Speaker 1: Nicole and I had a ritual for making Sundays not
Speaker 1: just RESTful but practically sacred. We de started the hiking
Speaker 1: and music thing the second spring we were together. I'd
Speaker 1: throw together some Spotify playlist, sometimes all pounding synths to
Speaker 1: get us up Kennesaw, sometimes low indye for the wildflowers.
Speaker 1: We debate which trail, who would bring what from the
Speaker 1: little Cuban bakery near the interstate, how much the weather
Speaker 1: should dictate our plans. Whatever the playlist, the plan, it
Speaker 1: was always us shoes ready by the door before sunrise,
Speaker 1: both of us half delirious and laughing about it anyway,
Speaker 1: ready to have stubborn fun together. Lately, though, it was
Speaker 1: always me making the playlist. Saturday night, I was sitting
Speaker 1: at the dining table in our little house in Decatur,
Speaker 1: headphones on, queuing up Fleet Foxes and Phoebe Bridges, and
Speaker 1: for the millionth time that Saint Lucia tracked. Nicole loved
Speaker 1: to pretend to hate take out from Carly Tie was
Speaker 1: cooling beside me my pad ce Yu, turning gummy in
Speaker 1: the carton. Nichole texted that she was stuck late at
Speaker 1: the hospital that emergency. Again a pit bull with heat stroke.
Speaker 1: She said she might just sleep in the guest room
Speaker 1: when she finally got home, didn't want to wake me
Speaker 1: if the surgery went late, and she smelled like adrenaline
Speaker 1: and dog hair. It was a real text, full of
Speaker 1: her usual little dramatics, but I was already off balance.
Speaker 1: Nichole's green curry, her standard, sat untouched from last night,
Speaker 1: still in the fridge. I'd brought it home, worried she
Speaker 1: wouldn't eat between shifts, but she'd come rushing in late,
Speaker 1: hair up in a quick bun, barely said hello before
Speaker 1: getting called back about an on call consult with her
Speaker 1: overnight teck. The container was right where I left it,
Speaker 1: not even opened. Our fridge was full of little evidence
Speaker 1: piles like that lately half cut lemons she swore she'd
Speaker 1: used for lemon bars, eggs, just starting to go. Some
Speaker 1: ipa my sister Leila had brought over for Sunday brunch
Speaker 1: that Nikole said she'd cracked open with a coworker after
Speaker 1: an especially hard shift, But the seal was clearly unbroken.
Speaker 1: I closed my laptop, letting the Sunday Wanderings playlist hover
Speaker 1: in the background, and started mindlessly scrolling my phone for distraction.
Speaker 1: It would have been just another waiting night if my
Speaker 1: thumb hadn't stopped on a post from Ethan, one of
Speaker 1: our mutual friends from Nichole's grad school cohort. He'd tagged Nikole,
Speaker 1: well her handle, not her face, at a new brewery uptown.
Speaker 1: The photo was blurry, bottomed, red cups and crowded benches,
Speaker 1: Nikole out of focus behind Ethan in her navy quilted vest,
Speaker 1: hair out mouth mid laugh. Time stamp read six fifty
Speaker 1: five p m. Nikole would have been just starting her
Speaker 1: supposed critical emergency shift at that exact time. For a minute,
Speaker 1: I stared trying to fit it together. Maybe she'd stop
Speaker 1: by for one beer before for work. Maybe she was
Speaker 1: keeping up with Ethan about some hospital fundraiser and he
Speaker 1: just tagged everyone there. Or maybe I even reasoned this
Speaker 1: out loud the time stamp was off old, or the
Speaker 1: hospital had called her in late, or or or I
Speaker 1: almost typed out, hey, how was the brewery? With a
Speaker 1: teasing emoji, but deleted it instead. I put the pad
Speaker 1: CU in the fridge next to yesterday's unmarked green curry
Speaker 1: and turned off the playlist before it could AutoPlay Nicole
Speaker 1: texted again quick, still at the hospital, love you. Sorry
Speaker 1: I didn't reply. Her hiking boots, her smaller ones next
Speaker 1: to mine sat expectantly lined up at the door, but
Speaker 1: I didn't bother prepping the granola bars like we used
Speaker 1: to do. I stood in the quiet, head weirdly full
Speaker 1: but nowhere to put it, and tried to remember when
Speaker 1: these simple things started feeling fragile. It's not like I
Speaker 1: don't know how relationships. Real ones, adult ones get bruised
Speaker 1: by time and career and the pinprick caseaos of being
Speaker 1: together almost into our thirties and not immune to boredom
Speaker 1: or stress or wanting out. Five years married, seven together.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's just how it goes. But I never had
Speaker 1: to work at trusting Nicole, even back at Emory. She'd
Speaker 1: been the one who dragged me to poetry slams and
Speaker 1: made pancake dinners at midnight, who once duct taped my
Speaker 1: broken bike tire with surgical tubing and laughed the hallway
Speaker 1: to Piedmont Park when it burst. Anyway, our Sunday brunch
Speaker 1: table always overflowed with too many berries, and our neighbor
Speaker 1: Bryan's bizarre attempts at vegan scones. Afterwards, Nicole and I
Speaker 1: would do the New York Times crossword bickering over gen
Speaker 1: Z clues and who got to hold the scrabble timer.
Speaker 1: Our friends overlapped in a way that felt effortless. Double
Speaker 1: dates with Meyer and her partner, all to candle trivia
Speaker 1: knights with Leela and her boyfriend Charles, whom Nicole teased
Speaker 1: mercilessly about his in door plant addiction. We weren't the
Speaker 1: couple that hovered in corners, that left early when real
Speaker 1: talk started. And when Nicole announced that January she landed
Speaker 1: the head e er surgeon role at the Uptown Animal Hospital,
Speaker 1: I was the loudest voice at a bash, dragging her
Speaker 1: into an impromptu bay and say dance off because I
Speaker 1: said and believed that she needed to claim the new stage.
Speaker 1: I just made project manager at the architecture firm finally
Speaker 1: after years of waiting, and sighed freelancing for equity into
Speaker 1: our dream garden. Nikole was proud as hell. She showed
Speaker 1: up at my showcase, made power punts for my ideas,
Speaker 1: picked out herbs and obscure bulbs for our raised beds.
Speaker 1: Our life wasn't perfect, but it felt like we shaped
Speaker 1: it from something solid. Nikole always had a way of
Speaker 1: using laughter as spackle over stress. She teased me about
Speaker 1: how I folded towels to hotel, or how my kayaking
Speaker 1: technique was decidedly amateur but adorable. But when her anxiety spiked,
Speaker 1: like taking on this monstrous new sh shift schedule, she
Speaker 1: withdrew that first week, She'd started putting her phone straight
Speaker 1: on to do not disturb after dinner, the screen of
Speaker 1: black slab on the counter work boundaries, She said, you
Speaker 1: should too. I let it slide, told myself I respected
Speaker 1: her right to decompress when all she saw these days
Speaker 1: were bleeding dogs and panicked pet owners. Still, I'd catch
Speaker 1: myself feeling shut out, that flicker of a fence that
Speaker 1: shouldn't have mattered. The next time I tried to bring
Speaker 1: us back to normal, Nicole came up with a clever
Speaker 1: way to sidestep the issue. It was well played. She
Speaker 1: urged me to finally take the ski trip I'd always skipped,
Speaker 1: said this year, please go. You need it. She said,
Speaker 1: work was murder, she couldn't take time. She'd hate to
Speaker 1: slow the group down all that the way, she said,
Speaker 1: it felt almost too rehearsed, but I let it puff
Speaker 1: me up, her wanting me to go, her trusting me
Speaker 1: to have fun with my friends. But it registered sharp
Speaker 1: that she'd been the one two years earlier, guilt tripping
Speaker 1: me for leaving her behind on the last sk GHI trip.
Speaker 1: Let's go together next time, she'd said. For a second,
Speaker 1: I toyed with whether she'd changed her mind after the
Speaker 1: e R promotion. Maybe Sunday brunches and trail hikes really
Speaker 1: weren't priorities when managing a perpetual crisis. Still, I packed
Speaker 1: the night before I left. I tried to stoke some fun,
Speaker 1: dropping comments about the possible black diamond wipeouts, our usual
Speaker 1: wager at first fall equals buying post slope dessert. Nicole smiled,
Speaker 1: but it didn't reach her eyes. While throwing my jeans
Speaker 1: in the wash, I emptied Nichole's pockets for her doing
Speaker 1: what I always did. That's where I found the ticket's
Speaker 1: stub from Fractured Realities Contemporary Southeast Art Exhibition, Thursday, seven
Speaker 1: thirty p m. She d told me she was catching
Speaker 1: up on charts and paperwork that night, not home until
Speaker 1: nearly midnight. The stub was fresh, not yellowed, not accidentally laundered.
Speaker 1: I held it dumbly, thinking about the art shows we
Speaker 1: d once crashed together, and how Nicole usually texted me
Speaker 1: surgical hayze send memes if she was working late. I
Speaker 1: let it pass mostly over dinner. I tried to needle
Speaker 1: out an explanation, grinning, you ever sneak off for art
Speaker 1: shows these days or just for work field trips. Nicole
Speaker 1: twirled her past her and mumbled something about, oh, yes, soon,
Speaker 1: Meyer's group has a trip coming up. Want to see
Speaker 1: those weird installations? Maybe in a couple weeks. She kept
Speaker 1: her gaze on her plate, deftly steering conversation to my
Speaker 1: anxieties about the ski trip. I wanted to trust her words,
Speaker 1: but they sat thinly over something else, almost like there
Speaker 1: was a script she was following. I steeled myself. Whatever
Speaker 1: the weirdness, it was probably just work. The ski trip
Speaker 1: itself should have been freeing old college friends a rented cabin,
Speaker 1: knights of beers and laughing at bruised knees. But late
Speaker 1: one night, after a long round of cards against humanity,
Speaker 1: some one passed me their phone group chat, endless memes
Speaker 1: and a photo of a patio at a down town
Speaker 1: wine bar. The caption was dumb, just guess who we saw.
Speaker 1: Nikole was in the background, blurry but unmistakable, leaning close
Speaker 1: to man. I didn't know ponat a loose jacket off
Speaker 1: her shoulders. She was smiling in a way that looked
Speaker 1: lighter than she'd been at home lately. The time stamp
Speaker 1: that night, nine thirteen p m. Friday. I'd texted Nikole
Speaker 1: before bed that same evening, and she'd replied, just one
Speaker 1: more surgery. I'll crash at the hospital after love you.
Speaker 1: My mouth went desert dry. I double checked the date,
Speaker 1: the time. No chance for an innocent overlap. Back in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: I tried for something normal. Nikole picked me up. She
Speaker 1: looked tired, dark circles under eyes. She hid with sunglasses,
Speaker 1: but tried for pleasant. I asked anything with work, calm down.
Speaker 1: She avoided details, threw in a story about an aggressive
Speaker 1: sheet sou and a frazzled intun Her phone buzzed several
Speaker 1: times during the dry and she thumbed it onto silent
Speaker 1: so fast it startled me. That night, I called Leela,
Speaker 1: hoping to stitch the hole in my confidence. Nikole seems
Speaker 1: a little off right, I said, steering at casual. My
Speaker 1: sister hesitated, then said she got in coffee with Nikole
Speaker 1: last week and she just seemed distracted, honestly, like she
Speaker 1: was barely there. Leela asked if everything was okay, and
Speaker 1: I heard the subtext was Nikole protecting me or herself?
Speaker 1: I brushed it off, told her maybe Nikole was just overloaded,
Speaker 1: but I didn't believe it. A day later, Nicole and
Speaker 1: I went to Brian's back yard cookout something we used
Speaker 1: to love, a chance to feel like sloppy, ordinary neighbors again.
Speaker 1: Late in the afternoon, Brian muscled up beside me over
Speaker 1: the grill, bottle in hand. Hey, weird. I ran into
Speaker 1: Nicole and her coworker at sun in my belly last
Speaker 1: weekend early brunch. You weren't there right. My face must
Speaker 1: have given something away, because Brian looked instantly apologetic. Sorry, man,
Speaker 1: just thought you were traveling or something. Nikole had told
Speaker 1: me she'd worked all night and needed to sleep late
Speaker 1: that morning. She never even mentioned brunch. That night, I
Speaker 1: went outside to the driveway just on a weird impulse.
Speaker 1: Nichole's car was idling at the curb. City grit caked
Speaker 1: on the back window. Coffee cups in both cup holders.
Speaker 1: One was Nichole's, her favorite batted yetti, the one I'd
Speaker 1: bought her for graduation, filled with the residue of black
Speaker 1: coffee and half melted ice. The other was a paper
Speaker 1: to go cup from a bakery across town. Lipstick ringed
Speaker 1: on the lid, not her signature burnt rose shade that
Speaker 1: left a faint pink dust on all our glasses, but
Speaker 1: a deep plum, half faded. I didn't say anything. I
Speaker 1: just dropped both cups in recycling and told myself over
Speaker 1: and over it was nothing. Nichole's voice mail messages started
Speaker 1: swelling in frequency, replacing the phone calls we used to
Speaker 1: have on her drive home. Sorry babe, super tired, can't talk,
Speaker 1: love you. She hung up fast, always with an edge
Speaker 1: of finality. There was less touching, less lingering talk. Late
Speaker 1: at night, Nikole would lapse into small, obvious routines, her
Speaker 1: telling me about dog abscesses gone wild with a fixed,
Speaker 1: careful smile. Sometimes after dinner, she'd feigned sleepiness and vanish
Speaker 1: into the guest room, claiming she didn't want to wake
Speaker 1: me by tossing all night. Other times she blamed nerves
Speaker 1: about her new role, for forgetting to RSVP to dinners
Speaker 1: or leaving texts unread. But reality started unraveling in ways
Speaker 1: I couldn't take back together. I looked at our shared
Speaker 1: Google calendar, something we both used religiously, color coding our
Speaker 1: different work shifts, parties, appointments. Recently, though, Nikole had blocked
Speaker 1: out long Thursday nights and some weekends with work meeting.
Speaker 1: But when I cross checked against the hospital's posted e
Speaker 1: R schedule, i'd found it online. Feeling sheepish, those meetings
Speaker 1: didn't exist. I try to talk myself down. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was a change in admin's scheduling, a mistake. Then Nikole
Speaker 1: started guarding her phone like it was a passport, turned
Speaker 1: face down, carried even into the bathroom slips of conversation,
Speaker 1: answered with a chirpie sorry work again. At a party
Speaker 1: with Meyer and a few vet texts, Nikole laughed too
Speaker 1: loudly at Meyer's stories and bristled almost snapped at me
Speaker 1: when I made a dumb joke about emergency work spouses.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't let me watch her type out her shift replacements,
Speaker 1: and when the hospital called, she'd vanish outside to answer
Speaker 1: in the car. Even during a thunder storm. The isolation
Speaker 1: grew quietly, Invitations dried up. We should have been the
Speaker 1: couple every one invited instead, Dinners, trivia nights, all filtered away,
Speaker 1: with Nikole s just so much happening this quarter as
Speaker 1: the excuse. When Meyer and her partner Kim did manage
Speaker 1: to get us over, the conversation avoided anything personal. All
Speaker 1: stuck to pet stories and viral tick toks. Weeks blurred
Speaker 1: into months. Even the small things got brittle. Nichole's habit
Speaker 1: of ordering groceries switched to her doing little errands alone.
Speaker 1: When I asked about her favorite frozen yogurt, she claimed
Speaker 1: she was craving new things. I didn't want to be territorial.
Speaker 1: But when her old playlists went stale on our shared
Speaker 1: Spotify and she started humming music I didn't recognize. I
Speaker 1: felt like a ghost in my own kitchen. Then whatever
Speaker 1: boundary stood between my doubts and confrontation finally eroded. One night,
Speaker 1: after a bruising, joyless dinner where I tried to joke
Speaker 1: Nichole into asking about my firm's win on a condo bid,
Speaker 1: only to have her aha into her beans and check
Speaker 1: her watch. I stopped her when she moved toward the
Speaker 1: guest room. You're barely here, I said, voice steady, but
Speaker 1: hands shaking under the table. If something's off with us,
Speaker 1: I want to know, is it really just work stress?
Speaker 1: I hated how small my voice sounded, how needy. Nichole's
Speaker 1: eyes brimmed instantly emotional, as if she'd been waiting for
Speaker 1: the question. She grabbed my hand, said she was just
Speaker 1: under water at work, that she'd lost a patient, the
Speaker 1: worst case in three years, and the head vet was
Speaker 1: scrutinizing her every move. I know I've been impossible. Just
Speaker 1: be patient, jur I'm sorry. For a minute, I let
Speaker 1: it soothe me. I felt childish for projecting my worries,
Speaker 1: for letting a dozen circumstantial details add up to sabotage.
Speaker 1: Nikole curled next to me on the couch, head tucked
Speaker 1: under my arm the way she did on our first apartments,
Speaker 1: Saggy Futon, and we reminisced for hours about Annette the
Speaker 1: disaster dog, about our slapstick attempt at Selsa, lessons, about
Speaker 1: how Nikole used to slide post its with dumb poems
Speaker 1: into my wallet. It felt real in the moment we
Speaker 1: pulled up pictures from college. Half planned a weekend in
Speaker 1: the mountains for the next month, talking in lets and
Speaker 1: can we try again? I thought, we'll get out of
Speaker 1: the woods for once. I got a full night's sleep.
Speaker 1: Two days later, Nikole was packing for a conference in
Speaker 1: Athens an overnight, some veterinary presentation. She said all the
Speaker 1: bigwigs from Atlanta would be there. I offered a ride,
Speaker 1: but she waved me off, kissed my cheek, and said
Speaker 1: she'd carpool with Meyer. The morning Nichole left my phone
Speaker 1: pinged doctor Meyer had accidentally texted me a chat clearly
Speaker 1: meant for someone else. Let me know how your weekend
Speaker 1: in Asheville goes. Hope you and Nichole have fun. I
Speaker 1: stared at the screen Asheville. Nikole hadn't mentioned Asheville. It
Speaker 1: didn't track, not with a conference in Athens, not when
Speaker 1: she was supposedly booked back at work by noon Sunday.
Speaker 1: For a few seconds, I stared at the message, wondering
Speaker 1: if it was auto correct, a joke, something I'd misheard.
Speaker 1: But then the tension that had coiled in me for
Speaker 1: months snapped, now burning with a new jagged edge. I
Speaker 1: didn't text Nicole. I didn't text Meyer. I just stared
Speaker 1: and stared at the chiming message until I stopped feeling
Speaker 1: anything at all. I hung in that confused stasis for hours,
Speaker 1: my mind double backing over every small oddity, the art ticket,
Speaker 1: the lipstick, the conference that may not exist. I needed more,
Speaker 1: some kind of certainty, before the ground came out from
Speaker 1: under me. Nichole texted a picture later, a neat, little,
Speaker 1: prepackaged continental breakfast in a hotel room with pastal walls,
Speaker 1: her conference badge half visible. I zoomed in. Nothing in
Speaker 1: the photo suggested Athens. There was a region map sticking
Speaker 1: from a pamphlet on the table. I enhanced as best
Speaker 1: I could, but it might have said blue Ridge, for
Speaker 1: all I could tell. Nichole's texts were breezy, chatty, even
Speaker 1: miss you, see you late Sunday. Don't forget to water
Speaker 1: the lilies, love you. I paced all through Saturday, debating
Speaker 1: whether to try calling the animal hospital. I had a
Speaker 1: lingering sense of decency, not wanting to seem like a
Speaker 1: suspicious spouse, or worse, someone ready to sink their relationship
Speaker 1: over a misunderstanding. But the more I thought about it,
Speaker 1: the more everything pointed away from ordinary stress. The lies
Speaker 1: were too sharp, the timeline too fractured, details building into
Speaker 1: something I couldn't rationalize away. Sleep eluded me. That night,
Speaker 1: I started making lists, literal bullet points in my phone's notes,
Speaker 1: app each inconsistency, laid out with times and dates. Nichole's
Speaker 1: appearance at the brewery while supposedly at work, ticket stub
Speaker 1: for the exhibit on a work night, wine bar appearance
Speaker 1: with an unknown man, brunch at sun in my belly
Speaker 1: with co worker when she said she was sleeping, lipstick,
Speaker 1: unfamiliar coffee order, work meetings in the calendar not mirrored
Speaker 1: on the hospital's schedule, guarded phone, and odd behavior at gatherings.
Speaker 1: The Athens slash Ashville text. I recited them silently, like
Speaker 1: an incantation. Just writing it down made it feel less
Speaker 1: like a foggy malaise and more like something I could
Speaker 1: maybe put to rest or confront. If it turned out
Speaker 1: to be some tangled overlap of work and friend obligations,
Speaker 1: I'd apologize, but I'd no longer let myself be comforted
Speaker 1: by surface level answers. When a cole came home that Sunday,
Speaker 1: I noticed she'd barely unpacked two bags dropped in the
Speaker 1: hall as if she meant to leave again soon. She
Speaker 1: told me all about the conference, the speakers, the stressful networking,
Speaker 1: the bad hotel coffee. She didn't mention Meyer's mistaken message,
Speaker 1: nor did she seem particularly curious about what I'd been
Speaker 1: up to all weekend. My responses were measured, making mental
Speaker 1: notes of every gap. I waited until she went upstairs
Speaker 1: to shower, then walked into the guest room, where she
Speaker 1: left her conference pass. The lanyard read Blue Ridge Wellness
Speaker 1: Center Veterinary Symposium Asheville, not Athen's. My hands were cold.
Speaker 1: I set the pass back where it was, not, wanting
Speaker 1: Nichole to notice I'd touched it. For the first time,
Speaker 1: I actually considered that the thing I was afraid to
Speaker 1: face wasn't just Nicole being tired or overworked or lonely.
Speaker 1: It was Nicole choosing to build a parallel life, patches
Speaker 1: of which I'd stumbled into by accident. I texted Brian
Speaker 1: that night, after too much bourbon and not enough food. Hey,
Speaker 1: you ever see Nicole with that coworker again. I kept
Speaker 1: it light, as much as it killed me to play dumb.
Speaker 1: Brian took a while, then replied, honest but careful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a couple times lately, always way out east. Not a
Speaker 1: usual lunch spots. Guys, may be my age looks like
Speaker 1: a younger Atticus Finch, if that makes sense. They seemed
Speaker 1: close you okay? I didn't answer, not right away. Next
Speaker 1: I called the animal hospital. I used the land line,
Speaker 1: disguising my voice a little, asking for doctor Nicole, wondering
Speaker 1: if she'd been on call all week nd. The receptionist hesitated,
Speaker 1: she's out until Monday, Oh, except for a day consult Wednesday. Sorry,
Speaker 1: can I leave her a message? I hung up and
Speaker 1: felt the adrenaline sweat through my shirt. I was scared
Speaker 1: and furious and weirdly hollow all at once. But I
Speaker 1: needed to see, really see what was being hidden. I
Speaker 1: remembered Nichole had never turned off location sharing on Find
Speaker 1: my iPhone. We used to joke about how it was
Speaker 1: pique millennial codependence. I opened the app, hands trembling. Nichole's
Speaker 1: phone read Asheville downtown, the Penrose Hotel not moving. I
Speaker 1: called Leela, finally, trusting she would be the only person
Speaker 1: who'd let me talk in circles without pushing solutions. Her
Speaker 1: voice was both warm and steady, a life line. I
Speaker 1: spilled everything, the ticket, the lipstick, the mysterious brunches, the
Speaker 1: incorrect conference location. Myer's text Leelah paused and didn't a
Speaker 1: fault to platitudes. If you need to know, then you
Speaker 1: need to know, she said softly. But don't walk in
Speaker 1: looking for a fight, walk in prepared for pain. I'll
Speaker 1: be on standby, Okay, I thanked, her voice catching and
Speaker 1: promised to update her. It was late afternoon already, Nicholl's
Speaker 1: itinerary suggesting she was due home next day at lunch.
Speaker 1: If I left, then I'd be in Asheville just after dawn.
Speaker 1: I drove for hours in the blue gray light, my
Speaker 1: mind racing through every possible scenario. What if Nichole was
Speaker 1: trapped in something. What if I'd missed some red flag,
Speaker 1: some sign she was miserable, not just at home, but
Speaker 1: as a person. What if I'd somehow become the villain
Speaker 1: in her life? Each mile marker felt at once like
Speaker 1: pursuit and escape. When I finally arrived, Asheville was rinsed
Speaker 1: clean with spring rain. The Penrose Hotel squatted at the
Speaker 1: end of a touristy block European in style, staffed too
Speaker 1: friendly for the awkward, sleep deprived man in front of them.
Speaker 1: I booked a room under my own name, just in case,
Speaker 1: and nursed a black coffee in the lobby, jacket zipped up,
Speaker 1: feeling every inch the private detective I never wanted to be.
Speaker 1: It took two more hours, but at eleven Nicole emerged
Speaker 1: from the elevator, hair looser than she wore it at home,
Speaker 1: skin glowing with that post chowl flush she once saved
Speaker 1: for nights out with me. By her side was a
Speaker 1: man young, a kind of deliberate casual, navy scrubs swapped
Speaker 1: for jeans and a blazer, too confident not to draw attention.
Speaker 1: Nikole and he Allan, it would turn out, walked close.
Speaker 1: He brushed her hand as they headed out the glass doors,
Speaker 1: laughing at something. Their heads tipped naturally together. For a minute,
Speaker 1: my brain short circuited. My body was frozen. It felt staged,
Speaker 1: like I had willed it into being, just so I
Speaker 1: could finally truly understand the extent of what I had
Speaker 1: been glimpsing in pieces. This was the story written on
Speaker 1: Nichole's new clothes, her shifting moods, The growing chasm in
Speaker 1: our bed. I ducked away, unwilling to turn this into
Speaker 1: a public scene. Instead, I waited in the bar, off
Speaker 1: the lobby, watching the street, trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: if I could confront her. My hands were shaking so badly.
Speaker 1: The bartender asked if I was cold just passing through.
Speaker 1: I lied and ordered seltzer. He didn't charge me for
Speaker 1: the old reflex to text Nicole, where are you? Flickered
Speaker 1: then died for now. Sitting there, I was forced to
Speaker 1: face a possibility I had spent months avoiding. Maybe the rituals,
Speaker 1: the playlists, the careful encouragement had all been replaced not
Speaker 1: by fatigue or boredom, but by some one else's attentions.
Speaker 1: I had found almost every answer, but I still didn't
Speaker 1: know how it all truly began, or what Nichole would
Speaker 1: say when finally she saw me. After a while, sitting
Speaker 1: there at the bar, I realized how easily I could
Speaker 1: slip into a sort of passive witness, all questions and adrenaline,
Speaker 1: with nowhere for it to go but inwards. I kept
Speaker 1: glancing at the front desk's narrow mirror, almost expecting Nicole
Speaker 1: and allan God, I hated that I already had a
Speaker 1: name for him to reappear tense, and cought instead. The
Speaker 1: lobby cycled through its late morning rituals, a family haggling
Speaker 1: over zoo tickets, two honeymooners wrestling a map, a bearded
Speaker 1: guy in a tech t shirt asking for a charger.
Speaker 1: I stared at the vanes in the marble countertop, trying
Speaker 1: to slow my breathing. After an hour, when the bartender
Speaker 1: started rearranging bottles and I was too wired to keep sitting,
Speaker 1: I stood and left a few dollars on the surface.
Speaker 1: My legs wobbled as I wandered out into the overcast
Speaker 1: parking lot and walked around the block, partly to scout
Speaker 1: the entrances and partly to kill time until I had
Speaker 1: some kind of plan. My phone vibrated. It was Leela,
Speaker 1: you made it okay. I typed out a shaky yeah.
Speaker 1: Looks like she's with someone for sure. I didn't elaborate.
Speaker 1: When she sent her heart emoji, I felt a weird
Speaker 1: wave of grief at having to need that kind of
Speaker 1: uncomplicated comfort. After orbiting the block for a while, I
Speaker 1: doubled back and found myself across from one of those
Speaker 1: little independent coffee shops, the kind Nicole had always dragged
Speaker 1: me to, all distressed leather chairs and cleontael with colorful tattoos.
Speaker 1: Peering through the window, I didn't spot Nicole, but counted
Speaker 1: at least three people in scrubs and one in a
Speaker 1: hospital logo jacket. Maybe Allan stayed here before, or maybe
Speaker 1: this whole world was one Nicole had quietly inserted herself into.
Speaker 1: My gut nodded. I forced myself to do something practical,
Speaker 1: anything really, to avoid spiraling in public. I ducked into
Speaker 1: a near by bookstore and flipped through a display copy
Speaker 1: of some travel memoir. I'd never buy, the words on
Speaker 1: the page barely registered. Instead, I thought about the thousand
Speaker 1: ways this could play out. When Nicole walked right by,
Speaker 1: clasping Allan's arm, which he rushed back to Atlanta, phone off,
Speaker 1: her secrets intact except for the ones I'd exposed. Or
Speaker 1: maybe god forbid, she'd see me panic and I'd have
Speaker 1: to confront her in some echoing lobby while strangers gawked.
Speaker 1: My phone pinged again, this time a group message with
Speaker 1: our hiking friends Jamie and Luke. Who's up for Arabia
Speaker 1: Mountain next weekend, Jamie wrote, I stared at the blue
Speaker 1: bubbles before locking the phone. It struck me then, our world,
Speaker 1: our web, was going to unravel. With every new line
Speaker 1: a coal wove, she pulled another loose thread from the
Speaker 1: life we'd spent a decade spinning together. When I circled
Speaker 1: back to the Penrose, my resolve was brittle but present.
Speaker 1: Something about being physically here, standing where Nicole had chosen
Speaker 1: to lie, changed the game from speculation to inevitability. I
Speaker 1: got another coffee from the lobby, away to look legitimate,
Speaker 1: just another business traveler killing time, and sat near the window,
Speaker 1: eyes trained on the gilded elevator doors. Minutes felt like hours.
Speaker 1: I started a draft message to Nicole in my note's app,
Speaker 1: rewriting what I might say if she appeared. Everything sounded
Speaker 1: trite or accusatory. None of it captured the shock coiled
Speaker 1: in my chest. Eventually, the elevator thunked open. Nichole stepped out,
Speaker 1: this time alone. She brushed her hair, changed into casual
Speaker 1: jeans and a peach sweater, clothes I didn't recognize. She
Speaker 1: moved lightly, smiling to the clerk as she asked for
Speaker 1: something behind the desk I kept expecting her to turn
Speaker 1: to sense me through the wall of glass and lobby scent.
Speaker 1: She never looked in my direction. Instead, she accepted what
Speaker 1: looked like a new room card, tucked it into her pocket,
Speaker 1: and meandered toward the front doors. I fumbled for composure,
Speaker 1: pushing myself upright so quickly that the chair legs scraped
Speaker 1: audibly against the tile. I debated following her outside blind
Speaker 1: confrontation right there on the sidewalk, truth rung out in public,
Speaker 1: but some vestige of dignity or cowardice told me to wait.
Speaker 1: She paused before leaving, propping open her phone for a
Speaker 1: split second. She looked almost exactly like the woman I knew,
Speaker 1: the set of her mouth, the worry in her brow,
Speaker 1: the way she typed with thumbs flying. The diffference was
Speaker 1: that she wasn't thinking about me. I glanced at my
Speaker 1: own reflection in the window, rumpled, eyes ringed, and wilder
Speaker 1: than I'd ever seen. I needed to talk to her
Speaker 1: in a space that wouldn't let either of us bolt
Speaker 1: screw it, I thought. I walked toward the desk, kept
Speaker 1: my voice even, and asked if there was a hotel
Speaker 1: bar open in the late afternoon. The clerk directed me,
Speaker 1: bright and helpful, to the lounge at the end of
Speaker 1: the hall. I went, staked a quiet corner table and
Speaker 1: rehearsed pointless strategies in my head. Half an hour passed.
Speaker 1: My phone buzzed again, this time Meier fractalizing my pulse
Speaker 1: heard from Nikole. Did the conference rap early? Want to
Speaker 1: swap hospital horror stories? Later? Her check in felt cruelly normal.
Speaker 1: I didn't answer, scared my fingers would betray the panic underneath. Instead,
Speaker 1: I set the phone aside, letting the anxiety ride up,
Speaker 1: my spine unchecked. Finally, just past three zero zero p m.
Speaker 1: Nicole entered the bar. She was alone, should set back
Speaker 1: in that deliberate way she used when trying to pass
Speaker 1: for self assured she didn't see me at first. She
Speaker 1: settled at the bar, ordered sparkling water and was scanning
Speaker 1: a folded pamphlet the kind tourists get. When I approached,
Speaker 1: I stopped beside her. She jumped at my voice. Hey.
Speaker 1: Nikole twisted around so abruptly. Her barst all squeaked for
Speaker 1: a beat. Her features rearranged themselves. Recognition, shock, then a WinCE,
Speaker 1: so brief only someone who loved her could clock it, ju,
Speaker 1: she said, voice high and tight, with surprise. I forced
Speaker 1: my voice steady. Didn't expect to see you here. How
Speaker 1: was Athen's I was proud of how neutral it sounded.
Speaker 1: Nikole blinked, mouth opening and closing. Then she tried to laugh.
Speaker 1: You what are you doing in Asheville. I ignored her question,
Speaker 1: sat down beside her. There was a moment of parallel silence.
Speaker 1: The bartender refilled her water and gave me a searching look.
Speaker 1: I waited until he ambled out of earshot. Nikole fiddled
Speaker 1: with her straw, gazed, darting everywhere but my face. I
Speaker 1: got a text from Meyer, I said, wishing us a
Speaker 1: great weak nd in Asheville. Her face tightened, plain involuntary.
Speaker 1: I put my phone down between us, screen dark. You
Speaker 1: want to tell me what's actually going on? There was
Speaker 1: a shimmer in her eyes, but she rallied, smoothing her
Speaker 1: expression into something like annoyance. I can't believe you're here,
Speaker 1: jur Seriously, you followed me? Did you drive all this
Speaker 1: way to check up on me? I came because nothing
Speaker 1: adds up. Nikole, your conference was supposed to be in Athens.
Speaker 1: Your badge says Asheville. You were at a brewery during
Speaker 1: your last emergency shift. You went to an art show
Speaker 1: when you said you were at the hospital. I've seen
Speaker 1: the brunches, the new coffee orders, the calendar that doesn't
Speaker 1: match your supposed work meetings. My voice broke. I took
Speaker 1: a breath, kept it from spilling over, and I saw
Speaker 1: you leave the hotel with Alleyne. Just now. She flinched
Speaker 1: at that bottom lip caught between her teeth. For a long,
Speaker 1: excruciating moment, Nikole just stared at the condensation curling around
Speaker 1: her glass. I'm not, she started, then shook her head,
Speaker 1: pressing fingers to her eyes. You're you're spying on me, Jeremy,
Speaker 1: don't try to flip this. Just talk to me, please,
Speaker 1: I hated how desperate that last word sounded. She exhaled
Speaker 1: all at once, a long, petulant sigh. It isn't what
Speaker 1: you're thinking. Then tell me what I am thinking, Nikole,
Speaker 1: because I'm out of explanations. She looked left, right at
Speaker 1: the bartender, a handful of ritarees huddled over beer flights.
Speaker 1: Not here, she muttered, Can we go up to my room? Aye?
Speaker 1: If you want answers? Really, I nodded silent, and followed
Speaker 1: her through the elevator. The ride up was so tense
Speaker 1: I almost laughed. Classic us, all quiet posture, not touching,
Speaker 1: not even breathing in sync. Once in the room, a
Speaker 1: bland queen bed, set up two mugs on the window sill.
Speaker 1: Nikole paced the foot of the bed, arms crossed tight. Finally,
Speaker 1: she stopped. If you're here to call me a liar,
Speaker 1: just say it. I'm here because I don't know what
Speaker 1: else to do. Nick, the nickname felt foreign in my mouth.
Speaker 1: You keep shutting me out. You create stories I can't follow.
Speaker 1: I want the truth. That's all I've ever wanted. Her
Speaker 1: jaw set hard, jaw muscles twitching. You haven't exactly made
Speaker 1: it easy, just poking around, asking weird questions, calling my colleagues.
Speaker 1: I cut her off, voice rising. Every day there's something
Speaker 1: new that doesn't line up. I'm not inventing this. You
Speaker 1: say you're one place, you're photographed in another. You claim
Speaker 1: you're working. Brian sees you at brunch with a man
Speaker 1: I've never met. Nikole bristled but didn't reply. She picked
Speaker 1: up one of the mugs, pretending to sip from it,
Speaker 1: even though it was clearly cold. Fine, she said, words
Speaker 1: quiet but volcanic under the surface. Do you want to know? Really? No? Yes.
Speaker 1: She sat at the end of the bed, elbows on
Speaker 1: her knees, and for a second I was transporting. Her
Speaker 1: posture was the same one she used when waiting for
Speaker 1: bad news about a rescue animal years ago. I realized
Speaker 1: then how much I missed, even the familiar shape of
Speaker 1: her sorrow. It started at the hospital, she said, voice
Speaker 1: scuffed raw. I hated those shifts. But Alleyan he was
Speaker 1: new covering nights. I thought if I men taught him,
Speaker 1: made a friend, it would be good for me, someone
Speaker 1: who got how grim it can be hearing the beeper
Speaker 1: go off all night. We started talking late, then working
Speaker 1: weird hours together. It was God, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to explain. It felt easy and electric and safe. I'm
Speaker 1: not proud of what I did, jur I just when
Speaker 1: I was with him, it was like none of the
Speaker 1: suffocating expectations existed. No expectations, I echo, voice sharper than
Speaker 1: I meant. You mean, like the ones we promised each other,
Speaker 1: or like telling your husband where you actually are. She
Speaker 1: flinched but didn't Rebut don't make it sound like I
Speaker 1: wanted to hurt you. I didn't set out to. She
Speaker 1: scrubbed her face with both hands. I kept thinking, I'd
Speaker 1: tell you, but every week I'd convince myself it was nothing,
Speaker 1: just a phase, an emotional thing. Was it just emotional, Nikole?
Speaker 1: I couldn't keep the tremble out of my voice. There
Speaker 1: was the smallest pause now, she answered, voice small, not
Speaker 1: just I'm sorry. The room felt impossibly small. I stared
Speaker 1: at my shoes, then at the ugly beige carpet, trying
Speaker 1: to imagine the last few months, as if from outside,
Speaker 1: to see Nikole in some other light, a woman I
Speaker 1: couldn't recognize, having secret lunches and late night drives in cities.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how long I asked, Nikole, let the
Speaker 1: question float, may be, hoping i'd retract it. Finally, she answered,
Speaker 1: since February, since the Er promotion. Honestly, that was half
Speaker 1: a year. I've been making playlists and planning anniversaries, and
Speaker 1: all the while everything had already changed. Part of me
Speaker 1: wanted to scream, to demand every granular detail. Instead, there
Speaker 1: was just exhaustion. Are you in love with him? Nichole
Speaker 1: shook her head, but it was an ambiguous, uncertain gesture.
Speaker 1: I maybe it's not like us. It's messy. I love you.
Speaker 1: I never stopped loving you. I just needed someone to
Speaker 1: see me, and I didn't know how to tell you
Speaker 1: I felt invisible lately. You could have just told me
Speaker 1: you were struggling, I said, hearing how hollow that sounded now,
Speaker 1: Or at least told me you wanted something to change
Speaker 1: instead of this, she swallowed. You wouldn't have listened, or
Speaker 1: maybe you would have tried, and I still would have
Speaker 1: let you down. I didn't know how to choose between
Speaker 1: the person I'm supposed to be and the person and
Speaker 1: I became over those long, terrible nights at the hospital.
Speaker 1: That's not an excuse, she nodded, jaw clenched, tears sliding
Speaker 1: down her face. Not the embarrassed, single tear kind, but
Speaker 1: the messy, open water works I'd only seen a handful
Speaker 1: of times before. I'm sorry, she whispered again. I'm so
Speaker 1: fucking sorry. I sat arms hugging my sides while she
Speaker 1: collected her breath. I wanted to scream at her for
Speaker 1: the betrayals, to accuse her of cowardice, to tell her
Speaker 1: she'd broken something permanent, but the anger ebbed, replaced by
Speaker 1: a cold clarity. She de made choices, so had I,
Speaker 1: not pressing her, accepting surface explanations and ritual apologies. Now
Speaker 1: here we were, I stood, hands shaking and gathered my jacket.
Speaker 1: I can't stay. Nikole nodded, not arguing or pursuing. She
Speaker 1: blinked at the far wall, as if the future was
Speaker 1: written there, invisible to both of us the door, I stopped.
Speaker 1: I'll find somewhere else to night. I'll let you know
Speaker 1: what I want to do about the house. Until then,
Speaker 1: don't contact me, please, She nodded once, face crumpling. I
Speaker 1: closed the door behind me, but the muted sound of
Speaker 1: her sobbing tangled with every memory I had of us
Speaker 1: dancing in the kitchen, spitting tooth paste at each other
Speaker 1: before bed, inventing dumb garden games on Sunday mornings. In
Speaker 1: the hallway, I pressed my back against the wall, breath
Speaker 1: coming in shaky bursts. I texted Leela, it's true. I
Speaker 1: saw her leaving the hotel with him. It's over, she called,
Speaker 1: but I declined. I wanted needed the silence. I used
Speaker 1: my booking to check into a new room, shutting out
Speaker 1: the world. I craved action, but my limbs were heavy,
Speaker 1: my brain running through every argument. I didn't have every
Speaker 1: possible version of this I could have believed. Instead, there
Speaker 1: was no relief, just gravity. The hours blurred. Nikol texted twice,
Speaker 1: first a short message, then a much longer one that
Speaker 1: I couldn't bring myself to open. I stared at the
Speaker 1: words until my eyes prickled. I started, deleted, and rewrote
Speaker 1: half a dozen responses. Everything felt like it was happening
Speaker 1: through a layer of sound proof glass. That night, I
Speaker 1: lay on the two firm hotel bed and scrolled idly
Speaker 1: through photos of us last year kayaking the Chattahoochee, Nicole
Speaker 1: slung backward in the stern hair, sun bleached and wild,
Speaker 1: the weird good harvest, both of us mugging over the
Speaker 1: ugliest squash like it was a prize. Meeting her parents
Speaker 1: at the Art Museum opening anniversary, shots at the Metallic
Speaker 1: Sushi Bar, the fight where we made up in matching
Speaker 1: bathropes with sticky notes stuck to our foreheads. It felt
Speaker 1: like watching another person's life. In the morning, I packed
Speaker 1: my bag, checked out, and drove the long blind miles home.
Speaker 1: The radio chattered static and sports news I barely heard.
Speaker 1: I thought of all the tiny lies now converging, and
Speaker 1: wished for something simpler, a clean ending, or a catastrophic fight.
Speaker 1: This instead was a slow bleed. When I got home,
Speaker 1: I didn't rush inside. I texted Leela, asking her to
Speaker 1: grab a bag of essentials and leave them at her
Speaker 1: apartment for me to pick up. She replied instantly, anything,
Speaker 1: jur seriously, just tell me. But I ignored the impulse
Speaker 1: to pour it all out over the phone. I needed
Speaker 1: the rituals to pause. I needed a day, maybe more,
Speaker 1: before I could step through the threshold of the life
Speaker 1: Nikole and I had built. Late that afternoon, Nikole came
Speaker 1: home first. I checked the fine my iPhone out of
Speaker 1: habit saw her dot return to Atlanta. I watched from
Speaker 1: my car as she let herself in her posture, deflated,
Speaker 1: head down. After a while, I drove away. She sent
Speaker 1: a long email that evening. I finally forced myself to
Speaker 1: read it. It was both heartfelt and maddening in its careful,
Speaker 1: self aware sorrow. She apologized for the lies and begged
Speaker 1: me to let her know what I wanted her to
Speaker 1: tell friends, what boundaries mattered for now. She offered to
Speaker 1: move out if I wanted or to stay elsewhere herself,
Speaker 1: if that was easier for me. I didn't answer right away.
Speaker 1: I wandered around Leela's apartment, looking at photos from a
Speaker 1: hiking trip last summer, the chintz teapot our mom had
Speaker 1: handed down, the plants Nicole had helped her repot. My
Speaker 1: world felt like it was hovering, the outlines of where
Speaker 1: Nikole wasn't more present than where she was. Over the
Speaker 1: next few days, practicalities took over. I called a real
Speaker 1: estate agent for short term rentals, packed quietly when Nikole
Speaker 1: was at work. Let the neighbors believe I was house
Speaker 1: sitting for Lela, so no one asked too many questions.
Speaker 1: The house, ostensibly ours, became hers. I left the hiking boots,
Speaker 1: the fond of pot our, shared books. I took only
Speaker 1: what I needed, clothes, laptop, the one scrabble set, and
Speaker 1: the box of cards from our first year dating. Word
Speaker 1: filtered out among our friends in that indirect and comfortable
Speaker 1: way things do. Some like Meyer and Bryan texted support
Speaker 1: brief rarely prying. Others less loyal or just baffled, retreated
Speaker 1: into silence. Nikole's parents surprisingly reached out to me a
Speaker 1: short note of regret and shared heartbreak, not blaming but
Speaker 1: not minimizing either. I read their words and felt the
Speaker 1: jagged ache of all the breaks this had made in
Speaker 1: every web around us. Little by little, I got used
Speaker 1: to the shape of my days. I tried new routines
Speaker 1: out of necessity, Coffee in the tiny galley kitchen of
Speaker 1: my rental, walks through neighborhoods. Nicole had never even visited
Speaker 1: with me late night drives just to avoid four walls
Speaker 1: closing in. The emptiness wasn't crisp or cinematic. It was
Speaker 1: a kind of ceaseless static. Yet the dull pain was
Speaker 1: at least honest. Nicole abided by my request for space.
Speaker 1: I received a handful of logistical texts about the bills,
Speaker 1: about the garden, a note that she told close friends only,
Speaker 1: but would follow my lead if I wanted anything else said.
Speaker 1: I scrolled past most of it. She offered to water
Speaker 1: the lilies, which was both her olive branch and a
Speaker 1: tease I'd nearly let them die in spring the first
Speaker 1: year we lived together. I texted back thanks and left
Speaker 1: it at that. The following week, Sunday rolled around, I
Speaker 1: woke before dawn, out of habit, and sat on the
Speaker 1: balcony of my new place, hunched in a sweatshet, the
Speaker 1: world outside just hinting at sunrise. The phone beside me
Speaker 1: was quiet. I queued up the hiking playlist, the old
Speaker 1: Sunday wanderings, and let it spool out, soft and aimless.
Speaker 1: In the chilled, unscented air. Birds started up. A neighbor's
Speaker 1: car alarm trilled, startling me out of thought. My mind wandered, unmoored,
Speaker 1: back to hikes with Nicole, the clutter of our old routine,
Speaker 1: the impossibility of resuming any of it now. I imagined the
Speaker 1: house as she'd keep it, maybe Allan's stopping by with groceries,
Speaker 1: or maybe just Nicole herself, replaying her own mistakes. It
Speaker 1: was a jagged vision, but I'd let it be. The
Speaker 1: future was blank. Nichole's last emil haunted my unread inbox,
Speaker 1: the subject line unassuming but weighty. If you're ready, I'm here.
Speaker 1: I hovered a finger over reply, then dropped my phone
Speaker 1: beside me in its place, I laced up the running
Speaker 1: shoes I hadn't worn since March, choosing for once action
Speaker 1: over another cycle of questioning it wasn't freeing, not exactly.
Speaker 1: The day was still just a day, the grief still
Speaker 1: circling in my chest. But as I started my slow
Speaker 1: warm up pace around the unfamiliar block city, sun streaking
Speaker 1: the side of a mural had never seen before, I
Speaker 1: understood something small but concrete. The world would keep turning,
Speaker 1: with or without the explanations I thought I needed. I
Speaker 1: let myself breathe and jogged into the quiet, open morning.
Speaker 1: The run down my new block was just long enough
Speaker 1: to leave my knees aching, but my mind blank, a
Speaker 1: normal soreness, the kind of thing you feel after trying
Speaker 1: to sprint away from your own life. I cut through
Speaker 1: an alley behind a bakery not yet open, breathing in
Speaker 1: the sweet, yeasty tang, and for a few minutes I
Speaker 1: wasn't thinking about Nicole or Allan or our house at all.
Speaker 1: That empty kind of peace surprised and unsettled me. When
Speaker 1: I got back to the apartment, the inbox notification blinked
Speaker 1: on my phone again, Nicole's subject line unchanged. I didn't
Speaker 1: open it. I dropped the phone in the bowl beside
Speaker 1: my keys, stripped my running shirt, and stood a minute
Speaker 1: rooting myself with a single palm on the kitchen counter.
Speaker 1: The world outside went about the business of a city,
Speaker 1: waking up, delivery trucks, grumbling birds, scrapping over someone s
Speaker 1: dropped doughnut. My own world had no agenda. For the
Speaker 1: first time in months, I didn't check my calendar. I
Speaker 1: didn't even wonder how Nichole's morning was unfolding. The new
Speaker 1: stakes were everywhere, each square foot of this unfamiliar apartment
Speaker 1: etched with absence, every plan reduced to me deciding what
Speaker 1: came next. Across the day, my phone buzzed with practicalities,
Speaker 1: a reminder from my real estate agent, a note from
Speaker 1: Leela let me know if you want to come by
Speaker 1: for dinner, even an automated message from my old Jim,
Speaker 1: miss your face, Jeremy, a tone deaf algorithm. But I
Speaker 1: stared at it for too long. Anyway, I tidied, not
Speaker 1: out of hope, but out of a need to make
Speaker 1: the space less like a waiting room. Still, no matter
Speaker 1: how many times I wiped down the counter, I couldn't
Speaker 1: erase the muscle memory of Nichole's routines. The mug she favored,
Speaker 1: the humming as she made tea the way she always
Speaker 1: scolded me for leaving the honey jar sticky. My hands
Speaker 1: kept pausing, wanting to recreate those domestic patterns, but the
Speaker 1: apartment was silent. Toward afternoon, the practical work bled into
Speaker 1: harder things. I opened Nichole's email, only reading a line
Speaker 1: at a time. I'm sorry, I'll respect your wishes. If
Speaker 1: you want to divide anything, just let me know. No presers,
Speaker 1: all soft landings she never offered in person. She detached
Speaker 1: a scanned image of a lawyer's business card at the bottom,
Speaker 1: low key but clear about where her head was at.
Speaker 1: I closed the message before it could register another buzz
Speaker 1: mire of all people worried about both of you. Let
Speaker 1: me know if you need anything, promised to keep things private.
Speaker 1: I nearly smiled, picturing her awkward but earnest straddling loyalty.
Speaker 1: I typed thanks and left it there. Our social group
Speaker 1: was already calcifying into teams. I could feel it. Mid afternoon,
Speaker 1: the door bell rang. I stiffened, pulse rapping out fast,
Speaker 1: then heard Leela's voice through the static intercom. I brought food, asshole,
Speaker 1: let me in. I buzzed her up, not sure if
Speaker 1: I wanted company, but unable to say no. She walked in,
Speaker 1: carrying takeout and a bag of groceries, her version of
Speaker 1: a care package scrawled with the label don't starve. We
Speaker 1: ate in silence for a while, and she didn't press
Speaker 1: me with questions, for which I was stupidly grateful. After eating,
Speaker 1: she set her fork down and finally asked, any idea
Speaker 1: what you want to do next? I shook my head, shrugging.
Speaker 1: Feels fake, like I'm housetting my own exel that s aloud,
Speaker 1: she said quietly. It's better than forcing yourself back before
Speaker 1: you want to. I picked at the edge of my napkin,
Speaker 1: then forced myself to speak. Have you has she reached
Speaker 1: out to you just once? She said, she feels awful.
Speaker 1: Didn't ask me to talk to you, didn't defend herself. Really,
Speaker 1: I let that settle good. Leela watched me for a minute,
Speaker 1: eyes soft. You know you could do anything now, stay
Speaker 1: with me for a while, go on a trip, hell
Speaker 1: even just rearrange all your furniture, I huffed a laugh.
Speaker 1: I might have to sell it all before I can
Speaker 1: afford something less bleak. You don't have to decide to day,
Speaker 1: she said. We talked about safe for things, then her work,
Speaker 1: her friends, small polite gossip about Charles's new dog, But
Speaker 1: all the chatter floated on top of the undercurrent. The
Speaker 1: moment she left, the emptiness folded back around everything alone again.
Speaker 1: I scrolled old texts between Nicole and me, the ones
Speaker 1: from before everything soured, dumb memes, inside jokes about her boss,
Speaker 1: throwaway bring home cookies requests. Those little digital fossils hurt
Speaker 1: worse than the drama. It was the ordinariness. I missed,
Speaker 1: the ease of not having to negotiate every word or
Speaker 1: gesture for fear of what was hidden beneath. By midweek,
Speaker 1: the pressure kept mounting. Nikole texted house meeting this week end,
Speaker 1: just to sort bills and logistics. She was gentle, almost tentative,
Speaker 1: as if waiting for me to snap at her. It
Speaker 1: felt transactional, but I said yes, Delaying would change nothing,
Speaker 1: and part of me needed to face her in the daylight, sober,
Speaker 1: with no hotel walls muting either of us, sleep remained thin,
Speaker 1: my mind, exhausted from rehearsing. The confrontation showed up as
Speaker 1: nightmares of Nichole packing and unpacking endlessly, her face always obscured.
Speaker 1: Each morning I woke uncertain whether I'd actually spoken the
Speaker 1: words I wanted to in Asheville, or if I'd left
Speaker 1: too much unsaid. The lack of closure chafed, but I
Speaker 1: dreaded what more could even be sorted. On Friday, Leela
Speaker 1: called mid afternoon with a cautionary tone. Brian texted, said,
Speaker 1: Allan's been around the neighborhood, showing up at the house.
Speaker 1: Nikole es not hiding it, she said. I could barely respond.
Speaker 1: I'd braced for pain, but not for Allan to waltz
Speaker 1: into corners of our world that still felt untouched. The
Speaker 1: thought stripped another lair from my already roar insides. That night,
Speaker 1: insomnia tangled with anger. I wanted to storm to the house,
Speaker 1: demand Nichole keep Allan away until we finished separating, but
Speaker 1: it sounded juvenal even in my head. I wrote the
Speaker 1: sentiment in my phone's notes, then deleted it, too proud
Speaker 1: to send anything that petulant. Saturday came, Rain drummed against
Speaker 1: the apartment, windows, cold and unyielding, and I toyed with
Speaker 1: skipping the house meeting entirely Ultimately, gilt and the need
Speaker 1: for concrete answers shoved me out the door. My hands
Speaker 1: shook the whole drive as if every stoplight might turn
Speaker 1: me around before I reached our block. As I approached
Speaker 1: our street, everything looked slanted, The lawn needed mowing. Nichole's
Speaker 1: car was in the drive, plus a rental allan maybe
Speaker 1: or a visiting friend. The sight made my chest squeeze tight,
Speaker 1: but I told myself it didn't matter who was inside now.
Speaker 1: I parked a few houses down, collecting myself before stepping
Speaker 1: toward our front door. The house looked unchanged, yet the
Speaker 1: air crackled with difference. The weeds in the garden bowled
Speaker 1: and unchecked, the half broken gates swinging wide in the breeze.
Speaker 1: I rang the bell, half hoping Nikole wouldn't answer. She did.
Speaker 1: Nikole looked tired, eyes rimmed and face blanched, but she
Speaker 1: smiled wanly and stepped aside. Thanks for coming, she said softly.
Speaker 1: I nodded, careful not to brush her arm. As I
Speaker 1: passed inside. The house was cleaned within an inch of
Speaker 1: its life, her way of coping, clearing out clutter so
Speaker 1: the mess we both left behind wouldn't press down so hard.
Speaker 1: The table where so many morning scribbles had happened was
Speaker 1: wiped bare mail sorted in color coded piles. I recognized
Speaker 1: the attempt at calm for a moment. The urge to
Speaker 1: blurt something. Hello and apology are demand almost overtook me,
Speaker 1: but I kept still. We settled at opposite ends of
Speaker 1: the dining table. Nikole had a note pad and a
Speaker 1: stack of envelopes. I propped my chin on my hand, waiting.
Speaker 1: I scent the rent and utilities braked, and she started
Speaker 1: practical brisk, a familiar tactic. If you want to keep
Speaker 1: the raised beds and took fools, that's fine. I'd rather
Speaker 1: have fewer reminders right now. I nodded. You could have
Speaker 1: the kitchen stuff. I'm not cooking much these days. For
Speaker 1: a few minutes, the logistics spilled out Internet storage, how
Speaker 1: to tell the neighbors what to do if a piece
Speaker 1: of mail turned up for the wrong person. Nichole's voice
Speaker 1: stayed even, but every now and then it hitched, catching
Speaker 1: on a word or an over elaborate explanation. Then she paused,
Speaker 1: fingers splaying against the table top. She wasn't looking at me.
Speaker 1: I want to say something, she said, tone dropping out
Speaker 1: of the businesslike register. I don't expect forgiveness, but I
Speaker 1: if I could go back. I'd tell you the truth sooner.
Speaker 1: I wish I'd trusted you to hear how much I'd
Speaker 1: changed before I started looking for some one to patch
Speaker 1: the cracks for me. I swallowed, fighting the urge to
Speaker 1: retreat into sarcasm. Would it have mattered? My voice came
Speaker 1: out raw. I don't know, she admitted, voice trembling. At
Speaker 1: least we wouldn't be here like this, two people divvying
Speaker 1: up a life they worked so hard on. A silence
Speaker 1: ballooned between us, filled with the soft tick of the
Speaker 1: kitchen clock. My hands drifted to the grain of the
Speaker 1: table top, tracing the marks we'd made during drunken scrabble games.
Speaker 1: Every scar was evidence of a history that now felt fictional.
Speaker 1: I pressed on, needing the conversation to keep moving so
Speaker 1: I didn't fall apart. What are you going to do
Speaker 1: with Allan now? The question sounded childish, and I hated
Speaker 1: how brittle I sounded. Nichole hesitated, then, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's not as simple as just ending one thing and
Speaker 1: starting another. I need time to figure out what's real
Speaker 1: and what's just reaction. I nodded, surprised to realize I
Speaker 1: didn't want any more detail than that. Knowing didn't make
Speaker 1: it better. The rest of the meeting staggered on petty,
Speaker 1: necessary things that in another life we'd have handled with
Speaker 1: lazy affection. For every item crossed off, there were more.
Speaker 1: I barely registered the dog he had folded on the counter,
Speaker 1: the abandoned shoes near the door, the photos we had
Speaker 1: neither removed nor discussed. Finally, Nikole pushed back from the table.
Speaker 1: Want coffee. I shook my head, staring out at the
Speaker 1: rain dropped garden. No thanks, I should get going. She
Speaker 1: hovered by the counter a moment, chewing her lip. Jeremy,
Speaker 1: I meant what I wrote. If you want to tell
Speaker 1: any one anything, I'll back you. You deserve to say
Speaker 1: whatever you need. I stood, picking up my jacket. I'll
Speaker 1: handle it. I don't want a circus. She nodded, eyes bright,
Speaker 1: lips pressed so thin. I thought she might cry, but
Speaker 1: she didn't. I let myself walk through the house one
Speaker 1: last time, eyes flicking from room to room, inventorying what
Speaker 1: might go with me, what i'd leave behind forever. The
Speaker 1: sound of the rain filled every empty space. Back outside,
Speaker 1: the air smelt wet and green, and I realized I
Speaker 1: hadn't eaten all day or really wanted to Leelah called
Speaker 1: while I was still in the car. All o K,
Speaker 1: she asked, I paused, It's done. She said she was
Speaker 1: proud of me. I didn't feel proud, but I thanked
Speaker 1: her anyway. Only when I reached my apartment again did
Speaker 1: the exhaustion settle in. I dropped the folder with my
Speaker 1: share of bills on the dining table, not bothering to
Speaker 1: sort through it. I was itchy with the urge to
Speaker 1: do something to mark the change, not the end, but
Speaker 1: whatever came after. Unbraiding a shared life necessity and dread
Speaker 1: finally forced me to start a move out checklist, call
Speaker 1: the storage place, make a good will run, update my
Speaker 1: address everywhere, put aside the last of the keys. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Nicole texted one final time, let me know if you
Speaker 1: want to do a more official notice for the friend's group.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I'll default to just taking space. Her need for
Speaker 1: consensus was still a pair of hands on my life.
Speaker 1: That night, the apartment was too quiet to sleep in.
Speaker 1: Insomnia returned sharper than before. I replayed arguments I didn't have,
Speaker 1: craved apologies, I'd never believe and hated that so much
Speaker 1: of my pain was reduced to press releases among people
Speaker 1: who only knew parts of the story. Two days blurred by,
Speaker 1: filled with half successful attempts at reclaiming my habits, organizing
Speaker 1: a run, making a solo brunch, reading unfinished books. The
Speaker 1: world I was discovering only sometimes makes space for private disasters.
Speaker 1: There were bills to pay, There were deadlines at the office.
Speaker 1: There was even a stray neighbor's cat stalking the stoop,
Speaker 1: needing nothing but a scratch behind the ears. The ordinariness
Speaker 1: of life closing in felt both restorative and merciless. On Wednesday,
Speaker 1: I returned to the house for the last of my things,
Speaker 1: yard tools, a favorite framed map, a box of old
Speaker 1: Team T shirts Nicole had once threatened to send to
Speaker 1: good Will. She was at work, the house silent and expectant.
Speaker 1: I historied, distilled into labeled piles. I sorted what I needed,
Speaker 1: dropped the house keys in a mug by the door,
Speaker 1: and impulsively stood in the back yard, letting. The late
Speaker 1: afternoon sun cut across the fence. For a moment, the
Speaker 1: weight of leaving was nearly physical. It was a final sweep,
Speaker 1: an end to the daily unnoticed rituals. As I closed
Speaker 1: the back door for the last time, I spotted one
Speaker 1: of the lilies Nicole and I had planted, now out
Speaker 1: of bloom, a single green stalk, ragged but upright. I
Speaker 1: left it there, not out of sentimentality, but because it
Speaker 1: wasn't mine alone to claim. On the drive back to
Speaker 1: my place, I didn't play music. I just let the
Speaker 1: quiet fell in. Once home, I stacked the boxes by
Speaker 1: the wall and sat unmoving until evening pressed up against
Speaker 1: the windows. I didn't text anyone my phone for the
Speaker 1: first time in months, stayed silent by choice. Days stretched,
Speaker 1: I caught up on work, ignored a thread of group
Speaker 1: texts from trivia friends until they faded. Brian sent a
Speaker 1: quick here if you need anything message, and I replied, thanks,
Speaker 1: man full stop. I saw Allan parked outside the house once,
Speaker 1: when passing that way to pick up a forgotten charger
Speaker 1: from Leela. It felt less like a betrayal and more
Speaker 1: like a second story starting over my old one. Eventually,
Speaker 1: a Sunday came a real spring, one sky brittle blue,
Speaker 1: the kind Nicole would once have demanded we use for
Speaker 1: hiking or gardening. Instead, I woke in my own apartment,
Speaker 1: made coffee for just myself, and sat with the window open,
Speaker 1: breathing in the street's stale traffic mingling with new blossoms.
Speaker 1: The hiking boots waited by the door, companionable but ignored,
Speaker 1: and I let the playlist shuffle quietly in the background.
Speaker 1: No plan to follow, no one to coordinate, with, no
Speaker 1: reason to rush or explain. The world had rearranged itself
Speaker 1: around absence, but there were still decisions to make that
Speaker 1: were mine alone. It felt like the first real step.
Speaker 1: Later that day, the air felt thicker than it should
Speaker 1: for late spring. I made a sandwich and left half uneaten,
Speaker 1: letting the bread go stale while I sorted through the
Speaker 1: pile of unopened mail collecting on my table, mostly bills,
Speaker 1: some catalog in Nichole's name I'd have to toss. It
Speaker 1: was just busy work. Really, No amount of sorting paper
Speaker 1: could keep my mind from circling replaying quiet details. How
Speaker 1: Nichole's voice sounded so flat when she'd said thanks for
Speaker 1: coming at the house. How the quiet between us was
Speaker 1: no longer loaded with the possibility of repair. We'd spent
Speaker 1: years learning to read each other in emergencies. Running toward
Speaker 1: the crisis. Now, every interaction felt like evacuating from a
Speaker 1: burning house, a focus on what could be salvaged, not
Speaker 1: what pieces were turning to ash. Most of the food
Speaker 1: in my new fridge wasn't mine. Leela had brought over
Speaker 1: leftovers twice, and the orderly glass containers looked alien against
Speaker 1: the sh I'd barely filled. I knew I should do
Speaker 1: groceries by ingredients for just myself, see if I even
Speaker 1: remembered how to cook for one. But every small, ordinary
Speaker 1: act surfaced Nicole. The nuts she loved in granola, the
Speaker 1: fancy olive oil she'd insisted was worth the money. Their
Speaker 1: absence was sharper than what I'd left behind at the house.
Speaker 1: Late in the afternoon, Meya called for a second. I
Speaker 1: hesitated thumb, poised to send her to voicemail, but something
Speaker 1: about her persistence broke through. Hey, Jeremy, it's Meya. Is
Speaker 1: now a bad time? I cleared my throat. No, it's fine.
Speaker 1: She took a breath. The sounds of an animal hospital
Speaker 1: filtered behind her, beeping and soft voices a dog barking distantly.
Speaker 1: I wanted to check in, but not about Nicole this time. Selfishly,
Speaker 1: I miss having you both around. It doesn't feel right
Speaker 1: not knowing what people need. I didn't know what to
Speaker 1: say to that. Yeah, it's it's just complicated, it is.
Speaker 1: I know allan a bit. I don't think She paused. Then,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone planned for any of this. I
Speaker 1: see how messy it's gotten. I almost laughed. Messy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a word for it. She held the silence for me.
Speaker 1: I'm around if you need a friend who won't pick sides.
Speaker 1: I nodded, even though she couldn't see. Thanks Meyer. After
Speaker 1: we hung up, the conversation sat on my chest heavier
Speaker 1: than I expected. There was a clumsy sort of healing
Speaker 1: in knowing not everybody wanted gossip or a winner. Some
Speaker 1: people just wanted the dust to settle. In the middle
Speaker 1: of the week, a big, padded envelope showed up from
Speaker 1: Nicole Fording, a dress in her handwriting my name just
Speaker 1: j D. She d posted in the group that she
Speaker 1: was taking some time off work, phrased carefully like she
Speaker 1: had a family commitment. There was no return address, which
Speaker 1: at first made me nervous, but it was just the
Speaker 1: last of the stuff I'd left. A mixed c D
Speaker 1: we made for our fourth anniversary, a little hedgehog keychain.
Speaker 1: I'd forgotten a gift card for a kayak rental we'd
Speaker 1: never used. No note. I set the envelope aside, not
Speaker 1: opening the card. It wasn't a gesture of anger, more
Speaker 1: like self defense. I wasn't ready to rifle through reminders
Speaker 1: of hope. As the week end approached, practicalities forced new routines.
Speaker 1: Saturday brought my first solo grocery run in five years.
Speaker 1: I wandered up and down the aisles, buying in small quantities,
Speaker 1: the silence of lack of planning echoing all the way
Speaker 1: to check out. I put fruit back, then picked up
Speaker 1: an unfamiliar brand of coffee, almost laughing at the small rebellion.
Speaker 1: On Sunday, the apartment felt tighter. Older sun angled through
Speaker 1: the blinds, slicing the room into neat halves. That was
Speaker 1: the day, I'd told myself I'd finally finalized the last
Speaker 1: joint bank account call. The lawyer on Nichole's card, signed
Speaker 1: the separation paperwork, setting us on two distinct trails. Not
Speaker 1: an ending, but the work of closing. As I finished breakfast,
Speaker 1: a soft knock at the door startled me. I checked
Speaker 1: the peep hole. On instinct. Most deliveries left things on
Speaker 1: the door step, and Leela would have texted first. But
Speaker 1: standing in the hall was Nicole. She wasn't carrying anything,
Speaker 1: hands jammed in the pockets of an old windbreaker. I
Speaker 1: remembered from our first trip to Asheville. For a second,
Speaker 1: I just stared her shoulders looked narrower, or maybe I
Speaker 1: was finally seeing her outside the scaffolding of our routines.
Speaker 1: She caught my gaze through the glass, offering a hesitant wave. Hey.
Speaker 1: Her voice was muffled thin. I contemplated, not answering, but
Speaker 1: that wasn't who I wanted to be, not any more.
Speaker 1: Not in finality, I pulled open the door, bracing myself
Speaker 1: for whatever odd gravity this moment might have. Can we talk,
Speaker 1: she asked, already sounding like she regretted it. I nodded
Speaker 1: wordless and let her inside. Nichole looked around, eyes flicking
Speaker 1: over the tidy, unfamiliar space. Nice place, she offered weakly.
Speaker 1: I shrugged, wishing for once for something to fill the air. Music,
Speaker 1: a cat even some distant shouting from the street. She
Speaker 1: stood near the table, shifting from foot to foot. I'm
Speaker 1: not here to argue, I just there's something I want
Speaker 1: to say, and I didn't want to do it over text.
Speaker 1: The restraint in my chest snapped, just a little go ahead.
Speaker 1: She took a breath. I owe you the truth, the
Speaker 1: whole of it. She struggled with the words, picking at
Speaker 1: a loose seam on her jacket. It wasn't about Allan,
Speaker 1: you know, not really, he just showed up at the
Speaker 1: exact wrong time, after months of me failing to say
Speaker 1: what I needed to say to you. She looked at
Speaker 1: me properly now, the directness almost painful. I convinced myself
Speaker 1: we were both just surviving. But I let my fear
Speaker 1: of disab pointing you turn into outright lying, and that's unforgivable.
Speaker 1: There is no excuse, and I don't expect another chance.
Speaker 1: But you deserve better than feeling crazy, better than all
Speaker 1: the secrecy and manipulation. Her voice hitched. I needed to
Speaker 1: say that in person. Whatever you decide, I'll abide by it,
Speaker 1: about the house, the friends, the story we tell. I
Speaker 1: won't write around you any more. It nearly flawed me
Speaker 1: how much I had hungered for a moment like this,
Speaker 1: clear specific, no rationalizations, no hedging. I realized that, in
Speaker 1: the months since the affair began, maybe even longer, I've
Speaker 1: been desperate for the bare, unmistakable truth, delivered without asterisks
Speaker 1: or side steps. I stared at the sunlight slicing her face,
Speaker 1: made softer by the fear and sincerity there. For the
Speaker 1: first time since Asheville, I really registered the cost this
Speaker 1: had levied on her too. She wasn't coming for forgiveness,
Speaker 1: she wasn't asking for it, not with her mouth, or
Speaker 1: her eyes or her posture, and that made the moment
Speaker 1: feel real in a way nothing had for a long time.
Speaker 1: I stood there, letting the silence stretch between us, a heavy, uncertain,
Speaker 1: but tolerable thing. When I finally answered, my voice came
Speaker 1: out steady, almost gentle. I appreciate it. I needed to
Speaker 1: hear that. She nodded, blinking rapidly. If you ever want
Speaker 1: to talk, for closure or anything else, it's yours to ask,
Speaker 1: I nodded. I need time, we both do. Nichole absorbed that,
Speaker 1: then took a step back, pausing to look at me
Speaker 1: one last time. I hope you find what you need,
Speaker 1: she whispered, and then she let herself out, closing the
Speaker 1: door softly behind her. I stayed in place, the echo
Speaker 1: of her voice hanging in the air, vivid and exhausting.
Speaker 1: Then gradually the pressure in my chest released, one measured
Speaker 1: breath at a time. A half hour later, I finally moved.
Speaker 1: I went to the window, watching her car disappear down
Speaker 1: the street, the last solid thread of our old life
Speaker 1: spinning out behind her. Then I picked up my phone,
Speaker 1: not to text Nicole, but to scroll, searching for a trail,
Speaker 1: a park, a spot on the edge of the city
Speaker 1: where the day could move forward, not backward. There was pain,
Speaker 1: sharp and honest, but also space room for something new,
Speaker 1: something undefined. I noticed for the first time that the
Speaker 1: light in my apartment, unobstructed by old routines, looked different
Speaker 1: on the walls. I went to the door, pulled on
Speaker 1: a jacket, and stepped outside into the blue of the afternoon,
Speaker 1: walking nowhere at all, finally belonging wholly to myself for nap.