumbness
Speaker 1: little errands. For a while, things felt right again, like
Speaker 1: we'd hit reset. I barely checked my phone. By Sunday,
Speaker 1: I decided the matter was closed. But habits and anxiety
Speaker 1: worked together to create their own gravity. That following week,
Speaker 1: as I was scrolling through Instagram out of boredom, a
Speaker 1: photo jolted me out of my reverie, posted by someone
Speaker 1: I didn't know, Jess d. According to her handle, was
Speaker 1: a photo from Cafe Augustine, a group selfie. Four people
Speaker 1: huddled around a table laden with half eaten pastries. Eric
Speaker 1: was in the back, arm looped around Jess, grinning down
Speaker 1: at her as she half leaned into him. The time
Speaker 1: stamp was last Saturday morning, right around the time he'd
Speaker 1: claimed to have been meeting me, texting me that he
Speaker 1: was running late. My first reaction was confusion. I tried
Speaker 1: to explain it away. Maybe it had been an old
Speaker 1: photo reposted, but the doughnuts specials in the photo's caption,
Speaker 1: I'd seen those signs up at Augustin just a few
Speaker 1: days before, when I'd walked past after work. The comments
Speaker 1: below were teasing, as if everyone then knew each other well,
Speaker 1: inside jokes references to things I'd never heard Eric mention.
Speaker 1: I stared at the photo for a long moment, then,
Speaker 1: hands shaking, screenshotted it and set about piecing together what
Speaker 1: I knew and what I'd merely assumed. Instead of sending
Speaker 1: the photo to Eric, I tracked down Tara again, texting
Speaker 1: her a casual Hey, is Augustine that new spot your
Speaker 1: crew likes? Eric says he's been sometimes. Her reply came quick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a cute place. I think he sometimes grabs coffee
Speaker 1: there with work people, his new client, the marketing team.
Speaker 1: Is there a lot that checked out? Sort of? Eric
Speaker 1: had mentioned a new high maintenance client a while ago,
Speaker 1: and I remembered him working late or taking calls outside
Speaker 1: for what he called client care. Still, there was no
Speaker 1: reason he'd never mentioned names. If this was all above board,
Speaker 1: and why did he look so comfortable in Jess's orbit
Speaker 1: arm around her, so casually I spent the next hour
Speaker 1: crawling through Facebook, Instagram, linked In, using every digital trace
Speaker 1: I could muster. Jess's profiles were mostly open. There in
Speaker 1: public photos, more group events at Augustine, at a rooftop bar,
Speaker 1: at a warehouse party, all on Saturday mornings, sometimes afternoons.
Speaker 1: For every date, I could recall Eric's running club. In
Speaker 1: every image, Eric was present, always beside Jess, sometimes with
Speaker 1: an arm around her waist, or sharing a pastry, or
Speaker 1: in the background of an apparent inside joke. In no
Speaker 1: image was he ever wearing true running gear. The details
Speaker 1: began to organize themselves into something larger than chance. The
Speaker 1: timeline every Saturday i'd written off as a workout or
Speaker 1: solo recovery, carefully managed, systematically explained away, now gathered meaning
Speaker 1: that felt like gravity. Sometimes the same friends appeared, but
Speaker 1: always it was Eric and Jess at the heart. Past
Speaker 1: conversations flashed before me. I remembered him referencing Jess at
Speaker 1: some point, presenting her as a client contact on one
Speaker 1: of his more stressful project weeks. I remembered the way
Speaker 1: he'd excused a late night once by mentioning drinks with
Speaker 1: the marketing team, the faintly teasing ring to his voice
Speaker 1: when he said Jess's name. She detexted him late. A
Speaker 1: few times he'd grinned at something on his phone and
Speaker 1: wouldn't let me see. I'd chalked that up to work,
Speaker 1: even when it became more frequent, because what else could
Speaker 1: it be. The pattern, once seen couldn't be unseen. I
Speaker 1: remembered every busy weekend, every shift in intimacy, every small
Speaker 1: catch in conversation. With dread building in my chest, I
Speaker 1: decided to call Eric's closest work friend, Danny. I rehearsed
Speaker 1: a breezy pretense. I'm trying to plan a surprise for Eric.
Speaker 1: Do you remember which of his works friends was at
Speaker 1: Augustine last month? Kind of short, fun bob haircut Jess?
Speaker 1: Maybe is she in the client group or Danny was silent.
Speaker 1: I could almost picture him, face suddenly animated in my imagination,
Speaker 1: brow furrowing. Ah ah, yeah, Jess is in that group.
Speaker 1: I guess there are a close bunch. Hey, can I
Speaker 1: call you back? Someone's coming into my office. Before I
Speaker 1: could say another word, he was gone. That was all
Speaker 1: I needed. The discomfort in Danny's short non answer. The
Speaker 1: rapid pivot told me more than any photograph. I sat
Speaker 1: very still. The spreadsheet of cafe dates beside my notebook,
Speaker 1: the Instagram's screenshots opened beside Eric's run logs. The explanations
Speaker 1: of stress, of needing space, of a shift in work
Speaker 1: life all meant something, just not what I'd been told
Speaker 1: all my second guessing, My dutifully balanced compassion with suspicion
Speaker 1: had disguised from myself the truth now pressing down like
Speaker 1: a migrin. This was not about stress, or a downturn
Speaker 1: or a phase. This was about a deeper kind of
Speaker 1: absence and a web of Saturday mornings that didn't include me,
Speaker 1: and I no longer believed for a second that I
Speaker 1: was imagining it. I spent that night oscillating between numbness
Speaker 1: and manic energy, pushing myself to disprove what I had seen.
Speaker 1: Instead of tumbling headlong into a confirmation spiral. I clicked
Speaker 1: through every app where our lives intertwined, old photos, shared playlists,
Speaker 1: the calendar he'd teasingly made for our epic summer, all
Speaker 1: now blurred by the contamination of doubt. I realized I
Speaker 1: was re archiving weeks of my own routines, not trusting
Speaker 1: any concrete memory of what had actually happened versus what
Speaker 1: I'd been told. It was like learning to read a
Speaker 1: language from scratch when I thought I had already mastered,
Speaker 1: only to realize I've been mouthing the sounds without ever
Speaker 1: understanding their truth. At midnight, I scrolled our joint Google
Speaker 1: calendar side by side with the dates of Jess's posts.
Speaker 1: Something start to emerge. The overlap was not accidental. For
Speaker 1: every run or client breakfast that Eric blocked off so responsibly,
Speaker 1: there was some digital trace from Jess or her friends.
Speaker 1: Cafe checkins, short videos with Eric's half profel caught in
Speaker 1: the blurry background, geotags for every spot he never once
Speaker 1: mentioned to me in five years together, the same boutiques
Speaker 1: and street art popped up week to week places he'd
Speaker 1: never taken me, though he always claimed to love exploring
Speaker 1: our city with me, to want to make every week
Speaker 1: end fresh fresh for who The phrase scraped something inside me.
Speaker 1: The next morning dawned brittle and gray, city noises, starting
Speaker 1: even before my alarm. I didn't sleep, not really. I
Speaker 1: lay in silence, listening for signs of Eric waking. His
Speaker 1: usual pattern sliding his foot against mine, or whispering a
Speaker 1: dumb inside joke to ease me out of dreams. This morning,
Speaker 1: he rose quietly, careful not to disturb. I heard him
Speaker 1: moving around the apartment, and the front door clicked shut.
Speaker 1: My hands were shaking. When I opened my texts, he'd
Speaker 1: left me a message, upbeat as ever off for my run.
Speaker 1: Should I bring you a pastry? I stared at it
Speaker 1: for a long while and almost laugh escaping me. I
Speaker 1: almost texted something sharp, but instead just wrote sure, surprise
Speaker 1: me and added three heart emojis. My outward self performing normal,
Speaker 1: my insides vibrating with dissonance. I forced myself to shower,
Speaker 1: to eat a piece of toast. Each repetitive domestic motion
Speaker 1: felt like acting for an invisible audience. I couldn't decide
Speaker 1: if I was hoping desperately to be wrong, or if
Speaker 1: I'd quietly already accepted that the marriage I was waking
Speaker 1: up inside had begun to rot from a wound I'd
Speaker 1: been coached not to touch. Mid morning, I grabbed my
Speaker 1: messenger bag and left the apartment. I told myself I
Speaker 1: needed air, but truthfully, I want to walk by Cafe Augustine.
Speaker 1: I'd only passed it once on a busy week. Day
Speaker 1: to day, I circled the block three times, feeling like
Speaker 1: a novice detective or a fool. The place was humming
Speaker 1: a line out the door, laughter and clinking cups. I
Speaker 1: glimpsed two women from Jesse's Instagram photos through the window.
Speaker 1: No sign of Eric, at least not right now. I
Speaker 1: felt almost relieved at not catching him, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, part of me wanted proof that wasn't pixel sourced,
Speaker 1: something tangible to finally push me from doubt to certainty.
Speaker 1: On the way back, my phone buzzed a photo from Eric,
Speaker 1: a smiling selfie in front of a graffited wall, unfamiliar
Speaker 1: but probably somewhere he'd listed as part of his running route.
Speaker 1: The caption post run in Dorphins. You're missing out exo.
Speaker 1: I stared at it. He was alone, true enough, but
Speaker 1: the wall, I realized was just two blocks from Augustine.
Speaker 1: I checked Jess's Instagram again. She just posted a short
Speaker 1: video from inside the cafe's sun room. The camera panning
Speaker 1: passed a blur of some one in a navy hoodie
Speaker 1: just out of frame. I paced the sidewalk, wind whipping
Speaker 1: hair into my mouth. Was I spiraling or piecing together
Speaker 1: something obvious? I texted Tara, faking casual? Have you run
Speaker 1: past Augustine to day looks packed? She responded, skip the run,
Speaker 1: hung over, ha ha, we'll investigate next week. Something drew
Speaker 1: me back home, I said about normal things, changing sheets,
Speaker 1: watering the window sill, basle, folding towels. Every few minutes,
Speaker 1: I'd check my phone, desperate for some slip, some new clue.
Speaker 1: Eventually I forced myself to sit and try to read,
Speaker 1: only realizing half way through a paragraph that tears had
Speaker 1: welled up, blurring the print. I wasn't sure who I
Speaker 1: was most angry at Eric for the secrecy, myself for
Speaker 1: needing confirmation, or the whole architecture of my trust, which
Speaker 1: had started to collapse with almost no warning. Around noon,
Speaker 1: Eric came home with a quasser bag in hand, bounding
Speaker 1: in with all his old energy pain chocolat for the
Speaker 1: Queen of spreadsheets, he said, kissing my cheek. He was
Speaker 1: damp with sweat, eyes lighter than in weeks, and my
Speaker 1: heart tore at the sight. Was this the same man
Speaker 1: from those photos, the same one I'd watched receide these
Speaker 1: last few months? I forced myself to match his brightness,
Speaker 1: taking the bag, breathing in the buttery warmth. I wanted
Speaker 1: to throw the couassas back at him, but I played
Speaker 1: the part. I smiled, thanked him, commented on his run.
Speaker 1: Was it the club to day? I asked, as lightly
Speaker 1: as I could, unwrapping the quarsa. He shook his head
Speaker 1: just a solo loop needed to zonk out. He reached
Speaker 1: for his mug, taking huge gulps, eyes darting to his
Speaker 1: phone screen as it buzzed again a message, likely from
Speaker 1: the same Saturday group I could now map out almost
Speaker 1: by heart. You could have come, he continued, but it's
Speaker 1: getting crowded with tourists next time, I nodded, not trusting
Speaker 1: my voice. We spent the rest of the week end
Speaker 1: in a stree calm, like the eye of a storm.
Speaker 1: Eric was attentive, almost hovering, offering coffee reefls, suggesting we
Speaker 1: order from that new pasta place for dinner. He played
Speaker 1: records we loved, let his head fall in my lap
Speaker 1: as we watched TV, but every so often he'd slip
Speaker 1: his phone from his pocket, tilted away thummer response, then
Speaker 1: slip it back, smiling to himself. By Sunday night, our
Speaker 1: old ritual, the week end recap felt hollow. He let
Speaker 1: me talk through my week, nodded in the right places,
Speaker 1: but never once mentioned anything specific about his Saturday morning,
Speaker 1: beyond the run I now knew hadn't happened. I lay
Speaker 1: awake that night, unable to settle. I kept reminding myself
Speaker 1: that he'd confess to being burnt out, to hiding in cafes,
Speaker 1: to kneading space, hadn't. I already resolved to trust that
Speaker 1: version of events, but my trust was growing as thin
Speaker 1: as old tissue. Late, when he was sleeping, I got
Speaker 1: up and checked his laundry again. His running shoes were dustless,
Speaker 1: the inside solids still lightly scented from the deodorizer I'd
Speaker 1: sprayed a month ago. I resisted the urge to go
Speaker 1: through his phone, a line I still wasn't ready to
Speaker 1: cross proof or no proof. The next week churned past
Speaker 1: on work, autopilot calls, meetings, sprinting through emails. Eric was
Speaker 1: distracted but pleasant, making jokes about our mutual exhaustion. A
Speaker 1: few times I asked about his Saturday plans. He'd smile, say,
Speaker 1: gonna see if I can shake these cobwebs out with
Speaker 1: a long route. Maybe try the north loop. Since the
Speaker 1: group's doing something at Augustine. For a moment, I seized
Speaker 1: on that detail. He was mentioning Augustine. Now may be
Speaker 1: damned by my own vigilance, but the way he said
Speaker 1: the group general careful made me uneasy all over again.
Speaker 1: He was building a new narrative, including just enough detail
Speaker 1: to keep questions at bay. That Thursday, I agreed to
Speaker 1: meet Brionni for dinner near her office. We ordered salad
Speaker 1: and greasy fries at a place where no one ever lingered.
Speaker 1: She eyed me between bites. You're stress eating. What's going on?
Speaker 1: She finally asked, voice blunt in that way only siblings
Speaker 1: can manage. I hesitated, but decided to risk it. I
Speaker 1: think Eric's hiding something. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe I'm going crazy.
Speaker 1: Brionni frowned, chewing her lip. You mean hiding what exactly?
Speaker 1: I look down, tracing the pattern in the table's laminet,
Speaker 1: where he goes on weekends, who he spends his time with.
Speaker 1: There's a girl from his client team, Jess. He's in
Speaker 1: all her group's photos. I found receipts for places I've
Speaker 1: never heard of. Places he's supposedly been running. She put
Speaker 1: down her fork. That all sounds bad, but not definitive.
Speaker 1: You know he works weird hours. People get close with
Speaker 1: clients all the time, but it's every Saturday, I said,
Speaker 1: keeping my voice low. And he never talks about her
Speaker 1: except in passing. It's like he doesn't want to mix
Speaker 1: those circles. The admission shamed me. After all, was I
Speaker 1: outing myself as controlling or jealous? The worst stereotype? BRIONI
Speaker 1: reached a cross, squeezed my hand Leela, you're not someone
Speaker 1: who a majanies drama and Eric. He's a great guy,
Speaker 1: but everyone's got stuff they don't want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Maybe he just needs his own thing. Give it a minute,
Speaker 1: don't don't jump the gun. It should have made me
Speaker 1: feel better, but it didn't. I wondered when the moment
Speaker 1: had arrived, that great guy no longer stood as proof
Speaker 1: of anything at all, just as camouflage. On the way home,
Speaker 1: I passed augustine Es again, on purpose. This time lights
Speaker 1: were still on inside, some one mopping the floors, stacks
Speaker 1: of battered books on the counter. I pressed my forehead
Speaker 1: to the cold glass, scanning for who knows what a clue?
Speaker 1: A sign? There was only my own reflection, tired and
Speaker 1: sharper than I remembered that week. Eric made a big
Speaker 1: show of rearranging plans. Let's have a week nd just
Speaker 1: for us, he said, smiling with that same crooked charm
Speaker 1: I'd fallen for. I agreed, testing him. Saturday morning, I
Speaker 1: deliberately woke early, dressed for exercise, and asked, want to
Speaker 1: try a new run together, maybe just a couple of
Speaker 1: miles then brunch. Eric hesitated, just a shade too long? Um, babe,
Speaker 1: I'd love to, but I promised Danny I'd help him
Speaker 1: move this couch. And then I got to take a
Speaker 1: call with the client Monday. Though, Can we do Monday?
Speaker 1: I swear just us. I tried not to show my frustration,
Speaker 1: but it was useless. Why don't you just say you
Speaker 1: want to do your own thing? He looked, strung. It's
Speaker 1: not that, Lee, I just these next few days are
Speaker 1: all out of whack. I swear soon, okay. He kissed
Speaker 1: my forehead and ducked away to the shower. I sat
Speaker 1: down on our bed, realizing I was rehearsing conversations I'd
Speaker 1: already had playing the world's weak ed hand of poker.
Speaker 1: Around noon, while Eric was helping Danny, I ducked out
Speaker 1: to the park, clutching the hope that fresh air might
Speaker 1: clear my mind. The world was in bright, easy color, families, couples, runners,
Speaker 1: every one in movement except me. I called Sam, one
Speaker 1: of my closest friends, hoping for distraction and maybe a
Speaker 1: little reminder of who I was before suspicion became my
Speaker 1: only mode of operation. Sam listened, voice low and pragmatic,
Speaker 1: as always. Look, even if something's wrong, you're not crazy
Speaker 1: for wanting to know. You're allowed to expect him to
Speaker 1: be honest. Do you want me to spy on him?
Speaker 1: She joked, trying to lighten the mood. I laughed, startled
Speaker 1: by relief. I just want to know if I'm making
Speaker 1: this up. I don't want drama. I want my life back.
Speaker 1: Then keep watching, she said, gently, not like a hawk,
Speaker 1: but just don't gaslight yourself. For the rest of that day,
Speaker 1: I let my mind go slack. I met for a
Speaker 1: drink that evening, talked about anything but Eric, anything but
Speaker 1: running clubs, anything but clients named Jess. We discussed her
Speaker 1: new yogur obsession, the latest city council drama Netflix's recommendations.
Speaker 1: It almost worked, but when I got home later, the
Speaker 1: apartment was dark, Eric's bag hanging by the door, shoes
Speaker 1: a line just so, he was already asleep, or pretending
Speaker 1: to be the room's silent but not RESTful. Sunday morning,
Speaker 1: I went through our group chat, reading every joke and
Speaker 1: mim searching for evidence of Eric's mood, his true whereabouts.
Speaker 1: People talked about the hike they'd done, the brewery crawl
Speaker 1: he'd missed. How Eric escne mi I a must be
Speaker 1: marathon training mode. He always replied with a wink, never
Speaker 1: with a detail. Finally, after another anxious night, I did it.
Speaker 1: I messaged Danny directly, my heart pounding, Hey, quick question
Speaker 1: for Eric's birthday. Do you know if his client group
Speaker 1: is planning any surprise? I want to coordinate with Jess.
Speaker 1: I think she's involved. I forced the tone to bubbly,
Speaker 1: as though I were part of an in joke. The
Speaker 1: red receipt appeared almost instantly, but he didn't reply. Three
Speaker 1: hours later, I got back a single line, Hey, Leela,
Speaker 1: I think you should talk to Eric about any of that.
Speaker 1: I'm honestly not sure what's going on with their group.
Speaker 1: Nothing more, no emoji, no back and forth, just an
Speaker 1: abrupt closing of the door. I dropped my phone on
Speaker 1: the bed, head throbbing. I knew what it meant. People
Speaker 1: close enough to know the details were now shoring up
Speaker 1: their silence, not trying to reassure or explain. I didn't
Speaker 1: cry then, not exactly, but something left me. A thin
Speaker 1: thread of trust finally snapped. That afternoon, Eric tried to
Speaker 1: draw me out as we cleaned, chatting about a podcast
Speaker 1: he'd been obsessed with lately. I went through the motions,
Speaker 1: matching his jokes, but my mind churned with every new
Speaker 1: piece of withheld evidence. After dinner, he tried to pull
Speaker 1: me in for a lazy dance, humming some dumb vintage
Speaker 1: song and spinning me clumsily. It was almost perfect, acting, almost,
Speaker 1: but as he bent his head down, I caught the
Speaker 1: scent of soap he didn't use at home, a sharp,
Speaker 1: lemony sort of hotel clean. Had he showered at Augustine
Speaker 1: or somewhere else before coming back. I let him hold me,
Speaker 1: but I was already counting the moves left before this
Speaker 1: dance would end. By Monday, I'd reached a kind of resolve,
Speaker 1: one part numbness, one part a new impervious courage. No
Speaker 1: more triangulating calendars and feeling sick with the effort of
Speaker 1: policing my own sanity. I needed the truth, and I
Speaker 1: was going to ask for it point blank that night.
Speaker 1: I waited until after dinner, both of us sitting close
Speaker 1: on the couch. His hand was curled along the back
Speaker 1: of my neck, but I pulled away, folding a throw
Speaker 1: pillow into my lap for something to do with my hands, Eric,
Speaker 1: I said, quietly, forcing my voice to steady. I need
Speaker 1: to know. Is there something going on with you with
Speaker 1: the so called running club with Jess. His whole body stilled,
Speaker 1: His gaze went wary, masking confusion, with just enough delayed
Speaker 1: surprise to almost pass what number Leela know. I told
Speaker 1: you I'm burnt out. I use cafes to clear my head.
Speaker 1: I thought we both wanted a little independence. I pushed gently,
Speaker 1: but with more force than ever. Are you seeing someone?
Speaker 1: Are you with Jess? His face changed, pain and anger
Speaker 1: flashing over it, indignation rising almost as fast. No, I'm
Speaker 1: not seeing any one, I swear. Jess is just a
Speaker 1: work friend, part of the client team. Sometimes we hang
Speaker 1: out with her group after meetings. Yes, but there's nothing romantic. Nothing.
Speaker 1: Is this what you think of me? The way he
Speaker 1: said it hurt layered atop outrage, nearly convinced me. Even now,
Speaker 1: for a moment, I wanted to drop it all to
Speaker 1: believe him, except the story he'd already prepared. I just
Speaker 1: need to hear you say it. I managed, because I've
Speaker 1: seen the photos Eric, you and Jess and the Saturday group,
Speaker 1: all those cafes, the arms around each other, the fact
Speaker 1: that it's always her every Saturday. If it's just friends,
Speaker 1: just say it. He ran a hand through his hair,
Speaker 1: the walls coming up. I didn't tell you because it
Speaker 1: sounds worse than it is. It's not a secret, it's
Speaker 1: it's awkward, and I didn't want to worry you. I
Speaker 1: haven't been going on club runs because I can't keep up.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I bail and meet the work people for coffee instead,
Speaker 1: cause it's easier than explaining I'm not as fast as
Speaker 1: I used to be. Jess is just the person who's
Speaker 1: always there. I guess maybe it looks weird, but you
Speaker 1: know you're the only one I want. The conversation became circular,
Speaker 1: he assured. I doubted he comforted, I rationalized. Finally exhausted,
Speaker 1: I dropped my head into his shoulder and let the
Speaker 1: tidal wave of fatigue wash over me. He seemed genuinely contrite,
Speaker 1: may be well meaning, certainly stressed, And even as my
Speaker 1: mind spun, I let myself believe him, at least enough
Speaker 1: to knead a night off from accusation. I almost wanted
Speaker 1: him to be right. But once you've glimpsed beneath the surface,
Speaker 1: everything about normality feels brittle. I lay awake hours later,
Speaker 1: replaying every phrase, every glance, every skipped beat. My heart
Speaker 1: felt raw, enlarged by hope, contracted by fear. The next
Speaker 1: few days unfolded in a strained choreography of forced normality
Speaker 1: and implied reconciliation. Eric became gentler around me, a little
Speaker 1: less on his phone, quicker to reassure, more direct with
Speaker 1: his plans, or at least with the plans he put
Speaker 1: on offer. For a moment, I almost believed we'd each
Speaker 1: been given exactly what we wanted. Him forgiveness me the
Speaker 1: illusion of control, but my body kept the score. My
Speaker 1: hands shook when I picked up his laundry, my jaw
Speaker 1: ached from clenching, defenses in sleep. Every time I heard
Speaker 1: his phone ping, my stomach notted anew. By Friday, the
Speaker 1: cycle started again. Eric, claiming exhaustion, said he'd have to
Speaker 1: work through the week end to get ahead of deadlines.
Speaker 1: No run, no coffee shops, promise, he said, and I
Speaker 1: almost laughed. It was as if he'd read aloud my
Speaker 1: mental list of demands, rendering them obsolete by naming them.
Speaker 1: I checked Jess's profel at noon Saturday, a new group
Speaker 1: photo at Augustine, Eric present, hair fluffed out and damp,
Speaker 1: as if from a run he never took, Jess glowing
Speaker 1: into his side, captioned the best recovery crew. Among the comments,
Speaker 1: one phrase from a mutual friend stopped my heart. You
Speaker 1: too are the cutest. Next week, bring more stories. I
Speaker 1: stared at the screen, frozen. Later, when Eric came home,
Speaker 1: he brought me sunflowers and an apologetic story about missing
Speaker 1: coffee with the team because work ran late. He smelled
Speaker 1: of something new, herbie unfamiliar. When he smiled, something behind
Speaker 1: his eyes flickered, not quite guilt, not quite mischief, but
Speaker 1: something resolutely unreachable. That night, long after he slept, I
Speaker 1: opened a document, a record, not a case file, just
Speaker 1: a way to keep myself in sync with my own mind, dates, times, receipts, screenshots,
Speaker 1: not to weaponize later, not to build a trial, just
Speaker 1: to lay it out side by side the ways our
Speaker 1: two stories had diverged. I could no longer ignore the
Speaker 1: ache of knowing that what I had wanted most, a
Speaker 1: partner whose story matched my own, was drifting further away
Speaker 1: each hour every Saturday that passed. I would need to
Speaker 1: decide soon what counted as proof, and whether I wanted
Speaker 1: to save something or just finally finally name it for
Speaker 1: what it was. I spent Sunday night reading the same
Speaker 1: set of duplicated messages on my phone. Eric's Quassar photo,
Speaker 1: pay no Chocolat for the Queen of spreadsheets, a text
Speaker 1: from Sam checking in a thread of old calender invites,
Speaker 1: stacked out through spring, my eyes strung. At some point
Speaker 1: I must have fallen asleep on the couch with the
Speaker 1: light still on, because when I startled awake a little
Speaker 1: after three, my mouth was dry and my hair was
Speaker 1: plastered to my cheek, and for a moment I felt
Speaker 1: the old brace of comfort. Eric. Somewhere in the dark,
Speaker 1: soft footfalls, kettle, noise from the kitchen, the architecture of
Speaker 1: normal life in shadowy silhouette. Instead, it was silent, and
Speaker 1: my phone vibrated with a calender warning Monday sink with
Speaker 1: Eric eight a m I laughed out loud, a thin,
Speaker 1: odd sound, more anger than amusement. In daylight, the apartment
Speaker 1: felt tight, humid with sleep and unspoken words. Eric was
Speaker 1: already up his side of the bed, messy. He left
Speaker 1: a note on the counter work early, love you back
Speaker 1: for dinner, a heart added after his name. I stared
Speaker 1: at it, fingers curled around the mug. I no longer
Speaker 1: remembered filling, letting the note curl the edges with condensation
Speaker 1: from the mug. At work, I was mostly useless. Every
Speaker 1: emil fused together. I kept moving my mouse from the
Speaker 1: Gmail tab to the open folder of screenshots, scrolling labeling,
Speaker 1: half hoping for some wildly innocent explanation to leap out,
Speaker 1: if only I cataloged and cross checked enough. Mostly I
Speaker 1: felt the familiar pull, the urge to clean things up,
Speaker 1: to line the facts in a row, until everything returned
Speaker 1: to order. Brionni texted just afternoon, thinking of you, door
Speaker 1: always open, call if you need to, a simple emoji.
Speaker 1: I started to write back, then hesitated, not wanting to
Speaker 1: type the real words yet. At four, I finally caved
Speaker 1: and messaged Sam, asking if she was free for a drink.
Speaker 1: I didn't mention Eric, just said I needed fresh air,
Speaker 1: she replied, instantly, sending a map pin a wine bar.
Speaker 1: Five blocks from my office. I found her at a
Speaker 1: high top by the window, swirling something dark in a
Speaker 1: stemless glass. She waited until I'd sat and ordered myself
Speaker 1: a mediocre Malbeck before saying softly, is it getting worse?
Speaker 1: I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Sam waited, giving
Speaker 1: me space to collect my words. Eventually, I set my
Speaker 1: glass down too hard and blurted, I have proof, photos, groups, selfies,
Speaker 1: messages every Saturday, Eric at Augustine with Jess, not just once,
Speaker 1: but all year. I even called Danny and he wouldn't talk.
Speaker 1: It's not just in my head. Sam's mouth tightened. Are
Speaker 1: you going to confront him? I nodded, again, misery creeping
Speaker 1: through me. I have to. I keep thinking I'm losing it.
Speaker 1: Then I see those photos and I know I'm not.
Speaker 1: How did I not see it? Because you trusted him?
Speaker 1: Because you were supposed to? She leaned, across, squeezed my forearm.
Speaker 1: Do you want me there? I shook my head. I
Speaker 1: think I need to do it alone. She recipes spected
Speaker 1: that we talked of other things after, but I only
Speaker 1: half heard them. Counting down to the moment I would
Speaker 1: have to look someone I loved in the eye and
Speaker 1: watch something familiar disappear. By the time I got home,
Speaker 1: rain was dripping onto the balcony, painting the city in streaks.
Speaker 1: Eric texted to say he was heading home soon, picking
Speaker 1: up groceries. Want anything for dinner? Feel like cooking something comforting?
Speaker 1: I replied, whatever you like, and sat silent on the
Speaker 1: couch with the folder of evidence newly organized on my tablet,
Speaker 1: feeling the beat of dread in my chest. He came
Speaker 1: and drenched, kicking off shoes, flashing his old lopsided smile,
Speaker 1: bags in hand. He looked almost boyish, so guileless, that
Speaker 1: my resolve flickered. Rained like hell out there, he said,
Speaker 1: shaking droplets from his hair. I watched him scan my face,
Speaker 1: noting whatever he saw there rough day. I nodded, my answer,
Speaker 1: non committal. He moved to the kitchen, busied himself unloading
Speaker 1: vegetables and eggs. Humming tunelessly. I let him have the
Speaker 1: opening minutes, one last accident of kindness before I had
Speaker 1: to uphend everything. When I finally spoke, my voice trembled
Speaker 1: only a little. Eric, we need to talk, not to morrow,
Speaker 1: not after dinner. Now. He paused cabbage half way to
Speaker 1: the crisper. Something in my tone must have pricked him,
Speaker 1: because he set the bag aside carefully. What's going on?
Speaker 1: For the first time, the nervousness was sharp, unmasked. He
Speaker 1: dried his hands, but didn't come closer, like he already
Speaker 1: sensed there was nowhere safe to stand. I opened my
Speaker 1: tablet so the screen glowed between us, evidence in color,
Speaker 1: time stamped. Tell me about your Saturdays, Tell me about Jess,
Speaker 1: tell me about Augustine. I need you to be honest,
Speaker 1: not to protect me. I already know what you've done.
Speaker 1: Eric went still, eyes flickering from the tablet to my face,
Speaker 1: searching for some angle of denial that might still shield him. Leela,
Speaker 1: I told you, there's nothing. Don't lie. I cut in
Speaker 1: sharper than I meant. Stop making me spell it out.
Speaker 1: I know about the cafe, I know about the photos,
Speaker 1: I know about the months of Saturdays, I've talked to
Speaker 1: your friends. You don't get to rewrite this one more time.
Speaker 1: He blanched. For the first time, he looked truly afraid,
Speaker 1: not just caught off balance by my anger, but cornered
Speaker 1: by the absence of escape. He opened his mouth, closed it.
Speaker 1: Tried again. It's not it's complicated, I barked, a short,
Speaker 1: humorless laugh. Try me. He shifted from foot to foot
Speaker 1: for a moment. I wondered if he'd deny it outright,
Speaker 1: force us both into lunacy. But he deflated, hands falling
Speaker 1: to his side's voice finally small. I never meant for
Speaker 1: it to get this far, I waited. He seemed to
Speaker 1: shrink in front of me, a man receding behind his choices. Jess,
Speaker 1: she's she was a work there. It started with the
Speaker 1: client project, meeting early for coffee, then with the team,
Speaker 1: then sometimes just her and me. She was easy to
Speaker 1: talk to. It was supposed to be harmless. Harmless the
Speaker 1: word echoed in my throat like a sickness. He grimaced.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize not at first. We just clicked. It
Speaker 1: felt good someone seeing me talking to me about things
Speaker 1: you never have time for any more. He caught himself,
Speaker 1: shaking his head as if wrangling the words. I'm not
Speaker 1: blaming you. I mean maybe I am a little. It
Speaker 1: always felt like something more exciting was pulling you away,
Speaker 1: if not work, than planning or the next thing. I
Speaker 1: held the tablet up again, scrolling through group photos, Eric
Speaker 1: and Jess leaning in Saturday after Saturday. Their laughter so
Speaker 1: familiar it scraped my ears. Did you sleep with her?
Speaker 1: He flinched, but he met my eyes. No, I swear
Speaker 1: to God, it wasn't that kind of affair, not physically
Speaker 1: but emotionally. Yeah, we met almost every week. I told
Speaker 1: myself I was just looking for distraction, but it was more.
Speaker 1: It was lying. I know. I ended it a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago. It never got further. He looked old, then,
Speaker 1: his face sagging, voice raw. I thought I could fix it,
Speaker 1: act normal. I wanted to try. I'm sorry. The silence
Speaker 1: rang sharp and electric, full of the outlines of every
Speaker 1: lie unspooled between us. You let me wake up every
Speaker 1: weekend thinking I was crazy, I said, voice low with rage.
Speaker 1: You let me think this was about me. He just
Speaker 1: shook his head, eyes rimmed in red. I thought I
Speaker 1: could keep it separate. I don't know. I pressed my
Speaker 1: palms into my eyes, the sting of tears finally rising.
Speaker 1: How many people know? His lips parted, Then he shook
Speaker 1: his head again. I don't know some of the work group.
Speaker 1: A few people might have wondered. I made sure Danny
Speaker 1: wouldn't say anything. For a moment, I wanted to reach
Speaker 1: for the nearest fragile object and smash it, to feel
Speaker 1: something shatter that wasn't just me. Instead, I kept my
Speaker 1: voice as steady as I could. I can't stay here, Eric,
Speaker 1: not right now. I I need air. He nodded, shame
Speaker 1: hollowing his eyes. Let me help, no, I said, just no.
Speaker 1: Let me do this my way. I went to the bedroom,
Speaker 1: packing a bag with mechanical precision running tights, two work dresses, toothbrush,
Speaker 1: laptop charger, the slim paperback I had meant to start
Speaker 1: for months. I left his jacket on the hook, the
Speaker 1: one I'd carried to so many brunches, now an alien thing.
Speaker 1: He hovered by the kitchen, silent, letting me pass in
Speaker 1: the hallway. Just before the door closed behind me. Eric's
Speaker 1: last words followed, faint and familiar, Leela, Please, let's let's
Speaker 1: talk soon. Don't end it like this, but I was
Speaker 1: already gone, the chill of the corridor swallowing me. The
Speaker 1: hotel lobby was quieter than I'd expected, just a lone
Speaker 1: night clerk and the soft tracery of jazz from hidden speakers.
Speaker 1: I signed in with numb fingers, unwilling to meet any
Speaker 1: one's eyes, the unfamiliar key card oddly cold in my palm.
Speaker 1: Inside the room, I dumped my bag by the bed,
Speaker 1: stood in the small light from a wall sconce and
Speaker 1: let the full weight of the day pressed down on me.
Speaker 1: I texted Brionni and Sam, single lines they both deserved.
Speaker 1: I left It's real calls started. I turned off my ringer,
Speaker 1: letting messages pile up behind that dam of silence. I
Speaker 1: ordered the blandest hotel room service I could find, plain
Speaker 1: toast black tea. While it arrived, I lay on top
Speaker 1: of the covers, staring at the ceiling. The blank paleness
Speaker 1: a kind of witness. No tears, not now, just the
Speaker 1: feel of motionlessness catching up, the world shrinking to four
Speaker 1: walls and filtered air. I slept badly that night, startled
Speaker 1: by every hallway footstep. In the morning, I showered, dried
Speaker 1: my hair, pulled on clean clothes moving by clockwork, my
Speaker 1: phone had a dozen unread messages from Eric. Can we talk?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I miss you. Please call one from Tara
Speaker 1: here if you need anything, no pressure voicemails from BRIONI
Speaker 1: tell me what you need, I'll come get you. For
Speaker 1: the first time in weeks, my mind felt oddly still.
Speaker 1: The outlines of what had broken were clear. Now there
Speaker 1: was nothing left to find out. By noon, the news
Speaker 1: had started to ripple through the group, someone maybe Danny
Speaker 1: or Tara, spreading the story in whispers, turning detail into legend.
Speaker 1: A few people texted condolences or offers to meet. I
Speaker 1: made no reply, storing their numbers in another silent folder.
Speaker 1: I called the property manager about freezing our banking access,
Speaker 1: left a memo for work, saying I'd take a day,
Speaker 1: maybe two, to reconsider priorities. I canceled my dinner plans
Speaker 1: for the week, ignoring the pang when my phone flashed
Speaker 1: an old calendar invite by day fun Shay Leela plus Eric.
Speaker 1: When Eric texted, let's please figure this out, Leelah, we
Speaker 1: can fix this. Don't give up on us. I saw
Speaker 1: the words but couldn't believe them. I typed one response,
Speaker 1: I need space. Then I silenced his notifications. All the
Speaker 1: swirling calculations, rent, groceries, bills, mutual friends could wait. Right now.
Speaker 1: My only task was to move my body through the world,
Speaker 1: one hour at a time. At sunset, I changed into
Speaker 1: running shoes, as if in some mocking echo of all
Speaker 1: those false Saturdays. I left the hotel, following the city
Speaker 1: streets out toward the park, wind lashing my cheeks until
Speaker 1: my eyes watered. Each step, each breath, measured exactly what
Speaker 1: I traded for. Honesty, the comfort of old routines, the
Speaker 1: myth of being known and safe. Nothing waited for me
Speaker 1: on the other side except my own reflection, taut and strange,
Speaker 1: running pointlessly under a gathering night sky. A few days
Speaker 1: days later, when I could bear to see faces again,
Speaker 1: I found myself walking up hill toward the place that
Speaker 1: always calmed me, the look out rising over the city,
Speaker 1: the one where back then Eric had once promised, this
Speaker 1: is where we'll plan the next adventure, just you and me,
Speaker 1: the whole future out there now the view was sprawl
Speaker 1: and missed, a hundred glass towers fading into pale blue.
Speaker 1: I pulled up my phone, opened the calendar, and tapped
Speaker 1: to delete each old event with his name attached. A
Speaker 1: running joke at our favorite restaurant, an anniversary dinner, a
Speaker 1: brunch that never happened. Those color coded sundays marked us.
Speaker 1: Only no one would see the gesture, but the act
Speaker 1: was final, private, rewriting my own schedule, letting emptiness take
Speaker 1: the place of obligation. I scrolled through the last few months,
Speaker 1: found the cluster of brunches, runs, dates that had been
Speaker 1: both promise and cover. I deleted them all. When only
Speaker 1: clean squares remained, I let the phone fall back into
Speaker 1: my pocket. The ache was keen, but beneath it ran
Speaker 1: something small, a root of clarity I had long buried.
Speaker 1: I stared out over the city, at the sweep of
Speaker 1: lights blinking on below. There was one thing I knew now,
Speaker 1: unshakably simple. Next time doubt speaks, I will not look away.
Speaker 1: The wind caught my hair as I stood, unsure whether
Speaker 1: to put my hands in my pockets or just let
Speaker 1: them dangle by my sides. It was early evening, but
Speaker 1: the sky was still bright, one of those long spring
Speaker 1: dusks that makes you believe you could stand outside forever
Speaker 1: without consequence. The city below moved on oblivious cars, people,
Speaker 1: a blur of week end routine going on, untouched by
Speaker 1: what had cracked open in my small, deliberate life. I
Speaker 1: stayed at the look out longer than I'd meant to,
Speaker 1: the taste of salt collecting at the corners of my lips.
Speaker 1: Eventually I walked back to the hotel on legs that
Speaker 1: felt new, detached from the person who'd once believed a
Speaker 1: perfectly balanced calendar could hold a marriage together. The days
Speaker 1: after the confrontation blurred, but not with the simple pain
Speaker 1: I'd always imagined heartbreak would bring. It was as though
Speaker 1: my mind had retracted its claws, abandoning all pursuit, all calculations,
Speaker 1: finally letting the air settle thick around me. I woke up, showered,
Speaker 1: ate what I could. I met Brionni for coffee in
Speaker 1: the hotel's lobby lounge. She didn't ask for details, just
Speaker 1: held my hand, thumb running steady circles against my wrist.
Speaker 1: There were no big speeches, no dramatic sobbing in bathrooms.
Speaker 1: Instead quiet rituals, unpacking, repacking, stowing my shoes by the
Speaker 1: door as if it mattered. The staff at the desk
Speaker 1: began to smile faintly, automatically recognizing me as a regular
Speaker 1: now not a tourist in crisis. Life outside churned on
Speaker 1: emails and texts from friends, trickled in, questioning but respectful.
Speaker 1: A few, like Tara reached out with gentle, almost wary concern.
Speaker 1: I heard things our whis here if you want to
Speaker 1: walk or talk. Others like Jamie simply sent memes or
Speaker 1: tagged me in dumb posts, as if mapping a path
Speaker 1: back to normal conversation. Through all of it, I could
Speaker 1: feel the shudder of rumors starting their slow, inevitable circle
Speaker 1: in the group. Did you hear Leela and Eric split?
Speaker 1: Something about her? Something about him? Nobody really knows. I
Speaker 1: resented it and craved it in turns the proof that
Speaker 1: my experience was real enough to become a story, even
Speaker 1: if told by others. Rick, for his part, kept trying,
Speaker 1: but not with the urgent pounding i'd half feared, half
Speaker 1: wished for. He sent texts morning and night, short, at first,
Speaker 1: careful checking in I love you, I miss you, then
Speaker 1: longer spilling into apologies, shot through with confusion. His own
Speaker 1: hurt curdled into a kind of pleading. I honestly thought,
Speaker 1: I could make it right. I never wanted to hurt you, Lee.
Speaker 1: You were always the one I counted on. Sometimes he
Speaker 1: offered explanations I didn't ask for. Jess was just easy,
Speaker 1: not better, not more important, just a way to remind
Speaker 1: myself that I could still be interesting to someone. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry. What struck me was the absence of denial.
Speaker 1: Not once did Eric try to contradict the facts I'd
Speaker 1: shown him. When I didn't reply, he started emailing a
Speaker 1: medium we'd reserved for vacation rentals and insurance paperwork. If
Speaker 1: you want to talk, tell me. If you just want
Speaker 1: to yell, I'll listen, he wrote one late afternoon, the
Speaker 1: subject line reading simply Leela. For two days, I avoided
Speaker 1: every route that would take me past our apartment. I
Speaker 1: imagined him there, with the furniture exactly as we'd left it,
Speaker 1: the fridge still full of joint choices and compromises, and
Speaker 1: it made my chest ache. On the third day, I
Speaker 1: looped by in an absent minded haze and saw his
Speaker 1: bike gone from the rack, mail stacked on the console
Speaker 1: table inside the lobby window. I wondered where he was sleeping,
Speaker 1: whether Jess had become a fixture of comfort or like me.
Speaker 1: He was haunting temporary spaces, stripped of the context that
Speaker 1: had made him feel like any one at all. The practicalities,
Speaker 1: the ones I was best at in theory, began to
Speaker 1: demand attention. A calendar alert pinged for the landlord's quarterly inspection,
Speaker 1: another for our rent payment due soon. My bank's fraud
Speaker 1: department flagged the frozen joint card, unsure if the transaction
Speaker 1: was legitimate. Each reminder was a small prod. Life continues,
Speaker 1: Bill's need paying, The world's machinery ticks forward, regardless of
Speaker 1: whose heart got cracked. I answered nothing. I let voice
Speaker 1: mail pile up, Eric's voice soft and lost my sister's impatience,
Speaker 1: a distant cousin's request for references for a new job.
Speaker 1: It was in the margins of these banal chores that
Speaker 1: the true shape of our rupture became clear. There was
Speaker 1: no single explosion, no melodramatic ending, just small, relentless shifts. Dinners,
Speaker 1: canceled meetings, rescheduled social events, quietly dropped from my phone.
Speaker 1: The world retracted to a manageable core. Me Brionni Sam
Speaker 1: and the half empty hotel room that came to smell
Speaker 1: faintly of home and defeat. One morning, I woke to
Speaker 1: a mist call from Eric, time stamped two fifty seven
Speaker 1: a m. My first impulse was panic, some animal part
Speaker 1: of me alarmed by old devotion. Maybe something had happened,
Speaker 1: an accident, a terrible apology, a plea for rescue. For
Speaker 1: a few minutes, I hovered finger poised over his contact,
Speaker 1: breathing slower, trying to tell if I would be calling
Speaker 1: back for his benefit or my own. Instead, I listened
Speaker 1: to the voicemail. Eric's voice was raw edges sanded down
Speaker 1: with exhaustion. I just can't sleep. I want to tell
Speaker 1: you again how sorry I am. You don't have to
Speaker 1: forgive me, but I can't bear that you think you
Speaker 1: weren't enough. You were everything good. I let it fall apart,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why. I just wanted you to
Speaker 1: know that I won't call again. If you don't want,
Speaker 1: just please take care of yourself. I sat on the
Speaker 1: edge of the bed, listening to it twice, then deleted it.
Speaker 1: My hands didn't shake, my breathing stayed, even the consequences
Speaker 1: seeped in slow. Some friends pulled away, as if torn
Speaker 1: by loyalty or embarrassment. Others hovered closer, testing the water
Speaker 1: with cautious jokes or silent presents. At work, I performed competence,
Speaker 1: met deadlines, ran meetings, fielded tiny crises about graphics, and
Speaker 1: copy edits, nodded in the right places. After hours, I'd
Speaker 1: walked the city, sometimes retracing roots Eric and I had
Speaker 1: made our own, the bench by the river, the patio
Speaker 1: at the wine bar, the soccer field where we'd once
Speaker 1: joined a random pick up game on a dare. Those
Speaker 1: places felt stripped, now, not haunted so much as neutral.
Speaker 1: Each time I thought I'd reached the small end of emotion,
Speaker 1: another wave crested. Anger at his betrayal, Shame at my
Speaker 1: own blindness, a bruised nostalgia for the best hours and worst.
Speaker 1: Occasional flashes of curiosity about Jess. They're inside jokes, their
Speaker 1: secret world. Was she still in his life? Had she
Speaker 1: known about me all along? Or just believed what Eric
Speaker 1: let her believe. Did she mourn this interruption to her
Speaker 1: comfort or simply shrug herself into another narrative, Hands clean,
Speaker 1: I didn't let myself search for her again, refusing to
Speaker 1: be that kind of obsessed. Some things would always stay unanswered,
Speaker 1: my body braced for small collisions. Shared friends in a
Speaker 1: group chat talking about Eric's drama, mutual acquaintances at happy
Speaker 1: hour eyeing me sideways as if waiting for the right
Speaker 1: cue to bring it up. Mostly they didn't. When someone did.
Speaker 1: When Jamie caught me in the hallway at work with Hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to talk about it? Or should I
Speaker 1: pretend I know nothing? I smiled, shook my head. I'm okay,
Speaker 1: I lied. Let's just get through the day. Truth was
Speaker 1: nothing about it went away, The shape shifted, the pain
Speaker 1: moved to the walls of the room, but it was
Speaker 1: always there. I felt its absence when I chose my
Speaker 1: own dinner, Its ache, when I added my name to
Speaker 1: a single hotel laundry ticket, Its vacancy, when I calculated
Speaker 1: rent ode now to be split differently, newly, impersonal. One evening,
Speaker 1: Tara called her voice softer than usual. Listen, if you
Speaker 1: ever want to drag me out for coffee and talk
Speaker 1: absolute shit for a few hours, I am available and
Speaker 1: judgment free. For a second, I was tempted to ask
Speaker 1: the one question burning under everything, Did you know? Did
Speaker 1: you ever see them see it? Wonder why the world
Speaker 1: was shifting beneath us, but I held back. I knew
Speaker 1: her answer would be incomplete or worse compassionate. Instead, we
Speaker 1: drank over priced lattes and talked about her latest yoga class,
Speaker 1: our friend Mason's doomed love life, the absurdity of city rentals.
Speaker 1: Neither of us mentioned Eric. It was a gift. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize she was offering until it was over. But
Speaker 1: the world Eric and I had made wasn't so easily
Speaker 1: sanded off. He kept messaging, eventually, less often, but every
Speaker 1: few days, ping I'm thinking of you. I'm still sorry.
Speaker 1: Can we talk just once? Even when I didn't reply,
Speaker 1: even when a week passed with nothing but silence, I
Speaker 1: knew he was out there, orbiting the edges, trying to
Speaker 1: decide if there was a place for him in the aftermath.
Speaker 1: One Thursday evening, as I was shoving things from one
Speaker 1: overnight bag to another, there was a knock on the
Speaker 1: hotel room door. I stared at it for a second,
Speaker 1: heart thrumming with distant panic, half expecting Eric on the
Speaker 1: other side, But it was Brioni. Her arms loaded with
Speaker 1: takeout and a bottle of wine. She settled in at
Speaker 1: the tiny table like a diplomat brokering piece. I booked
Speaker 1: you a place, she said, quietly, eyes, gentle but firm,
Speaker 1: a short term rental down town. It's ugly but cheap.
Speaker 1: You can just hold up if you want, figure it out.
Speaker 1: Don't go back to the apartment yet, give it time.
Speaker 1: I nodded, unable to speak. I wondered, not for the
Speaker 1: first time, whom I would be in a place that
Speaker 1: held no memories of us together. After she left, I
Speaker 1: sat at the edge of the bed, staring at the
Speaker 1: small pocket of my life that remained. Two bags, one phone,
Speaker 1: a plastic cup of half cold tea. This was I
Speaker 1: realized the true cost, not spontaneous heartbreak, but thousands of
Speaker 1: smaller prutings, each as final as the next. On Saturday morning,
Speaker 1: as the city launched into its weekend whirl, I stared
Speaker 1: down at the battered file where I'd kept our shared documents,
Speaker 1: calendar invites, rent agreements, the color coded plans I had
Speaker 1: once infused with certainty. I started archiving them one by one,
Speaker 1: tucking away receipts for meals we'd split, annotating reminders that
Speaker 1: no longer applied. Each click was another acceptance. Week Ends
Speaker 1: were my own, now, not a field of traps, but
Speaker 1: of empty possibilities. It was equal parts frightening and liberating.
Speaker 1: The rest of the day passed like molasses. I focused
Speaker 1: on the physical things I could control, folding t shirts,
Speaker 1: washing the last of my own laundry, scheduling a hair
Speaker 1: cut I should have gotten weeks ago. At some point
Speaker 1: I drifted to a park bench by the river, watching
Speaker 1: joggers thread past a couple walking hand in hand into
Speaker 1: the glare. I listened to music, let the words and
Speaker 1: melodies rinse my head. What stood out more than the
Speaker 1: ache was a bizarre relief. Finally there was no story left.
Speaker 1: I was required to believe. Whatever rituals remained, whatever damage lingered,
Speaker 1: was now mine to name. There were no more explanations
Speaker 1: to chase, no more lies to root out. Mid afternoon,
Speaker 1: my phone lit up Eric's name one more time. This
Speaker 1: time he wasn't calling or texting. He'd written me a letter,
Speaker 1: an e mail really titled please read for once I did.
Speaker 1: It was a woven, contradictory thing, regret and hope, pain
Speaker 1: and a half formed plea. He wrote, you deserved better.
Speaker 1: I never thought I'd be someone who lied like this.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you the truth every Saturday. But
Speaker 1: I was always a coward. You were always so strong,
Speaker 1: and I kept waiting for the right moment to be honest.
Speaker 1: I wasn't strong enough. If you want to talk, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you everything I know. That's not enough. I read
Speaker 1: it twice, then clicked archive. I put my phone away.
Speaker 1: That night, the hotel felt quieter than ever. For the
Speaker 1: first time, I didn't replay conversations or hunt for more proof.
Speaker 1: I drifted off to sleep, thinking of nothing. The relief
Speaker 1: a kind of mercy I hadn't expected to find. Late Sunday,
Speaker 1: as the city wound itself back into week day rhythm,
Speaker 1: I made a decision. I packed my few remaining things bag, jacket, laptop,
Speaker 1: that paperback still unfinished. I checked out of the hotel early,
Speaker 1: thanked the clerk without meeting her eyes. TAXI called engine,
Speaker 1: Idling on the curb, I left behind the spare key,
Speaker 1: casual and final. Instead of heading to the rented room
Speaker 1: right away, I walked alone to that look out one
Speaker 1: more time. The sky above was gun metal, streaked with
Speaker 1: filmy clouds. In the waning light, the city stretched away
Speaker 1: from me, half known, half undiscovered. This time, standing at
Speaker 1: the edge, I didn't reach for my phone. I didn't
Speaker 1: check old calendars or scroll through texts. I closed my
Speaker 1: hands into fists, feeling the weight and temperature of the
Speaker 1: air wrap itself around me, new and uncertain. Then, with
Speaker 1: a steady breath, I let go of justifications of regret,
Speaker 1: of the urge to understand every last detail. The ache stayed,
Speaker 1: but softer, now wrapped in something like resolve, I turned
Speaker 1: away from the railing, shoes crunching on old gravel, already
Speaker 1: moving forward as the city unwound below, empty handed, sure
Speaker 1: only of this, I would never again mistake the management
Speaker 1: of hope for the presence of trust. And that was enough.